When government es sufficiently large, its impact on private citizens is not just harmful; it’s self-contradictory. U.S. policy toward dairy farmers offers a poignant example.

Joseph Sunde recently explored one aspect of U.S. agricultural policy: The Food and Agriculture Act of 1977, signed by new President Jimmy Carter, intended to artificially raised the price for dairy products (and led to a 500-million-pound stockpile of “government cheese”).

Government intervention in the market, which inevitably confuses price signals, forced U.S. consumers to pay higher prices. At least on paper, that benefits U.S. dairy farmers.

But what the government gives with one hand, it removes with the other. The federal government spent $22 million provided by U.S. taxpayers – including dairy farmers – to benefit the Serbian cheese industry. USAID explained its role is to help dairy farmers in Sjenica, Serbia improve “cheese standards and quality” to market its product “to the consumers in the EU, US, and further.”

Senator Rand Paul noted in his “Waste Report” for Fall 2019:

In recent years on the domestic side, theU.S. has been experiencing a massive,historiccheesesurplus, one that wouldeventually hit 1.4billion pounds—whichNPR noted in its report “means that there isenoughcheesesitting in cold storage to wraparound the U.S. Capitol.”

SoAmerican dairy farmers dealingwith the realities of this situation might becheesed off to learn theirgovernmentworked to petition and theEuropeancheesemarket—using their owntax dollars to boot! (Emphases in original.)

The towering Christian intellect Dr. Samuel Johnson once wrote, “All power of fancy over reasonis a degree ofinsanity.” What would he say of a government that works at cross-purposes with itself?

Dairy Farm in Delhi, New York. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Public domain.)