RoR: Forum

Well, all right... Let me be the devil's advocate and suggest that government treats people right while businesses exploit them. That would be one explanation. Why do businesses not offer better wages to get the best workers? That is supposed to be what they do, is it not? Yet, clearly, the best and the brightest go into public service because the wages and benefits are far superior to the private sectors. Thus, government works much better than free enterprise.

The present depression demonstrates that point. The private sector now consists of those who lack the wherewithal to find solutions to their obvious problems. Markets contract, work goes overseas, manufacturing fails, and the best the private sector can come up with is Wal-Mart.

What would be accomplished by reversing the situtation? Suppose government paid only 60% of private sector wages. What would that look like for even the basic services that libertarians claim are only appropriate, police and courts. Realize moreover, that even a so-called constitutionally limited government needs workers at all levels. Hiring them by contract with the private sector would only make a round-robin of the problem.

Should public police be paid more than security guards? Should the FBI facilities be cared for by the best in maintenance, janitorial and service, or should they get only those who are not good enough to work in the private sector: the lazy and inept?

Before Eli Whitney brought interchangeable parts to military arms, it was assumed that the government operated its own arsenals. After al, if protection is their raison d'etre, then the government is properly engaged to make its own weapons and defenses, to have its own court buildings, etc., ultimately, its own engineers, mines and factories for its own uses and services. At what rate do you pay them?

We complain about the wages and perquisites of Congress and the state legislatures. But what is the alternative? Do you want people who can do nothing else at that level, the least capable, the least aware, interested and hard-working?

If human action works by self-interest, and if government is important to society, then should government workers not be paid as much as possible?

That still leaves the other side of the coin ungraded. Why does the private sector not invest itself up by its bootstraps by paying more, hiring the best and brightest, and thereby making more money from new and better goods and services?

(Just asking, because I see a deeper problem here.)

Post 1

Sunday, June 13, 2010 - 11:58am

Michael, you wrote, "Yet, clearly, the best and the brightest go into public service because the wages and benefits are far superior to the private sectors."

I don't know if you really mean that, or it is part of you playing devil's advocate. If you really meant it, then I'll strongly disagree. The best and the brightest is a category of people that include many that can not stand the negative, soul-deadening aspects of government employment enough to justify the better wages and benefit packages.
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"Thus, government works much better than free enterprise."

By what standard? That is such sloppy thinking.
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"The private sector now consists of those who lack the wherewithal to find solutions to their obvious problems. "

Apart from those who are in a company that was recently nationalized, the private sector contains the same people it did before. The 'wherewithal' that is missing isn't inside of them, it is the freedom taken from them, and the change in the economic context that has been wrought by the government.
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Michael, look at this sentence of yours: "If human action works by self-interest, and if government is important to society, then should government workers not be paid as much as possible?"

It is an illogical mish-mash. Human action works best for the individual when it works on the basis of individual self-interest, but then you leap to what is important to society - which is not an individual. And then from that subject-disconnect, you leap to a conclusion that government workers should be paid as much as possible.

If you really care about this issue, why aren't exploring the way a market works to determine wages and finding the closest to a market solution for setting government pay scales. Doesn't it make more sense to pay what is required by the market to get the people needed to do the job?

Post 2

Monday, June 14, 2010 - 10:48am

Why does the private sector not invest itself up by its bootstraps by paying more, hiring the best and brightest, and thereby making more money from new and better goods and services?

Do you mean, after paying the taxes that subsidize the monopolists-with-guns largess?

Government 'best-and-brightest' budget meeting: "We need more revenue: raise taxes." And, the most ridiculous pension system imaginable, funded by what is percieved by an infinite supply of O.P.M. obtained at the point of a gun. See Greece for the end game.

The tribal carcass carving and parasitism have reached critical mass. What is left of 'private sector' is defined mostly by its access to crony connections in the public sector, aka carcass-carving-crony capitalism. What is left of the sad balance is, a struggle for as long as they can take it, and then a punt on 4th and long, which will not be for long for many.

The tribal free-for-some is breaking, as it must. A system based on the first shift funded by taxes on the second shift funded by taxes on the third shift funded by taxes on the first shift is going nowhere fast.

Strongarm dictator Chavez is really knocking it out of the 'best and brightest' park down there in Venezuela, don't you think? Circling the drain, all the while blaming it on 'capitalism.' Just like the religious nuts in Bangladesh.

Different religion.

Post 3

Monday, June 14, 2010 - 11:02am

"If human action works by self-interest, and if government is important to society, then should government workers not be paid as much as possible?"

If plumbing and proper sanitation is important, than shouldn't plumbers be made emperors?

I mean, be paid "as much as possible?"

In fact, shouldn't we all live for the plumbing? SHouldn't 'maintenance of the plumbing' -- after all, it is crucially important -- be the very purpose of our existence, the reason we are all born? To serve the crucially necessary plumbing? We should live for the plumbing, and plumbers should rule our lives, if this logic has any weight.

(Credit: Ayn Rand, We The Living.)

regards,
Fred

PS: The plumbing of state is necessary. An honorable job should be, being a state plumber, keeping the pipes of state clean and free flowing should be an honorable job ...not an argument to be made emperor.

Else, plumbers would make the same claim, on the same basis.

Painting the double yellow lines fairly down the middle of the road is a crucial function, necessary to the safety of us all.

So is, honorably scraping the barnacles off of all of those navigation bouys.

And, so on.

Let me know when the proper function of state plumbers should include "RUN THE ECONOMY, AS IF BY EMPERORS."

That is, in this nation. Strong armed thugs can run Venezuela, that's fine, let 'democratic socialism' work its magic on the people not yet thrown into jail, like the odd dissenting judge.

(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 6/14, 11:08am)

Post 4

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - 2:43pm

Steve and Fred: Rather than attempt to defeat me with superior logic, thus proving your intellectual superiority to me -- admittedly, an easy standard to surpass -- why not deal with the assumptions?

Government has grown continuously and continually. Obviously, government is successful.

Government wages are not created out of thin air by government agencies. The Park Rangers in the Department of the Interior do not rob people in shopping malls. in order to pay the geographers in the Department of the Interior. Congress controls the budgets and We, the People, control Congress.

Moreover, hiring and promotion in the ranks is by civil service, which is merit-based. At the topmost levels, apppointments are from the President with the Advice and Consent of the Senate. This is clearly the system that We, the People want.

For those who advocate a "minarchy" this is a serious problem. Fred and Steve both dodged the question of how to limit government. Should the government own its own factories for producting its own weapons? Should it operate its own law schools for training its own judges?

You talk blithely of "limited" government, but you have no idea what you propose. How about ports and harbors? Who controls those? Who maintains national monuments or do you think that all the copies of the Declaration of Independence should be privately owned like a bunch of Roman coins? How are they housed. curated, displayed, and protected? Bunker Hill? The Alamo? Pearl Harbor? Mount Rushmore?

However, it is soluable.

For one thing, maybe we should not pay government employees anything. If only the richest Americans with the most discretionary time devoted volunteer effort to government, maybe that would be best.

Do "minarchists" advocate voluntary government service?

Or should government emplyees be paid?

Steve says that we need a mechanism to determine the best rate of pay for government employees. We have that. It is called the marketplace. If they offered a million dollars a year, they would be inundated. If they offered a thousand, no one would show up. So, they offer what they do by an iterative, information-driven process which brings the people they need.

You object to that because in your hearts you are anarchists who hate and fear government.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 6/15, 2:44pm)

Post 5

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - 4:19pm

Michael:

You have switched from:

then should government workers not be paid as much as possible?

to

then should government workers not be paid?

Yes, government workers should be paid.

You were trying to make the case, I think, that we are so dependent on government for everything in our lives that we should make sure we populate it only with the best and brightest and so on, and pay premium for the best government that money can buy.

As opposed to define and limit it, and pick folks by random from the phone book and ask them if they want a shot at painting the double yellow lines fairly down the middle of the road, it's a much needed societal function, and an honorable job.

If we set out asserting that we need emperors to run the empire and nothing else will do, then the point is well made, because emperors don't come cheap.

There is a fundamental economic difference between public and private employment, and that has to do with the discipline of risk. With more than some irony, it has been the fat fingering of possibly well meaning public policy that has been monkeying with the discipline of risk in the (once) private marketplace, resulting in some half-assed soft fascism of half-is/half-isnt public/private entities, monopolists with guns perverting marketplace(financial markets) after marketplace(health care.)

The Tribe is on a bender, attempting to nullify risk, and along with it, the discipline of risk.

There are two fundamentally different modes of participation in our economies: ROI at risk, and ROI guaranteed. 'For wages' is an example of ROI guaranteed. You pull at the pump handle and make an effort, and at the end of the week, you are guaranteed a predetermined ROI, win or lose. You might lose your job, but when you do, you immediately stop pulling on the pump handle, and you have a tribale cause for action should your employer try to stiff you for your wages.

The other mode is ROI at risk. You can pull at the pump handle all year long, and at the end of the year, there is no guarantee that you get any positive return for your efforts.

Who guarantees ROI for wages? Ultimately, it is folks with ROI at risk.

The 'risk' in public emnployment is not as clear. There is the clear political risk of political positions and political appointments at will, but the vast majority of public employment is not elected. It is like a massive public union, in fact, it is a massive public union. Ultimately, those getting paid in public positions are getting paid via taxation of those in the private economy, and ultimately those in the private economies, in our model, depend on ROI at risk to create circulation of effort in our economies.

By deliberately targeting risk, public policy is in effect dampening the engine that drives circulation in our economies, as in, exactly what we see today.

As in, who in their right mind is going to risk skin in this crazy tribal 'free-for-some' that the tribe is attempting to throw, a crazy model that in extremes is characterized as "the first shift is taxed to pay the wages of the second shift, the second shift is taxed to pay the wages of the third shift, the third shift is taxed to pay the wages of the first shift."

You don't see a problem with moving ever closer to that model of a risk averse, largely socialized 'the economy?' There is a reason that such puddingheadedness breaks long before we get to Nirvana.

When it comes to the discipline of risk in our economies, we are moving in precisely the wrong direction. It is what people do when they are drifitng at a great height at the end of a period of once powered flight, clueless as to how they got to that great height. They got there by letting success succeed and failure fail. Sure, along the way were all kinds of attempts to ameliorate failure.

Anyway, that is what is fundamentally wrong with too large an influence of public employment in our economies; we become culturally risk averse, with some irony. (There is no argument that government workers are scared to death of wasting the people's money on risky ventures. What is missing is the discipline of risk, felt as, peril to ones own skin when taking that risk.)

Nothing sharpens up the focus quite like the threat of pain of failure. Nothing. Not benevolence towards our fellow man, not years of subsidized existence in a university Disneyland, not calouses on our knees from years of praying in church.

regards,
Fred

Post 6

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - 4:54pm

Michael:

Do "minarchists" advocate voluntary government service?

There are 501 school districts in PA, each with 9 school board members. Every one of those is an unpaid position, staffed by volunteers who subject themselves to an election for the privelege. My wife is serving her third term.

Maybe she's a minarchist: I'll ask her.

I love it when she gets calls, folks complaining that the school boards are always voting themselves huge pay increases. It is news to her and 4500 others in PA.

Is there a huge problem with this model? Far from attracting those who could only work for minimum wage, it attracts those willing to work for nothing at all.

Exactly.

Granted, it is not a full time job. But, it requires a substantial commitment of time and grief, and is a responsibility taken seriously by those who subject themselves to the public scrutiny of doing the job.

My wife did so selfishly; she wanted the job. But she's leaving after three terms. Twelve years will be enough, andevery single page of the phone book is indeed full of folks who are more than able to the job of self-government in a free nation.

regards,
Fred♠

Post 7

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - 4:57pm

Fred noted: You have switched from:
then should government workers not be paid as much as possible?
to
then should government workers not be paid?

Fred, I am not advocating either. I have not "switched" from one to the other. I am only looking at the assumptions and conclusions.

Consider this: We know the government numbers because they are public. We do not know the private numbers. They might be under-reported.

They might not be commensuate. To be an accountant with the DoD, for example, requires that you meet standards that are publicly posted and the same for all applicants. In the private sector that is not true. You can have a bookkeeper with no special training earning as much as an MBA CPA and they might be doing the same job -- or their roles might actually be reversed witht the MBA CPA reporting to the bookkeeper. In a sense, that might be "good" or even "best" -- Fred's risk-based ROI at work -- rewarding the hard-won "street smarts" of the bookkeeper. Maybe.

But with Civil Service, the rules are not so flexible. They are in place to assure equal outcomes for all applicants based on established criteria.

We do not know. And that is one of my points: the story tugs at our hearts. The data from the private sector comes from (supposed) statistical sampling which is not validated.

Also, public employment is capped. When you read about million-dollar bailout bonuses, those are not GS-14s. Private enterprise -- again, as Fred notes -- rewards risk with profits. Ultimately,there is no limit on how much youi can make in the private sector, whereas government wages are severely limited at the top, $128,000 is the maximum.

And government employees tend to be managerial and technical. So, to say that they earn "more" than "equivalent" private sector occupations begs very many questions.

Before you talk, get the facts.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs041.htm

Post 8

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - 5:13pm

Fred hath written:
There are 501 school districts in PA, each with 9 school board members. Every one of those is an unpaid position, staffed by volunteers who subject themselves to an election for the privelege. My wife is serving her third term.

That's a good point, Fred, and I sanctioned your post. The original article -- again, it appeals to our emotions -- conflates government service. Many do serve without salaries. I did as well, in two posts here in Washtenaw County, appointed by the county commission to serve on the community corrections board and then elected by the people in my precinct to represent (some of) them at the state GOP convention.

City Council in Ann Arbor is paid, but that is an exception and even the money paid is nominal. City Council reps get $15,000 per year; the mayor makes $42,000. It is an honorarium, not an incentive.

US Senators and Representatives cap out at $170,000. Not bad from where I sit, but clearly they are not in it for the money because anyone with those skills can make ten times as much in the private sector.

So, we need to separate Civil Service from appointments and elected officials and to separate the various levels of government. For that matter, we might find -- just guessing here -- that multinational corporations pay more than businesses with only one local presence.

See, I think that the article was just conservative propaganda that lets people feel mad because they want to. If you look at the details, much else is there. For instance, private sector workers in the South have lower health care costs than in the Northeast. No surprise, perhaps, but it speaks to other issues not addressed in our disdain for government.

Beyond that gut-level anti-intellectual advertising, Dr. Newt Gingrich once told a Republican Party dinner something like this: "Ladies and gentlemen, these people are not your enemies. These are your neighbors. They just have the wrong information system."

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 6/15, 5:24pm)

Post 9

Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - 6:37pm