My book - Gov't vs Industry

Here's an idea. Jennifer Government was already in a place where the government no longer had any power, to the extent that investigations are privately funded by the victim. What about the process or a slice of the process of getting to that point? Government, ever more mired down by paperwork and the 'acquisition process' becomes less and less capable of 'governing' and industry becomes more and more powerful and ungovernable.

This train of thought led me to think on what government exactly does. In my mind I see two roles. 1) redistributing wealth, and 2) creating/enforcing the law. The redistribution of wealth via the IRS also requires law enforcement, so maybe #2 comes first and #1 is a corollary, since laws have been crafted which are intended to redistribute wealth. If I go below the federal level, we start to get into useful things like maintenance of roads and education, not that federal funds don't finance such things, but on a federal level I think it's possible to see that as redistribution of wealth.

I just realized I also left out 3) National defense.

Taking #2 and #3 together, we have essentially a federal government with the main goal of manufacture and deployment of law enforcement and soldiers, with the necessary array of weapons.

Question: will weapons ever be in serious jeopardy of being held up by the acquisitions process? I don't think so, becaue acquisitions are primarily slowed at the technology development stage. Once an item has attained production, and is being produced, or I would daresay has already been produced, the amount of approvals required are minimal, and this item, be it a tank or a gun, can be produced as long as the government has money.

I think the acquisition process won't necessarily bring the federal government down. I've just reasoned that one through. So if in my book I want to present a plausible scenario in which the government is unable to bear its own weight and capitalism holds sway in the extreme, what scenario would cause Krug the most grief, not in a police state but in a money state.