Writing my last post accomplished a few things for me. As usual it killed time and kept me from doing household chores while still letting me feel like I did something. It also highlighted for me something that I've kind of suspected for a while, which is that our government as it was designed by the framework of the Constitution isn't supposed to be doing nearly as much as it does. A good analogy would be something like how in the private sector there are certain industries- like manufacturing- where the people working in that field are supposed to constantly be moving and doing stuff and if those workers choose instead to sit around talking and eating all the time the industry will suffer as a result because less stuff will get made. The opposite of those industries are ones- like being a doctor or a 911 dispatcher- where the best case scenario is for the people working in those jobs is to not do much of anything at all because if they can have a boring and lazy work day it's probably because people don't have any need for their services. Paying assembly line workers according to their productivity and the amount of output they are able to generate is a perfectly reasonable way of doing things- it fits right in there with the whole concept of capitalism as perfection if that's the style of economic policy that gives you a hard on.
The point I think too many of the die hard capitalist fans are missing is that it is also perfectly acceptable and reasonable to pay people just for being there in case they are needed to do something- even if they end up not needing to do anything at all. It is this constant and overwhelming desire to increase the productivity of everyone in relation to their compensation that has seriously created some problems as a result of everybody running around trying to make themselves look busy enough to earn their paycheck. If you've ever worked on an assembly line you'll get what I'm saying, because you'll understand that it helps productivity to do the right action over and over again quickly. All that happens when you do the wrong thing, because you're trying to look busy while the boss is watching, is you fuck something up. Then everybody has to stand around doing NOTHING while your screw up gets fixed.
While examining just what it is that the President is supposed to be doing with his or her time while we're paying them to be the President I came to the conclusion that, at least according to the Constitution, the answer is not much. Like a doctor or a 911 dispatcher there are plenty of situations in which the President might end up being busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, but in the main it would be perfectly reasonable to expect he or she to be just hanging out in the Oval Office sipping on some tea and reading a book or watching TV. The things that he or she is responsible for doing during the busy times might influence what they were reading or watching- CIA reports and CSPAN instead of a Tom Clancy novel and RHONJ for example- but either way they could totally be sitting on their ass (wearing pajama pants) and that would be fine.
The idea of this offends the shit out of people whose experience, skills, and chosen profession require them to be on their feet and moving the entire time they're on the clock. Even those of whose workday looks exactly like the President's could, but who pay other people to work and move almost all the time that they're paying them for, get incredibly pissed off when they think that someday we could end up with a President who spends almost their entire 4 years in office collecting cash- that we're forced to pay them in the form of taxes- for nothing more than just being there. This outrage doesn't just apply to the President either, it starts there and extends down to the lowliest government employee, because the idea that we're paying these people full time pay for part time or no work makes the blood boil. Hence the pressure to either privatize as much of government as possible so that we can pay less by paying these people to only do the work we need done on a contract basis and not pay them when they aren't doing anything, and the pressure to make the people in those positions that can't be privatized DO SOMETHING DAMMIT, even if it's just busy work. The whole "If you've got time to lean you've got time to clean." philosophy is just stupid if the area you work in is already clean, or if there is another person whose job it is to do that cleaning and your doing it screws them out of being able to work.
Thanks to all this pressure that is put on government and it's employees to look busy so they can earn their paychecks we've ended up with a government that, at every level, is full of people looking for more shit they can do while one of their bosses is looking in their direction. Thanks to the requirements for transparency in government there is always the possibility that at least one boss is looking unless those employees are in the bathroom, and even then there is probably someone outside the door timing them and figuring up how much that person is getting paid to take a dump. In the quest for more busy work, a whole lot of government workers have hit upon the idea to either spend their time generating massive amounts of unnecessary paperwork or perking up their ears and responding every time they hear somebody mutter that "there oughta be a law."
The amount of paper that has been generated, and the number of laws, restrictions, and do's and do not's that have been enacted to tell us how we're supposed to be doing EVERYTHING- just as it applies within the confines of our borders alone- has got to rival the pile that represents every religious scripture and doctrine ever created, for every religion ever practiced by anyone, in all of human history everywhere on the globe by now. Seriously, the US Federal Tax Code runs about 1000 pages longer than the average King James Bible, and that pile of documents only addresses the ways that we as citizens are supposed to meet our obligation to fund the Federal government through the paying of taxes. The Bible, questionable as I may be about it's necessity and how factually accurate it is, at least serves as a complete list of how followers of the religions that use it as a reference are supposed to think about and act in every single aspect of their daily lives from birth to death. The Bible does all that and still leaves space for a bunch of entertaining stories to illustrate the value of doing what you're told to do and avoiding the stuff you're not. The number of people who find the tax code to be a fascinating and entertaining read could probably be counted on one hand with fingers left over.
The laws aren't any better than the tax code. We have 535 Congressmen and women, I have no idea how many State versions of Congresspeople, even more County, City, Township, and Special Boards officials whose jobs are equivalent to those of Congresspeople; all of whom are getting paid to get up and go to work invested with the power to create and enact laws by majority vote that the people who pay their salaries have to follow unless they want to face a penalty of some kind. A shitload of these people are showing up for work every day and either hearing about or thinking up some version of "there oughta be a law" and deciding to make one up and vote on whether to pass it. The result is a crazy number of laws that tell people what to do and what not to do- everything from it being illegal to keep an alligator in a bathtub to every man, woman, and child must be covered by a health insurance policy or pay a fine unless they've got a really good reason not to. I know, I know- for every stupid law there is a stupid person who did or didn't do the thing the law is designed to prevent or promote, but come on. The list of do's and do not's has grown so long that your average citizen- hell, even your average insanely smart speed reader with a photographic memory- couldn't possibly read, comprehend, and remember all the ones that apply to them. The best we can do is hope we aren't doing something the wrong way (or at least we aren't getting caught doing it) and react by trying to defend our actions or inaction if we end up screwing up in some way whether we realized we were or not. An entire, very lucrative, field of study and employment has sprung from the need we have to be able to turn to someone and have them defend us when we run afoul of one of these laws, and a ton of fees and fines are imposed to help pay for the systems run and operated by people who are hired by government (and whose salaries are paid for with our tax dollars) to enforce all these laws by busting us when we break them and imposing a punishment for it.
I totally get it that the vast majority of all this busy work and the laws and everything else is government trying to help solve problems for us, but I gotta wonder whether they should really be viewing it as their place and their job to solve all those problems. Especially when they tackle a big problem by passing laws that only address a tiny part of it and don't really solve anything. Take that gator law for example, presumably it was written to address the problem that could stem from people owning gators that might eat somebody or the problem that gators are wild animals and shouldn't be owned by people at all because it's not fair to the gator. Does the don't stick em in a bathtub law really solve the bigger problem? Is the gator less likely to eat people if they get put in a swimming pool instead of a bathtub, or is it okay and more fair to have your own personal pet gator that you took out of it's natural habitat if you let it live in a cement Koi pond? Even if the only problem that the law was intended to solve was the fact that gators will inevitably outgrow a bathtub, why not let the gator and the person who put them in the tub figure that out for themselves? Chances are that if they don't work it out wisely, then the punishment imposed for violating the law against putting them in a tub isn't going to be satisfactory to whoever gets eaten by the gator eventually. As a lesser included offense it's pretty lame and unnecessary. As the only relevant charge if gator in the tub eats somebody it's really lame, and completely unenforceable if the person who put the gator there in the first place is the same idiot that got eaten. There probably won't be enough of them left to charge, and even if there is they've got much bigger worries than a piddly fine for improper gator storage. The fine for that probably represents less money than the line item on their hospital for bandages does.
I feel like if all these people really feel like they have to stay busy doing something, and we as citizens are going to support this point of view, then they should be divvying up their time to spend part of it reviewing all the laws that have already been passed by their level of government to see if those laws accomplished what they were supposed to and solved the problems they were supposed to solve. It would be really helpful if every law they passed had a section explaining what it's purpose was- what the problem was that it was trying to solve- and detailed, specific information about how it was supposed to do that. If it was written clearly why a law was being proposed and passed then it would be a lot easier to figure out whether it was working. It should be feasible for anyone who is hoping to get a job making or enforcing laws to read and understand all the laws that already existed before they started doing the job, in addition to their other duties. Instead of just patching existing laws that didn't work to solve the problem they were created to solve the goal should always be to either repeal, repeal and replace, or leave it alone because there isn't a better idea that everybody can agree on right now. Another important thing is that while the broadest reasonable scope for understanding all the details of a problem should be considered when crafting laws to address that problem, and laws should be passed to address as many of the component parts of the problem as legislators can agree upon, the overall problem should be specific to one basic issue and those issues should be dealt with individually. Human reproduction is one issue, moving humans around from place to place via a system of transportation is a totally different issue. They should be tackled separately and independently of each other.
Which brings me to my next point; Anybody who is eligible to serve in government or work in a government job is a grown ass man or woman. Bribery and trading favors has a place in getting children- or adults who are lazy or stupid- to do something that they don't want, or see the sense of, to do, but it has no place in governing and making rules that people you're supposed to be representing and advocating for have to follow. Either you're there to make decisions and impose rules that are in the best interests of the people you represent or you're not. You don't get to say for them that you'll give up this thing that is in their best interest in exchange for something else unrelated that is even better for them. You vote for the things that are good or neutral for most of the people you represent and against the things that are bad or unnecessary for them. If you really don't know which is which, here's a thought- ask them. If they know the answer themselves they'll probably be more than happy to tell you. If your vote combined with all the others isn't enough to get the result that you want then you go back to your constituents and tell them that you're sorry, but the support just wasn't there for it that day and you'll try again next time. Frankly, if a whole lot of people are voting no because the thing being voted upon is unnecessary for the people that they represent then that problem ought to be kicked back down to a lower level of government to address, but that's something for another day.
Related to that last point about bribery and favors is this point- getting reelected or getting to stay in your position has zero to do with the job that we pay government workers to do. Sure as shit with elected positions the public is going to be judging you based upon the job you're doing and the votes that you're casting, but that doesn't mean that you get to cast your votes in a way that is beneficial to the people who can give you the most money for your next campaign or create opportunities to cast votes that will be popular with a lot of voters whether they are successful or not if the laws are unnecessary or don't actually solve any problems. Wasting time on trying to make laws that one set of your constituents want imposed on another set just to win the votes of people who care about something that isn't a problem for them is not what you should be collecting a paycheck for, especially if you know that legislation has no chance of passing or being upheld as constitutional. Introducing and voting on legislation that awards special perks to a portion of your constituency at the expense of another portion in exchange for votes or donations from the folks you're favoring is bullshit too if it doesn't address a real problem and contribute towards fixing it in a way that works for all the people you're supposed to be representing. If it is a problem that can't be solved to the satisfaction of everybody involved then you should probably be kicking it back down to a level where it can or letting it work itself out. At the very least you should be erring on the side of supporting the side that benefits or does no harm the most people rather than the side that will reap the most benefit if that side is in the minority.
To be quite frank, we're now over 200 years in to this experiment on a system of government that is supposed to be "by the people, for the people." and a lot of things have changed since it started. The limitations imposed by distance and poor methods for government officials to communicate with the people they are supposed to represent have been addressed in a big way by advances in technology. With the advent of just the internet we're no longer confined by a reality that requires us to elect or hire the person we think will be the best for the job we're asking them to do and then send them off hoping they don't screw it up before the next time comes along that we can tell them what we want by casting our votes. A vote is a simple yes or no, it gives the elected the power to tell us what they think we want or should want to hear, and our only available response that we know they have to pay attention to is a one word answer. That supposedly implies that we either totally agree with them or we don't agree with anything that they said. In theory our ability to write, call, email, and send lobbyists to continue and expand the narrative with them while they are in office is supposed to ensure that their behavior is responsive to our needs and reactive to our wishes, but the power to control the information about what they are basing their decisions and actions upon is left completely in their hands.
There just isn't a good reason for this when the possibility for them communicating more regularly and directly with each of us exists. Within one more generation there will be almost no one left who is not familiar with how to use a computer, or social networking, or navigate a website and exchange communications via email or take a multiple choice poll. We're almost at the point where we can really start to gauge what it is that people want their representative government to be doing for them and measuring how much support there is for different courses of action. We're close to being ready to judge for ourselves whether most of the things that our is government taking upon itself to decide for us are things that majority of us want to have decided for us, and what level we want them decided at. We were never supposed to be treated like children that government was responsible for parenting, and it's time for us to start being included in the discussions about ourselves in a meaningful and impactful way. Even though we're not all completely ready to do this, it's time for our government to start preparing for the day that we are and letting all of us know that it is coming, and that we should be getting ourselves ready to participate.
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