Bringing up lists of wastage, such as the accounting stupidities
which produce $600 hammers, is pointless; anyone with a brain knows
real competition would drive them way down. But statists of all
stripes despise true free markets and can find all sorts of excuses
why their particular programs need to be run by government.

The only “permanent” solution is to get these programs out into
the free market. Reduce government down to an absolute minimum so
the sunshine of competition can take care of these petty problems
which add up to such malfeasance.

I once figured that the only things taxes actually need to pay
for is investigation of crimes far enough to identify victims who
can take over the investigation (stolen cars abandoned by the
roadside, bodies to find the relatives, houses with the front door
broken in, …) and interim guardians for children whose parents
died in an accident, etc, until permanent guardians can be found
(relatives, Sisters of Mercy, monocle factories, …).

Assuming those costs won’t all be recovered, you could do all of
it for $1B a year, which is roughly $10 per family or $1 per $20K
property value. And if you make the property value self-declared,
but limit restitution in court cases to the self-declared value,
then you can make it semi-voluntary and eliminate a whole bunch of
verification bureaucracy and intrusion.