Starve the beast is either (charitably) a way to encourage efficiency by introducing necessary scarcity or (uncharitably) a way to deliberately create artificia

Starve the beast is either (charitably) a way to encourage efficiency by introducing necessary scarcity or (uncharitably) a way to deliberately create artificial failure to leverage the phenomenon being described here where people will conclude that because something doesn't work, it can't work, and therefore should be abolished. It's related, but it's not the same thing. EDIT: Note that I'm assuming that prematurely leaping to the conclusion isn't deliberate on the part of the reporter here. If it were, then maybe it would be the same thing.