Public Service 101

by Randall Schultz

 

For those of us who have observed the shenanigans of the state for a while, the sequence of events is all too familiar. A corrupt local politician is caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Usually, it has something to do with the questionable redistribution of the taxpayers' confiscated wealth. The matter becomes public, and the mainstream media outlets catch wind of it. How dare this tenured public servant betray the trust of his constituents?

What follows next is a period of increasing coverage in the local media outlets. This feeds the escalating outrage by the masses. The fellow politicians demand full disclosure and resignation. The accused pleads ignorance. His underlings take the fall for him when he fires them, but that's not good enough. Being a mobocracy, the masses initiate and circulate a recall petition. The masses want to be served by honest and accountable politicians.

I will attempt to spare the readers of a lot of the ugly little details. A county executive has been padding  the retirement packages for himself and his chums with the taxpayers' hard-earned money. Some of his partners-in-crime are already retired and living on Easy Street. This fiasco is unfolding before us in the county where I work and where many of my coworkers live. A local story like this has been repeated often in many parts of the country. What follows now is my open letter to all of the county residents who were outraged by this and expected the other local politicians to really care about their concerns.

An Open Letter to the Masses

I certainly understand your indignation with the county executive's actions and would share with you the desire to remove him from office if I were a resident of your county. Your recall petition was circulating where I work and the public sentiment is certainly behind his removal. However, I am going to shoot straight with you and probably burst a lot of bubbles. Why are all of you so surprised that something like this has happened? By its very nature, public service beckons parasites like your county executive to have his name placed on an election ballot. When you punch out the chad next to a candidate's name on a ballot, you have said, "I want you to do something for me." That is the essence of "public service"--doing something for somebody. However, please remember that whatever they do for somebody, they are doing it with your money. This is money that is taken from you, and you have little say as to how it is spent once it is taken. At the heart of the matter is whether public servants serve only you or just happen to include themselves and their buddies in their definition of public service.

Recently, the local media ran their annual stories and images of citizens paying their tribute to their municipal government in the form of real estate taxes. Last week, on the way home from work in the private sector, I picked up two of my daughters from the private school they attend. Just down the road, I stopped off at the town hall to pay my tribute. Using counterfactual reasoning, my soon-to-be eight year old daughter posed the question "What happens if you don't pay the real estate taxes?" As a parent, these questions are always an opportunity to instruct my children in the true nature of the state. I took the ball and ran with it. My response was something like this: 

"Given enough time, it means that the county sheriff will send some armed deputies to our door with a court order. We would be evicted and the county would take possession of our property. It would then go on the auction block, with the minimum selling price being that which is owed in back real estate taxes. A starry-eyed realtor could buy it for pennies on the dollar and make a handsome profit by reselling it on the open market. We would be forced to 'live on the street' where wolves and thieves abound."

Okay, so why the story to grown adults about the consequences of not paying real estate taxes? It has to do with the tortured rationalizations that friends of the state use on the public about "how much you get for your taxes." Then, they try to appease you by saying that it could be much worse if it wasn't for the fact that the county is getting state and federal funding "to help out." At this point, the masses are expected to drop to their knees before their humble servants and thank them for lightening their tax load. So, you see, the public servants are doing something for you.

Now, this minor detail about the attractive retirement packages for the county executive and his friends. How dare you even question the public servant's judgment in his personal financial matters! This is the public servant who has sacrificed so much to serve you. Don't you understand how difficult it is to spend other people's money? It's hard to decide how to carve up the county's budget to give something to all of the rent seekers out there. Just look at the county budget. We have Social Services, Child Protection Services and the sheriff, who has a really big budget. Thank goodness that Bill Clinton gave us COPS funding to pay for the sheriff's new helicopter. Then, we had to pay Motorola big bucks for that four-site, 15-channel trunked radio system. A lot of the county vehicles had to get new two-way radios. Even there, we had to get that federal funding quickly before someone else snatched it up. Being a county executive is a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Now, to all of you citizens who went before the county executive board to voice your concern, you need to learn an important lesson. You are utilizing what is known as the political solution. Nobody told you that it would come down to this when you were wooed into believing that the county knows best how to spend your money. Nobody told you that a scoundrel for a county executive cared more about his retirement than the quality of life in yours. All of this is consistent with the nature of the state to provide concentrated benefits and have diffused costs. Now, you must engage in the same type of activity as that of the rent seekers. You say, that you want a county executive who is not so morally repugnant? Too bad, you're paying for him anyway. After all, a majority of you voted him into office.

I noticed that many of those protesting the county executive's actions appeared to be at or close to the government-defined age of retirement. You say, "I haven't had a child in government schools in well over 20 years and I'm still paying for them." Try to withhold payment on that portion of your real estate taxes which funds the government re-education camps and see what happens. Tell your story to the county treasurer and see if he really cares. At least with a private sector merchant, you can return faulty merchandise and have a fighting chance of getting a refund or an exchange. Enough bad service to customers would motivate them to employ the economic solution and take their business elsewhere. You can't use the economic solution with the county government. Just try asking for a full refund of your real estate taxes and see the looks you'll get.

Even the ballot box cannot provide enough incentive for the local politicians to behave themselves. This is exactly what happens when the more conniving ones decide to "game the system." In election campaigns they puff up and brag ad nauseum about how they kept taxes down, the budget in line, and miraculously, satisfied the desire of every rent seeker. The ballot box often aids and abets the very thing that it promises to get rid of. Lobbyists are really nothing more than squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease rent seekers. All that I ask is that you not be too surprised that the county executive and his pals knew better than you what to do with your money. What we have here are a few parasites and a lot of host organisms. Did you really expect them to be honest with you when they don't have to earn your business in the first place? They get their tribute either way. If your county government suddenly just vaporized, imagine all of the honest businessmen and charities that would come out to fill the void and compete for what the market demanded. If you get rid of one self-serving county executive, you cut off one branch but leave room for another to grow. The problem lies in the political solution. You need to STRIKE THE ROOT!

Randall Schultz is a recent convert to paleolibertarianism. He recently went through a mid-life crisis. This crisis was not a string of extramarital affairs, but was a denunciation of a neoconservative ideology. His thinking is influenced by an array of heroes who include Confessional Lutheran theologians and dead, white guys like Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises. He is also an avid fan of the gifted and talented writers at the Anti-State, Antiwar, Lew Rockwell and Strike The Root websites, among others. For this, he is grateful to Al Gore for inventing the Internet. Randall and his child-bride of 23 years are blessed with five children and reside in the state of Wisconsin. He earns a living as a lowly electronics technician for a huge, evil, greedy, multi-national corporation. His hobbies include studying Austrian economics, amateur radio, playing with Linux, riding bicycles with his wife, and arguing with statists.

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