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Unless you’ve worked in government, honestly, just stop. I spent years in a metro water system and this class of corruption is rampant. You get 90k maximum sal

Unless you’ve worked in government, honestly, just stop. I spent years in a metro water system and this class of corruption is rampant. You get 90k maximum salary, but your last 5 years dictate your retirement… so guess what you find yourself with maximum overtime. We tried to fire an employee for cause… who hired counsel, so we caved immediately because of optics. So we gave them a do nothing barely-show-up job for the last 7 years. I personally went on a death march for 12+ hour days for 6 months, 7 days a week, off the clock and without compensation, only to be screwed out of my “accrued” PTO. The VP, two years from retirement, suffered not a bit of repercussion for this violation. The public sector is rife with corruption, no question, but if you worship it as your God, you’ll have to look past this sacrilege to find the truth.

datsci_est_2015 1mo ago
I make these arguments because privatization is not a panacea, as the subtext of many of these types of would imply, but not because I "worship the public sector as a God". For some reason, many critics of the public sector are willing to look past the many inefficiencies of our private sectors, especially the anticompetive and rent seeking practices. The public sector needs solutions to its unique problems, it does not need to be eliminated entirely with privatization.
- xp84 1mo ago
  I'm not a privatization crusader either. But I do detest the hideous amount of waste in our municipal, state, and federal governments, and argue that it's a very hard problem to solve, and that we should never feed that beast by entrusting more things to them than they already control and mismanage. Most companies where corruption significantly defrauds the owner (shareholders, for public companies), there's a strong chance it'll get shut down. That incentive simply doesn't happen when it's just taxpayers being fleeced. Otherwise, how else do you explain Sacramento?
toxic72 1mo ago
Your anecdotal story is perfectly representative of all govt entities, surely.

datsci_est_2015 1mo ago

I make these arguments because privatization is not a panacea, as the subtext of many of these types of would imply, but not because I "worship the public sector as a God". For some reason, many critics of the public sector are willing to look past the many inefficiencies of our private sectors, especially the anticompetive and rent seeking practices. The public sector needs solutions to its unique problems, it does not need to be eliminated entirely with privatization.

xp84 1mo ago
I'm not a privatization crusader either. But I do detest the hideous amount of waste in our municipal, state, and federal governments, and argue that it's a very hard problem to solve, and that we should never feed that beast by entrusting more things to them than they already control and mismanage. Most companies where corruption significantly defrauds the owner (shareholders, for public companies), there's a strong chance it'll get shut down. That incentive simply doesn't happen when it's just taxpayers being fleeced. Otherwise, how else do you explain Sacramento?

toxic72 1mo ago

Your anecdotal story is perfectly representative of all govt entities, surely.