Government Jobs

i don't think everyone working for the government is evil, and i think using the word 'evil' in that context is crazy.

right now we have a solidly entrenched system in place. until that system is undermined, one may as well make use of it for income, medical aid, or whatever it is that your taxes are paying for. i'm not an anarchist, but a minarchist, and so i don't have any goal of the government going away entirely, anyway.

I think I am in the opinion as ms_cantrell on this.
The system is there so go ahead and use it. I could not work for certain branches of the government based on personal moral codes but hey that is up to you! If you do not take the job someone else will right?

Most politicians are evil, but many who work in the government are simply just trying to make a living in an industry they feel secure in.

It taints you, though. A guy I work with who was in the Air Force for 8 years is having a hard time adjusting to the private sector. It always reminds me of this line from Ghostbusters:

Ray: Personally, I like the University. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there. I've worked in the private sector. They expect results.

Doesn't that just sum up all of our arguments against big government so beautifully?

Yes it does. I've always loved that line.

Haha. I forgot about that line. That's amazing.

One thing it is important to remember.

Many (not all but many) of the jobs the government does needs to be done by somebody and the presence of government doing those jobs prevents the private sector from doing them. Therefore if you wanted a job in one of the fields where the government has a defacto monopoly you have no other option.

This does not make one evil, they are simply living within the framework of the world around them. What would make one evil is if you used that job commit evil yourself or excuse the comission of evil by others in your field.

Why not suck them as dry as you can?

If you're an anarchist, it's not necessarily the job you're doing that's evil, but the way you get your pay, and who you're working for.
Those are the unethical aspects of that arrangement.

A person isn't automatically evil for working for the government, but there are definitely bad people in the ranks.

First though, you've got to be clear on what is meant by "working for the government." There are basically two options. One is to be a civil servant (GS), another is to be a contractor.

Contractors are employees of private companies, filling slots in government offices doing tasks in place of civil servants and/or uniformed military. Usually the reason for hiring a contractor is that either the task is highly specialized and the military has no equivalent specialty (for example, technical writing) or the task is common enough that any civilian can do it so the military can put a warm body in the job slot without sending the person through basic training (for example, mess hall cooks and truck drivers in Iraq). Language work might be handled by both contractors and GS, depending on the government agency needs.

I worked for three years as a contractor in a system program office at a nearby Air Force base. I was a tech writer, most of the workers in the program office were also contractors. We were just people doing our job. I worked for a private sector company (L-3 Communications), but the head of the program office was at first an Air Force Lt. Colonel. When he rotated out he was replaced by a civilian GS-15.

My observation is that the contractors tend to be harder workers, the GS types tend to take advantage of the system. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. One is that the contractors are working for a private company so there is an expectation that they perform, where the civil servants are unionized and effectively can't be fired. (That's no exaggeration. There was one notorious incident on the base where a civil servant manager was found having sexual relations with his subordinate employees in his office during work hours. The command structure's solution was to promote him to a higher GS level and give him his own program office.) Civil servants tend to regard contractors as mercenary scum, and there are a number of little perks the civil servants get which do not flow down to the contractors. (Example: about four times a year as Monday holidays approached, the base commander would announce at the last minute that the Friday prior to the weekend would be a paid day off for the civil servants and uniformed military...but not for contractors. However, we were also told that contractors weren't allowed into their offices if there was no civil servant or uniformed military person present, I guess they were afraid we'd run with scissors or something. Result? We could either use vacation time or lose a day's pay.)

One of the inherent problems in the civil servant system is that the "S" in "GS" stands for "schedule," and means is that if you stick with the system, kiss the right asses take all the right training courses, pass the right tests, get good managerial revues and spend the right amount of time in the right job slots, you will automatically be promoted to a higher GS level on a predictable, reliable schedule. This of course takes away much of the incentive to excel.

Another problem is that the civil servants work in a massive bureaucracy, in which the compliance with regulations and forms becomes more important than the end result of doing a good job. A civil servant who becomes a robot insisting that every check box be filled in will get a better revue than an civil servant who tries to take the time to figure out real issues are. I had actually written some horror stories here, but it made the reply too long for LJ to post.

Don't get me wrong, they're not all bad. I saw some good, dedicated civil servants who believed in what they were doing, and were determined to do a good job. But I also saw a lot of bad ones as well.

And it doesn't mean that you will turn out bad. Just be aware that you'll be working with a bunch of people...some good, but some just out to game the system and retire as early as they can.

GS is being phased out, actually. I was working for the DoD under a paybanding scheme (ie no scheduled raises) and that was 5 years ago.

Someone better tell the FBI career book writers, then. They wasted a few good pages on it.

Dunno, FBI isn't DoD so I have no idea what their plan is.

Yeah, see ericthemage's comment above. That kinds relates to this.

It's really sad. More and more people want the government to do more and more things, get bigger and bigger, and see this picture with a sort of bright, noble idealism. Yet it's the exact opposite. I still don't know how to make people realize this. In some cases I've declared it to be utterly impossible.

Well, how do you undo decades of brainwashing that's reinforced in 90% of their social environment?

People are evil to the extent that there is evil in their heart, and to the extent that what they do is evil. Not all government officials directly participate in evil, so it would be a mistake to use that kind of terminology as a generalization. Government taken as a whole perpetrates great evil, yes, but any given individual in government does not necessarily do evil.

That said, I consider working for the government to be a form of support for the power structures which do participate in evil, so it is at best a morally questionable decision. I know at least two public school teachers who are libertarians, and they have both carefully weighed the negative of choosing to support a system that they don't believe in with the positive of actually helping children who they would not otherwise be able to influence. It's not the decision I would have made, but I respect that it is far more complicated than "Government Job Bad" - and I do think that despite the inherent "evil" of the public school system, they are doing good by injecting sense into their students; in a way, it has potential for some delightful subversion.

That said, I still love this quote from Friday, by Heinlein:

"No matter how lavishly overpaid, civil servants everywhere are convinced they are horribly underpaid-but all public employees have larceny in their hearts or they wouldn't be feeding at the public trough." --Friday

I work for a scientific research facility. Like most, we get government funding (and I even have a nifty state university ID). Every time I step into a voting both, I do my best to vote to limit government research spending... and truth be known it's changing slowly anyway (corporate sponsors, etc).

Am I evil? I don't think so. Research is important. As long as government offers easy money to do research, it will be taken instead of doing the hard work of getting industry to provide money. I do what I can to change the situation, but as long as the money is going to be taken, it might as well be put to good use.

as long as the money is going to be taken, it might as well be put to good use.

Right on. Better it go to you than to some authoritarian fuckwad.

There are definitely government jobs I think are excessive and pointless, but there are others I think are necessary. The military for one, all the elected positions, I'm not opposed to privitized police, but at the same time I don't think publicly funded police forces are unsalvageable either. Where to draw the line is a complex subject, but any job that can be privatized I think probably should be.

What about working somewhere with government funding (NIH etc.)

Well, elaborate. I'm asking for your thoughts.

When I was considering majoring in nuclear physics, my father, who was himself a physicist had a chat with me about it. The crux of it was, don't make weapons of mass destruction; that would be wrong. The subtext was that any science can be used for making tools of death, and that I should keep in mind who would be using those tools if I made them.

Just keep in mind what your tools may be used for, and who wields those tools. For instance, and FBI translator may never shoot anybody, but he could get some poor college kids beaten up for being "radicals". Or he could prevent a terrible bombing. Think about those possibilities.

Lew Rockwell's an idiot.

The stupidity of this take on federal employees is, I believe, representative of most of his content.

Honestly, I get the impression that those who agree with his take on the world are stretching really far to prove conclusions they've come to ahead of time.

Lew Rockwell's an idiot.

I wouldn't argue with that.