The Mountain Star*

Government: “it takes money from some people, keeps a bunch of it and gives the rest to other people.” (Dave Barry as cited in David Boaz´Libertarianism: A Primer).

These days I had a chance to see municipal government at work. A troup of communal workers trimmed a group of 4-5 trees outside the building where I work. The workers were five and that` s how the work was done: one of them watched the traffic, one watched two others who were busy watching cut-off branches and twigs fall to the ground, two were on a kind of elevator that lifted them up to where the actual work was done - one of these seemed to be responsible for the security and welfare of the last one who did the cutting with long electromechanical clipping devices. The two twig-falling watchers were not completely idle - they picked up the fallen twigs (I saw at least one of the do that) and carried them - a handful of twigs in ONE hand, the other one seemingly needed for holding the balance - to their pickup car which was parked a few hundred meters from the site of the action. They did have some breaks, eating, looking, phoning with a mobile telephone, discussing - the strategy? - it took two full workdays to have the 4-5 little trees trimmed. I had a - plausible - and dizzying vision of small working groups like this one at “work” all over the republic at the very same time

“…government enterprises are less efficient, less innovative, and more wasteful than private firms.” (ibidem)

No doubt, big government, as we have it today on every layer of public life is like an open vein wasting the life-blood of western societies.

municipal, authorities, waste, inefficiency, taxpayer, wastefulness, taxmoney, taxes