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An unsettling thought...
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 Quote:Valles wrote:99% of government employees operate in "Who can I step on to get ahead" mode, 99% of the time. Including elected officials. -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Relying on the self-selected for higher decision making does have its downsides, but your assertions look nothing at all like any of the actual bureaucrats I've dealt with.
And I doubt that West Virginia, of all the states in the union, is uniquely noncorrupt. =========== =============================================== "V, did you do something foolish?" "Yes, and it was glorious."
Being in government does not magically make one more concerned for one's fellow man. In practice it tends to make one -less- so, because there is less room for rule-bending, less motivation to actually try to provide decent service, and fewer consequences for failing to do so. A company that consistently disappoints its customers will go out of business. A government bureaucracy that consistently disappoints its customers will watch the party in power change in the next election, shrug, and go on with business as usual.
-- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Leaving aside that having the party in power change on account of your issues can and will produce highly unwelcome disruption, the factor you're refusing to acknowledge is that those in government service have no incentive to 'disappoint their customers' while those in corporate do. The public servants I've seen at work for things like the Appalachian Forest Heritage Area were interested in doing their jobs and bringing in tourism, and were actively concerned with benefiting the communities involved. The staff at the AT&T call center I worked at advised newcomers not to care about their callers, just to sell and get them off the line.
The contrast is... drastic. =========== =============================================== "V, did you do something foolish?" "Yes, and it was glorious."
Not all government servants are faceless uncaring sociopaths, true.
Your example is a bit flawed, IMO, because areas like the Forestry Service are places where the ones who -do- care about the job and the public will gravitate towards, because they're less interesting to those who are only interested in their own personal gain. Health care and the like, on the other hand, do not have that draw, and do not have the factors that discourage the asshats. Which is why I'm not interested in government-controlled health insurance; I want those decisions made by my doctor, not by somebody whose only incentive is to cut costs so that he can have more to spend on flying in hookers and blow to Guatemala like certain other govenment departments have recently done. -- Sucrose Octanitrate. Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.  ECSNorway Wrote:My experience says otherwise. And I am a government employee.Quote:Valles wrote:Certainly government employees disassociate, too, but from a societal level, and speaking personally as someone who'd be expecting to have to deal with them, 'How can I not get in trouble?' is infinitely preferable to 'Who can I step on to get ahead?'99% of government employees operate in "Who can I step on to get ahead" mode, 99% of the time. Including elected officials. -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012 |
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