It amused me to watch the Eurocrats strike on Monday.
It has always amused me to see the way the Europeans treat their bureaucrats and politicians--the shock when the press hints that a politico’s personal life is lived in stark opposition to that same politician's loudly proclaimed policies, the indignant protests that removing perks for those employed in public service is somehow demeaning when there are so many rich people profiting from unscrupulous private enterprise.
These bureaucrats (and Eurocrats) never mention that this unscrupulous private enterprise occurs within a system that they "run", or that perhaps that an individual goes into public service not to be cosseted and coddled but to be challenged, pushed, provoked and yes, punished by the public that one is sworn to protect. Government and public service, let's be honest, are basically outsourced work. Everyday-citizens don't have the time or energy to worry about global trade and international issues. Most of us are involved in our own day jobs and our own families and friends. We pick up what we can about our society's entanglements from the media that fits into our schedule and setting.
We hire our politicians and pay our taxes to fund bureaucracy to run things for us—that is, for our communities. And, as with any service that a citizen-customer pays for, we complain when those paid to provide the service commit errors, fall short of their stated goal, or fail. We say things like "what do they think we're paying them [6,000 euros without taxes] for? To sit around and complain that it’s not enough? Or to keep us from losing our jobs and thus our ability to pay their ridiculous salaries?"
Citizens are not whiny children in a day care overseen by their more knowledgeable elders. We're potty-trained and many of us work in private enterprise—a setting within which not meeting a goal means losing money or, these days, losing a complete income. Our jobs are not guaranteed, and our futures are far from secure.
When things are good, we tend to forget that we pay these bureaucrats to provide us with public service. Their salaries, our taxes, become one more thing that we put up with daily—like traffic—as part of living among the masses—no man is an island and all that, so we all must contribute to the archipelago that is global society. Our diplomats, our international and national bureaucrats, our Eurocrats are just that—our contribution. They are our official recognition that someone needs to maintain inter-social relations or we risk falling apart globally and locally. We give these well-paid employees the money and time needed to learn about the world in which we live and make sure that one social group's way of doing things doesn't overly annoy another social group's way of doing things, especially if one or more of the social groups involved have weaponry.
But, as with all professionals, bureaucrats tend to get too accustomed to their accumulated knowledge and professional perks, like paid travel and income security. Yes, as a diplomat-bureaucrat one knows that there are five pillars in Islam, three pillars in European politics, two pillars for the FreeMasons, and it’s quite possible that one has seen the one pillar Pagoda while traveling through Hanoi. This knowledge and these privileges come with the job, rather like the ability to put together a PowerPoint presentation or track online trends come with mine. And while I admit that it’s amazingly easy to be arrogant about something that you are paid to do, I don’t think the salary justifies the superiority complex.
Now, no one expects government to work perfectly. The public needs and desires are too vast and too changeable. So we tend to give our bureaucrats some additional space and time—gifts that we rarely present to our politicians, who are expected to practice what they preach and practice it quickly or lose their position (especially in the USA, where the personal indiscretions of a political figure can indeed be used to discredit promises made to the public—live it or lose it, is the American politician’s power model, if not the European’s).
But this extra space and time provided bureaucrats is not merited or deserved. It’s just necessary, the way a single mom sometimes needs to leave work early to pick up a child. Her colleagues let her do it because they’re kind, not because she’s special. So before any bureaucrats start complaining about their demanding job and unfair treatment, they might want to remember it’s the public that they service and not the other way around.
