Bureaucracy exists in the public sector because the government has certain duties to the public which must be fulfilled, and the process of fulfilling them is inherently complex, difficult, and expensive.
It is also quite labor-intensive. Many people are required to facilitate the government’s administrative efforts. From court clerks to prison guards to the person who snaps your driver’s license photo, public service requires a lot of grunt work, and the direct impact of their performance upon everyone’s individual lives necessitates constant meta level analysis. This is further complicated by conflicting interests, disagreements over priorities, the prevalence of logistical errors, funding and informational deficiencies, social fads, internal ambivalence about the institutional mission, efforts to eliminate corruption and waste, corruption and waste period, and many other variables. Managing all of this at the federal, state, and local levels is mind-bogglingly convoluted and inconvenient, and I think necessarily bureaucratic.
In other words, the enormous difficulty of sustaining a functional society more or less justifies the existence of bureaucracy. The point of having a society is to increase the collective fitness of its members in the interest of improving their overall quality of life. Of course, sustaining a somewhat coordinated social framework is not a perfect solution to the problem of trying to be alive correctly, but it’s probably better than not doing it.
So you might say that bureaucracy in the public sector is, broadly speaking, an “efficiency-maximizer” with regard to public administration (at least in theory, although in practice bureaucracy is widely associated with inefficiency, which indicates that it’s simply failing to achieve its goal); or, even more broadly speaking, a “fitness-maximizer” that doesn’t happen to work very well, yet persists in the absence of anything better that could reasonably be expected to overcome entrenched resistance to reform efforts.
Whatever variable bureaucracy exists to maximize, its failures to do so are obviously not a reflection of its goals. All corporations are profit-maximizers, including those that eventually file bankruptcy.
Everything would be easy if only it weren’t so damn hard, etc.
The problem with your “resident of Boise” theory is that it costs an ungodly amount of money to move, all of which must be paid upfront. Moving out of state is even worse, because it often means transferring jobs. This is a huge barrier for a lot of people, and for many its utterly prohibitive.
Then there’s the fact that homelessness generally feels like a weird transitional phase, and you bear it with as much grace as possible and hope you have kind friends.
My father is a very soft-hearted person, and ever since I was a child he has let people stay with him who are down on their luck for whatever reason. There have been times where we had like 6 or 7 extra people staying out at my dad’s house at once, sharing bedrooms or sleeping on the couches or the living room floor.
I can tell you that most of these people are unable to generate much money at all in spite of their best daily efforts. They simply cannot do it. It’s not that they are mentally ill or grossly incompetent. Many of them demonstrate at least a base level of competency in many different directions. The problem seems to be that they quite simply are not needed. There just ends up being no place for them anywhere. They get outcompeted in the workforce as available positions shrink away, rising above their level of proficiency, becoming increasingly niche and specialized or automated, leaving them behind. Many are older adults without living relatives who are established and willing to help them out, and no one else really cares very much what kind of trauma a relatively uneducated 43-year-old man is suffering either, especially if he has a spotty criminal background.
Compounding these troubles is the fact that these people are poor and look poor. They don’t use correct grammar (not because they’re stupid per se; in fact, this usually comes down to the local culture and the communication styles they’re exposed to). They often don’t meet the minimum requirements listed on most job applications: smart phone with stable internet connection, professional appearance, reliable transportation, home address, etc.
So you see how people end up getting stuck in a downward spiral. Then they fall out onto the streets and get treated like a nuisance for it—because they more or less are a nuisance. A homeless person is a living, breathing allegory of want.
On the other hand, I have an old friend who got out of prison (drug charges) a few years ago and was placed in a 1-br apartment paid for by the city. He has never struggled with housing since then, since he doesn’t have to pay for it. I find that the problem is pretty much invariably financial when it comes right down to it.
On the other hand, I have friends hitting their 30s who very much are in the work force and who are nevertheless struggling to accept the fact that they will probably always be stuck living with no fewer than 9 roommates, come hell or high water.
Tons of people are hanging on by their fingernails or just aren’t able to hack it at all and will probably end up sooner or later on the streets of San Francisco or at my dad’s house or similar.
It’s hard out here.