Corruption In The Coercive And Voluntary Sectors: Rotten Apples? Or The Tips of Icebergs?

The mainstream media now describes a country that does not exist.

Just as their polls were wrong and they failed to understand why, so they now talk only to others like themselves and believe the whole country feels that way. If mainstream media journalists or politicians ever encounter a normal person who hates their guts, they tell themselves they are a Rotten Apple.

And when they encounter a corrupt civil servant, politician or journalist, they pretend the same.

I say they are both the Tips of Icebergs.

Now I appreciate that there are rank and file nurses and doctors, firefighters and policewomen, who we might all agree don’t fall into this category – I am happy to exclude these vocational workers from the following:

Anyone who deals with the general UK public (coercive) sector regularly, knows it is a cesspit of laziness, incompetence, arrogance and corruption, riddled with civil servants that are neither civil nor servants.

And I’m not suggesting that the levels of corruption and incompetence are comparable to those found in third world hellholes. A local official in your county council is very unlikely to demand a bribe and then have your daughter raped by his buddies if you decline. He’s especially unlikely to get away with it, and then douse your family in petrol and burn them alive if you complain – those are the levels of corruption found elsewhere in the world, so we need to retain some perspective here.

But those countries have not benefited from a thousand years of sacrifice to earn us a culture that has learned through bitter experience how to run a country. Our civil servants should be performing at the highest standard and be the best in the world, because what they inherited was a culture that conquered that world, and brought civilisation and progress (often at great cost) to every corner of it.

That they have fallen from these heights and now occupy such low places should be a matter for great national shame. And yet they continue to lord it over those they pretend to serve – try calling your local planning department if you want instruction in how supercilious a local functionary feels able to be when speaking to those he claims to serve. If you just want them to do their job, you better be prepared to beg.

Whereas on the flip side, we might agree that the private (voluntary) sector is largely filled with honest and hardworking people and entrepreneurs, but there are crony capitalists out there too.

Your local butcher and baker (those that have survived the regulatory avalanches under which the crony capitalists have begged their pet politicians to bury them) remain staunch servants of their customers (through regard to their own interests), whereas oligoplists (supermarkets, telcos, insurance companies, banks, energy suppliers or transport companies) deliver to us just what the monopolists of government do – an icy contempt that would soon turn to withering small arms fire if the laws allowed it.

Thankfully, they don’t. Yet.

When leftists look at the private sector, they see tips of icebergs – for every businessperson caught gouging the consumer, they insist there are a thousand under the surface waiting to trap the unwary. Whereas a libertarian like myself sees the mirror image – the odd bad civil servant caught is not a rotten apple as they claim, but the tip of another large iceberg.

Surely we have seen enough to know that large organisations like the government and their crony capitalists in the corporate sector are deeply resistant to independent investigations, whistleblowers and all other genuine threats to their status?

Whereas those that battle away in the competitive private sector don’t even get the chance to be that corrupt – they either treat their customers and employees well, or they crumble into dust like the costumed retards in the entertainment industry are doing so reliably these days, those beloved of progressive dunces the world over.

There are few cover-ups in the world of dogwalking and fishmongering – these people do a good job or they get told to piss off by their customers. But in the public sector and the corporate world that depend upon it………?

When we catch a corrupt civil servant or corporate lackey, we are seeing the Tip of An Iceberg. But when we catch a corrupt landscape gardener or carpenter, we are finding a Rotten Apple.

My claim is that terrible government officials and corrupt crony capitalists are the both the tips of icebergs, so the cries from Left and Right about rotten applies need to go away. Those that work in the public sector or depend upon their relationship with it, are routinely terrible and usually without consequence.

And the like-for-like comparison is important – whenever a progressive dunce tries to compare the public and private sector he cherry-picks like this……

“Look at Debbie down the local hospital – twenty years as a hospital receptionist on minimum wage, and not a single day off ill. Whereas look at Sir Humphrey Arse-Badgerer – a knighthood for running a bunch of companies into the ground.”

Of course this is deeply dishonest – if you want to use Debbie as your example, you have to compare her to her equivalent in the competitive voluntary sector – the local butcher perhaps? And if you want to pillory Sir Humphrey that’s fine, but then we need to compare him to Dame Lin Homer DCB.

Except of course Sir Humphrey Arse-Badgerer has become rich and powerful through his contact and relationship with…….you guessed it – government. Lobbying their way to business success with taxpayer subsidies for their insane ideas that never have to be tested by the consumer – government contracts abound.

So in summary, corruption in the competitive private sector barely exists, because the consumer punishes it so quickly.

Whereas poor service in the corporate sector is due primarily to the government relationships.

And poor service in the public sector is endemic.

It’s as if government is a toxin that turns to shit everything it touches.