With the news of the federal government shutdown in January 2018, various amateur pundits in my Facebook feed began opining, more or less seriously, that if various government agencies can send home 95% of their staff and the sky doesn't fall, then the agencies might as well be shrunk down permanently. Think of the government waste! Think of the robbery of taxpayer money!

Lest anyone take this too seriously, here is some common sense: the main role of most of these rule-enforcement agencies is through their deterrent effect. Most of the time, people follow federal laws (at least as much as they're going to) not because of the activities of these agencies, but because of the fact that they'll catch up with you eventually if you break the law. This deterrent effect is just as strong as long as everyone knows the agencies will re-open eventually, staffed at the same level. If you market a drug and make claims that haven't been vetted by the FDA, they'll come after you once they're up and running again. So no company is going to launch a project that flagrantly violates some federal law when they know they will be penalized (and their profits in the interim confiscated) when the enforcement agencies are back up to speed.

Some federal departments are exempt from the shutdown because their enforcement needs to be constant, in order to be effective. The TSA is still checking bags at airport security because if someone sneaks a weapon or a bomb onto a plane, there's no option to "make a note of it now and chase them down to punish them later." Border security is still operating, because - without wading into the overall immigration debate - if someone sneaks in now, it's much harder to find them and penalize them later, so it's much more cost-effective just to keep catching people at the border.

In other cases, some agencies really are crippled by the shutdown, and we pay the price in terms of increased risk, even if the impact on our daily lives is not immediately obvious. The Food and Drug Administration can't perform full inspections on the country's food supply, and while companies will continue to mitigate risks themselves in order to protect their reputation, the risk of food-borne illness has gone up. The Center for Disease Control can continue monitoring for outbreaks, but cannot communicate their findings to the public while their social media accounts are shut down.

Either way, the notion that "Life went on for me, so let's just leave the government permanently gutted" is ridiculous. Let's smack this down if you hear anyone saying it who isn't obviously joking.