Government Bureaucrats
This is a news story about how European Union parliamentarians come in on Fridays sign an attendance sheet and then leave for a three day weekend. Just watch how these bureaucrats respond to being filmed. Make sure you stick around for the halfway point to see how a German Bureaucrat responds. Its laugh out loud funny.
I realize that these are European bureaucrats, but these are the kind of people that are attracted to this kind of job. It’s worth noting that many of the polices that my readers on the left support would actually expand the power of these positions and in turn the power of theses kind of people.
Using the state to remedy perceived social ill comes at the cost of giving people with more malleable moral integrity greater power. One heck of a price to pay to assuage your guilt about having a good life.
June 28th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
As a libertarian, isn’t your IDEAL beauracrat one who goes home early? As long as they work hard when there’s a crisis, it seems like it should be ok. I value freedom from government control as well (just not to the exclusion of all other issues), and I’m happy with them slacking off until there’s something they truly need to address.
June 29th, 2008 at 1:11 am
So, are you saying that you are actually WORKING for the money you earn?
In summary, I think that this story (which is just one among thousands in the so called “news-summer-hole” and aimed to give fuel to the social unfairness debate, obviously, once again) is more about social psychology and theory of moral development than about bureaucracy. It is about “What goes on in a person’s mind to run away like a rabbit when cameras observe their wrongdoings, and what is going on in their minds when these cameras are absent? In Bruxelles and elsewhere.”
June 29th, 2008 at 5:26 am
btw - I think you were already implying what I just said. So sorry for the redundancy.
June 29th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
You honestly want to pay them to do nothing. Our differences are much wider than I originally thought.
I have heard you on several occasions bemoan the fact that some people inherent lots of money and since they don’t earn it that money should be taxed. On the same grounds would you support heavily tax theses bureaucrats money earned while not working.