RE: Don't Try To Improve The Government. Take Advantage of it
While I can understand your point of view, I really don't understand the contempt. We get it that there is incompetence in government. There is also incompetence in business. Even entrepreneurs can be incompetent. If they learn from their mistakes, they become "successful entrepreneurs".
Contempt for government employees is evidence of a lack of compassion for those working in government. I know from my own experience. I used to spend a lot of time using the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy gathering interesting records from various tax agencies and I did that for a business. I even got to know a few Disclosure Officers. I even met with a few of them.
These are not dumb people. Yes, they may or may not be working against their own interests, and perhaps they are enslaving others, as you put it. But if you want to fix the system, well, I'm pretty sure we'll need everyone to be involved in fixing the system, including those in government.
One thing I learned while filing those requests and getting records is this: if I want those records, and I don't want the Disclosure Officer to round-file my request, and I want to avoid appealing a denial of release of records, or even litigation, I had to be friendly and courteous with the Disclosure Officer. The work I was doing was to fix the system. I knew from talking to them, that they just wanted to go to sleep at night knowing they did the right thing. So do you.
I think that everyone wants to sleep at night knowing they did the right thing. I have compassion for people, even if they work in government. I am learning about anarchy and voluntarism and that takes time. So far, I've seen that anarchists and voluntarists appear to have compassion for everyone, and the principles of non-aggression make their compassion plain to see.
I eventually stopped doing that FOIA work, but I came away from it with one thing in mind. If I see government as a machine, it will act like a machine. If I see government as incompetent, then I will fail to see the competence in government.
I'm not saying you should think like me. I'm just offering some food for thought. If you want to change the system, you might consider the possibility that you need the people in the system to help you change it. You know, like making them your ally. And that might require a sense of compassion for them.
I've tried it and it worked for me. You might want to give it a try yourself.
Yes I agree entrepreneurs can. And they have an incentive to do so.
Government employees, however, don't have to learn from their mistakes and they don't have to be successful, they get their money by way of violence or thread of violence through extortion.
I even hope they stay under productive and are as lazy as can be, and that they are not successful in harassing people with thousands of laws, licenses, stickers, stamps, having them jumping through hoops or crawling to get permission to do things with their own body and property.
I.m.h.o. you can't fix a system that is build on violence. What is there to fix?
I have compassion for the human being But I can not respect their job.
Everything they do, everything they use, form the pen they use to write with, to the chair they sit in, to the money they get every month, is payed for by extorting money from people that worked hard for it. And everything they do with that money is continuing this system of extortion and violence.
I.m.o. The system can not be fixed....as in ........a system of slavery can not be fixed.