Anyone who argues in favour of small government—and who doesn’t these days? (apart from supporters of big government, who seem always to get their own way)—insists on the need to reduce the size of bureaucracies. Public service departments have become bloated, advocates of downsizing say—usually with the implied rather than stated supplementary assertion that if the bureaucrats in them are not actually freeloading on the taxpayer they are not giving value for money either. Well, step out the door in any urban area, particularly an inner-city one, and you’ll see evidence of one branch of bureaucratic endeavour that, if judged…