I thought, hooray! Finally the nanny government is going to stop paying people full time salaries to board buses and check peoples tickets all day. Not only does it cost tax payer money, it also wastes everybody's time, even when they don't fine anybody to make up for the cost of their salaries. It's especially mondo-retardo because competitors to the government do run city buses at half the cost to passengers (without the "controllers"): obviously the bureaucracy is where half the ticket price goes.
No such luck: controllers boarded the bus a few stops down and I asked one of them, "So your job here will be done July 15th, or what?"
"I don't know, depends on if all the changes get approved. Of course, some of us will get to stay no matter what," he said with the certainly only civil servants exude.
This reminded me of an incident while I was at college. Boston was spending millions of dollars cleaning the streets with mechanical street sweepers that weren't effective at all. Their solution? Cut the budget in half...but still spend millions of dollars on the same ineffective measures. I remember very well how furious Darius was that they weren't cutting the program entirely.
But that's how government bureaucracy works, isn't it? Just as teachers in Lithuania rarely fail students because it's so much more paperwork than a D- is, there might even be a hearing too, you might have to explain yourself, oh no! Sarunas doesn't agree that the example parallels other sectors of government run economy, but I remember, too, a story my father told me about his days in the public sector: the city he worked in had a 100% employment policy, so for instance, if at any point there were no new roads that needed paving, the city would pave some new roads anyway, ones that didn't need paving, because they couldn't possibly lay anybody off, if I remember correctly...
On other evils of bureaucratic government, here's a very depressing article my father posted yesterday: No More Eggs by the Dozen: EU Micromanages British Sales, by DanaLoesch.
6 comments:
Ironically, a girl I did Year 12 with was Lithuanian, and her family had moved to Australia because her father (who invented the system in Lithuania) had a contract to design a ticketing system for the train, bus and tram network here in Victoria (we don't have a nationwide system). So anyway, the ticketing systems in Victoria and Lithuania are almost identical. I also thought many years back that we would be able to save taxpayer's money if you put all punched in your tickets at the front of the bus/tram/train but I have it from a very reputable source on the inside that the government vetoed this because they wouldn't get the revenue from fines. They are trying to design a new system at the moment which has blown out over budget and time by heaps, but that's another story...
I agree with you about general bureaucratic ineptitude though, and conscientious ineptitude. You should really, really, really watch the episode of 'Yes, Minister' about the hospital with no patients. In fact, you should just simply watch 'Yes, Minister' anyway.
It sounds hilarious already, I just added it to my list of things to find and watch!
Oh, and about the bus fines: In Lithuania, most of the fines don't go to the city anyway, the controllers get them. You're allowed to agree to a lesser fine on the spot, or get off the bus a pay the full fine to the city. If you agree to the lesser fine, the controller gets to keep it to supplement his minimum wage.
Thus it has been explained to me, so I can't vouch for this. However, even if it isn't legal, it goes that way anyway, that much I can guarantee from experience.
But here's an even worse example. A much worse one. There's a ferry from Klaipeda to Smiltyne, the ferry tickets are all two way, and there never used to be anyone checking tickets on the way back, cause you have to buy a ticket to get there in the first place, right? Well, there was one speed boat bringing people there for a price that was more than half, but less than the whole ticket price. I don't know how many people a day traveled to Smiltyne that way and got a free ride home on the ferry, but it certainly was not hundreds, not by a long shot. So what did the city do? They hired a few guys to patrol the Smiltyne ferry port entrance--where there aren't even any fines! All they do is make you buy a ticket if you don't have one, so there is no chance in hell they're salaries are made up for by it. It's just the government spending my money to make sure nobody gets a free ride. I have to pay taxes to make sure I pay for tickets. What!
I don't recall the road paving story, I think you may have heard that from someone else.
In the U.S., if it weren't for government jobs there wouldn't be any new jobs at all. The economy here is going straight to hell.
I guess it wasn't road workers, but you defiantly told me about the 100% employment policy in Norfolk, Virginia.
i took a class at BU on the economics of post-Soviet Eastern Europe, and this effect was exactly what we studied. a big challenge that these countries face is overcoming this particular economic effect, which is the basis of command economies: you're assigned a budget and a quota - if output falls short, your budget declines (and you probably get sent to sunny Norilsk). if your output increases...well, then your output increases and you're probably an Izvestia feature. in other words, your budget doesn't increase no matter what.
this is why Stakhanovites were praised by the government and reviled by workers and factory bosses. they'd increase output, but that just set factory quotas higher.
anyway, the name of the game with government-heavy operations was and is maintaining the status quo. this is true of many government programs and even NGOs (which often receive most of their funding from the government). i've even seen this play out in my own career more than once, when a department will spend money on exorbitant, needless items at the end of a quarter or fiscal year to ensure that their budgets don't decrease for the next year (mostly at nonprofits).
in conclusion - i still hate street sweepers, even more now that i have a car.
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