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Updated Wednesday, August 26, 2009 9:20 am TWN, The China Post news staff

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The pernicious myth of 'public service'

Was President Ma Ying-jeou, our nominal servant, subject to our control “with respect to the physical conduct in the performance of his services,” when Typhoon Morakot struck and bereaved and homeless flood victims, his nominal masters, felt compelled to prostrate themselves before him, weeping inconsolably, begging him to “Please do something”?

Do you have a servant at home? When you want your servant to do something on your behalf, how do you go about it? Do you petition him or her by falling to your knees, tearing your hair out, crying your eyes out, begging him or her to take pity on you?

No?

Then why would you do so when your servant is a “public servant?”

If it turns out you must do all these things when your servant is a “public servant,” is he or she really your servant? Or is he or she something else altogether?

What makes our “public servants” different from our real servants, from private servants? How can we ensure that our “public servants” treat us with the same deference as our private servants?

The answer of course is that with private servants, we wisely retain our natural rights and individual liberty. Our relationship with our private servants is voluntary. Wages are the currency of voluntary exchange. We voluntarily pay our private servants the wages they desire, on the understanding that our private servants voluntarily provide us with the services we desire.

With “public servants,” on the other hand, we have foolishly forfeited our natural rights and individual liberty. Our relationship with our “public servants” is involuntary. Taxes are the currency of involuntary coercion. What the government calls taxes, the Mafia calls protection money. We cannot voluntarily choose to stop paying our “public servants” the taxes they desire, on the understanding that they can voluntarily choose to stop providing us with the services we desire.

Citizens of modern nation states have swallowed the pernicious myth of “public service” lock, stock, and barrel. Until we demand that our “public servants” relate to us in precisely the same way as our private servants, until we reclaim our natural right to contract voluntarily for services, in both the private and public sectors, we will remain indentured servants of our “public servants,” and our “public servants” will remain our lords and masters.

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