Of Politicians and CEOs

Kent comments:

Reminds you a bit of someone who wins a Noble Peace Prize having done, well, nothing to deserve it.  But I don’t want to pick on just old B.H.O. today.

I would like to pick on government officials in general.  I’m sure this sort of thing goes on in the corporate world.  But those stockholders Dogbert is talking about – they can be non-stockholders within about ten seconds any day the market is open.  In other words, you can fire ‘your’ CEO at the drop of a hat.

Unfortunately, government officials are not so easy to be rid of, and we have to convince a majority of that group containing many idiots (the voters) to help us fire unwanted government officials.

Those officials often sound just like Dogbert.  Some leach is elected governor of a state, and right away he wastes taxpayers’ money posting his name on signs at the state border and his picture in every government building.  It’s as though he thinks he now owns the entire state!

Some natural disaster happens.  While there is still plenty of photographable devastation present, governors and presidents fly over the area and then proclaim that they are going to help all those poor victims they just flew over.  As far as I know, what they really do is sign some order giving some of my money to those victims.  But they saved the day, of course.

In the halls of legislatures and Congress you hear elected officials talking as though everything that happens is the result of their law-making.  The fact is that most laws made today are designed to prevent people from making things, selling things, and doing things.  Most of the good that happens does so in spite of what lawmakers do.

There should be some dignity and honor in the halls of law-making.  (There is very little of it, but there should be some.)  But perhaps we focus too much attention on the people in government.  If their power were what it should be and no more, they would not matter all that much.  If they managed to figure out what real evil is and restrain it just a bit, we could congratulate them in a very subdued manner and get on with life.

Out there in life and society are the truly important people.  They are the ones who make things, maintain things, keep order, raise families, care for the sick, proclaim the word of God, expand human knowledge, play games, laugh, cry and live.  In these and many related activities you will find the important people.  If we could force the politicians to stay in their place and leave these people alone, what a wonderful world it might be.