from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:
Tips for Consumers: Advice for those who must deal with civil servants about things such as therapy and education
Politics: A tingle down the leg resulting from a freezing of the brain.
"The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments." Ayn Rand.
First, be aware that people who are employed by the state need not be right and, therefore, are frequently wrong. Take no advice from them. Second, do not place yourself or your relations under their programmatic control. The odds are overwhelmingly against the program being useful because a successful government program is as likely as a duck hatching a doorknob. Third, watch for the rationalization, “The State has declared me an expert, therefore I am.” Those who have all the answers have none. Appeal to authority cannot confer effectiveness. In a contest between data and the experts, back the data. There are two kinds of elite in the world; the false consisting of those who know everything, but can do nothing, and the real, who confess incomplete knowledge, but can do something. Go elsewhere for effective programs. When you deal with a government employee, you are not a customer to him because you cannot take your business elsewhere. You are an annoyance, a burden or a victim, not a customer. Business seeks out new customers, government agencies do their best to avoid them. In general, you should regard civil servants as what Sam Watkins called officers during the Southern War for Independence, “harmless personages”. No amount of tinkering with any government agency will change the contingencies under which it operates. This advice would have been as true in 1200 as it is now. If events continue in their present happy course, things will only get worse. You need to say to government workers: Live in your world. Pretend you’re important, and leave us alone. Beware the dead hand of government in all things. You cannot keep it out of your wallet, but there are many things you can do to keep it at remove of your destiny.
Stay away from any unionized workforce. They will have rules which don’t make any sense to the consumer, protect incompetent people, ensure minimum effort for maximum recompense and employment for the maximum number of workers. In the long run, this can only work in government situations, as the Big Three auto unions found to their unemployed dismay. Government workers also tend to be cranky. They have no reason to be civil and they have never known the joy of unforced commerce in their work lives. Living among them is like having an involuntary membership in a club of boring eccentrics. They are the overseers of the lord and you the peasant. Look for a situation in which the Law of Contingencies is free to do its useful work. In other words, avoid any situation in which you can’t hire and fire the person who provides the service.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
