It’s been said that you can put lipstick on a pig but you’ve still got a pig. The same is true for governmental action.

Bureaucrats and politicians can create new programs with lofty-sounding names or dress up programs by purposefully using vague language and empty promises, but that does not erase the fact that it is a governmental program, which not only causes significant unintended consequences but actually does the exact opposite of what it was implemented to “fix.”

Consider the latest round of bailouts. As Sheldon Richman wrote in the pages of the The Freeman:

In a free society supply and demand would govern markets. The demand for houses would be determined by people’s preferences and the resources at their disposal. Supply would be determined by relative profit expectations—which is to say, by the demand for housing and the competing demand for the necessary inputs.

A distortion occurs when government planners and rent-seeking corporate allies, under cover of humanitarian social policy, engineer a deviation from natural market outcomes. Dressed up as promotion of the American Dream through home ownership, the planners used political means—ultimately, the threat to imprison uncooperative taxpayers—to channel wealth to the construction, real-estate, and financial industries.

There was irresponsibility—but only because the government for decades has pursued a policy of relieving big companies of the responsibility that otherwise would have been imposed by market discipline and competition. Any promise to bail out companies, and any regulatory, tax, or trade policy that raises the barriers to entry for new competitors, sews the seeds of crisis.

Richman accurately concludes, “It is the state bailing out statism.”

Fortunately not all have accepted at face value these massive interventions into the economy by these bureaucrats and politicians. For example, check out this excellent example of street theater used to communicate such a message (which I’m told included some crashers):

Want another take? Then check out the the video “The Economic Crisis and You!” below made by Crasher Sovereign for a past Crasher Challenge: Set the Record Straight on the Socialist Bailout.

To connect with others and work together on pushing back against the government recklessly spending your money by labeling it as a “bailout” or “stimulus”, join the Stop the Government “Bailouts” group on Bureaucrash Social. And for more intellectual ammo, arm yourself with the Enjoy Capitalism and Stop Rentseeking overviews.