My government needs to lose some weight

Here's an interesting essay on government size, telcos, and privacy from Radley Balko. He talks about how the governments' sheer size makes it difficult for companies to say no for fear of losing its business.

It's a good argument, but not flawless. Still, I don't think anyone would say that the government should employ 3 million people (that's 1% of the entire country). It's time to face the fact that we need to drastically shrink our government. There has got to be tons of waste that we could cut out, leaving the machinery operating better than before. Besides, people are always the most expensive part of any project, and we could save tons of money with some massive layoffs.

But it'll never happen.