>trying to manage a confiscatory bureaucracy would have the same issues

It would be a cat and mouse game but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Like how funding the IRS appropriately increases government revenue.

Yes. And so we have the IRS whose enforcement measures fall disproportionately upon the disadvantaged and which is the only law enforcement agency permitted to open proceedings against citizens without evidence of wrong doing. I would hold this up as the archetypal bad example.