"Public" service

It's very common to hear college graduation speeches today, in which the professor congratulates the students, and then encourages them to serve their country and contribute to a better world via "public service" rather than the private sector. In other words, government.

While I am not an anarchist (as I am mistaken for too often), I am suspicious of government and the powers it possesses. You can call me a classical liberal (like the Founding Fathers of the USA). I don't just trust someone to have unlimited power and then use it wisely all the time. As we are human, we are prone to error, as well as corruption. Government is not God.

It is easy to look at how one can change the world through rose-tinted glasses, when you're in a position of power in politics or "public service", because it is there that you don't pay the price for being wrong, or for being totally incompetent. Other people pay the price, either financially or through calamity.

When one can spend other people's money without their consent towards certain projects and "public services", one doesn't really have to face up to whether a certain vision one has for the world actually works, and at what cost. What is deemed as "public service" is very often just a euphemism, as much of the government budget consists of taking money from people who didn't vote for you, and giving it to those who did.

It also very often means spending other people's money obtained through taxation (or inflation, the silent tax), and then spending it into a deficit, through which money is most often borrowed, and then paid back again with interest. Who picks up the tab? I think you can guess. These projects are too often crony spending, or favours granted to one minority of people who had heavily lobbied for one-sided laws passed in their favour.

Power needs its constraints. Keep all this in mind when you next hear those preaching about "public service" over "greed", which I will write about in the next entry.