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Bureaucracy works like this: The administrator of the agency has a budget to spend. If they spend the agency funds with businesses that give them kickbacks, they personally get rich. This is called corruption. It's common. Administrators thus seek larger budgets, because by doling out more agency money, they get more kickbacks.

Administrators that save the government money generally aren't corrupt, and the parasites that want to bribe administrators to get business work to get rid of them, as quickly as possible, so they can make more money.

As a result of corruption, long-standing criminal relationships between government and drug smugglers has created the cartels.

Cartels are the underbelly of government, not the enemy. Pablo Escobar worked for the CIA.