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Exactly why you SHOULD consider a government job. We need people willing to rock the boat from the inside if we want things to change.
by Devilboy 18y ago
Exactly why you SHOULD consider a government job. We need people willing to rock the boat from the inside if we want things to change.
- johns 18y agoExcept for that its exceedingly difficult to accomplish anything of worth without some political influence outside of your sections control. Doesn't matter how much buy in you can get from your management, you're still in the end at the mercy of someone else's political whims.
- pmorici 18y agoI think you are confusing political appointees with rank and file civil servants.
- johns 18y agoI was a civil servant for awhile. Politics frequently got in the way of our department's work. Political initiatives would interrupt the ones we were working on and would frequently change based on whatever they felt like legislating that session or whomever was newly appointed. Not every department would be like that, but in a lot of cases there's too much outside influence by politicians to get any real work done.
- bokonist 18y agoI'm curious - why use the word "politics", why not say "democracy"? i.e. "Democracy frequently got in the way of our department's work. Democratic initiatives would interrupt ones we were working on ..." I point this out because our society often denounces politics but enshrines democracy. Yet no one can logically explain the difference between the two. It's a fascinating cognitive dissonance. Perhaps you can explain?
- gaius 18y agoDemocracy is the will of the people, politics is the will of the politicians.
- bokonist 18y agoWhat is this mysterious "will of the people"? How is it measured except through the politicians the people elect? If the politician relies on polling to make every decision, is that "democracy"? Or should we have direct democracy with each decision being subject to a popular referendum? Although, even a referendum is not the "will of the people" - it's just the will of the majority. Perhaps then we should demand complete 100% consensus for every decision enacted? As a reader of hacker news, I assume you like to think of yourself as a person of science and reason. But when you summon phrases such as "will of the people" you have left that world. The phrase is empty - it provides no information, and contributes nothing to the discussion. Would you mind more precisely defining what you mean by "will of the people"?
- gaius 18y agoLet me give you an example. In the UK Gordon Brown was the Chancellor. The will of the people was that he managed the economy and that's all. The will of Gordon Brown however was to be Prime Minister, so he used his role as Chancellor to take power over unrelated departments by manipulating their budgets. That strategy worked pretty well for him. It's not working so well for we the people right now.
- bokonist 18y agoI'm still not sure what "will of the people" means or how one determines it. Again, it helps to speak in terms of observable phenomena rather than ambiguous concepts. Let me attempt to phrase your sentence a bit more precisely: "A majority of British voters cast votes for Gordon Brown under the expectation that he would manage the economy, and that's all. Instead he used his role to grab power, at the expense of the people" Is this a fair paraphrasing? I can then rephrase your original sentence: "Democracy is when elected officials act in a way that voters approve of. Politics is when elected officials act in their own self interest, in a way contrary to what voters want" Is that it? Or let me try a second, different, way of paraphrasing: "Democracy is when elected officials act in a way that benefits the public good ( whether the public realizes it or not). Politics is when an elected official acts in a way the benefits himself, regardless of the public good" Is one of these summaries fair? I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just trying to nail down precisely what you are trying to say.