Public employees
17th January 2002
Government employment is often permanent employment, and the quality of service from civil “servants” is about what you expect from someone who cannot get fired. Heinlein didn’t think any more highly of workers sucking at the government teat any more than do most libertarians of today. “In a mature society, ‘civil servant’ is semantically equal to ‘civil master’,” Lazarus Long said in Time Enough for Love (1973). Lazarus spoke highly of Ira Weatheral’s method of governance on the planet Secundus: Ignore problems until they go away.
Ira says a good leader “keeps a sharp eye out and his ear turned for signs that subordinates are doing too much unnecessary governing. Half of my time is used in the negative work of plucking such officious officials and ordering that they never again serve the public in any capacity.”
“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,” said Marjorie Friday Baldwin in Friday (1982).
In To Sail Beyond The Sunset (1987), Maureen Johnson recounts her father’s opinion of public employees: “There is a ready solution for anyone on the public payroll who feels that he is not paid enough; He can resign and work for a living. This applies with equal force to Countermen, Welfare ‘clients,’ school teachers, generals, garbage collectors, and judges.”