For example, for NASA GISS administrator, James Hansen, aka patient zero, seen below being arrested at a climate protest.
UGA research reveals public servants individually motivated to help environment
Athens, Ga. – New University of Georgia research shows that while on the job, public servants contribute not just to mandated sustainability but also to discretionary eco-friendly initiatives of their own.
“Some people are born with a higher intrinsic need to serve the public,” said study co-author Robert K. Christensen, an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs. “They have a desire to help others and serve society. Government and nonprofit managers, for example, typically have higher levels of public service motivation than business managers.”
The study in the American Review of Public Administration used a survey of hundreds of public servants in a large southeastern city to examine their environmental and organizational behaviors.
Authored by Justin M. Stritch, a former doctoral student in public administration and policy, and Christensen, who also is the school’s Ph.D. director in the department of public administration and policy, the research found that public servants were likely to engage in eco initiatives.
“Eco initiatives are discretionary, pro-environmental behaviors that an employee can participate in during the day,” said Stritch, who is now an assistant professor at Arizona State University. “Eco initiatives involve things like recycling or energy conservation. Reusing water bottles and turning off your computer screen are examples.”
Eco initiatives include sustainable micro-level behaviors, small tasks that are done voluntarily by the employee. When an employee chooses to do things like save paper or turn off lights at work, they are participating in eco initiatives. Eco initiatives are done because employees choose to do them, not because they’re enforced.
In the survey, public servants in the southeastern city from departments like neighborhood and business services, fire, police, human resources and the city manager’s office reported their environmental and workplace behaviors. The results showed that eco initiatives had to do with how motivated these public servants were to help society.
Public service motivation, a type of altruism, determines how people feel about the public and how they want to service public values. People with public service motivation can fulfill their desire to help society by choosing a job in government or a job in the private sector that helps citizens.
“Eco initiatives are correlated with the public service motivation of an individual,” Christensen said. “Public servants with high public service motivation engage in micro citizenship behaviors to benefit society on a broader basis.”
Along with public service motivation, two other predictors indicate a person’s likeliness to perform eco initiatives.
“The three key drivers are public service motivation, organizational commitment and environmental connectedness,” Stritch said. “The three work together to determine whether a person engages in eco initiatives.”
Environmental connectedness describes an individual’s attachment to nature. Having a strong connection to nature will increase an employee’s likelihood of performing environmental initiatives. An employee’s concern for the environment will help predict whether, and to what extent, they engage in eco initiatives.
“Even after accounting for an individual’s connectedness to nature, an employee’s public service motivation is a key factor in understanding voluntary, eco initiatives in the public workplace,” Christensen said.
Stritch and Christensen hope that future studies will examine how institutional arrangements and mandated sustainability initiatives in cities change environmental commitment and behavior.
“Our hope is that people begin to think about stewardship and public resources in a broader way,” Stritch said. “We want to see how public servants consider the environment over time and in different places.”
“We have some compelling, if not preliminary, evidence that government workers often have the motivation to go above and beyond to benefit the environment while working in jobs that benefit society,” Christensen said.
The full article, published online ahead of print, is available at http://arp.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/09/29/0275074014552470.full.pdf+html. For more information on the School of Public and International Affairs, see http://spia.uga.edu/.
“We have some compelling, if not preliminary, evidence that government workers often have the motivation to go above and beyond to benefit the environment while working in jobs that benefit society,” Christensen said.
But they only asked government workers, so they have no idea if this is more or less prevalent among non-government workers. Also they only asked people in one southeastern city. So maybe the motivation is a regional thing and not a government employee thing.
Only tells me that Govt. workers don’t have enough to do on the job, and if they can afford the off-time, they are paid too much.
It’s always about the same schism: work and feed off government, such as science research funding predisposes a top-down, pro-government outlook. Most climate science parties are solidly leftist consistent with academics and the AGW meme itself.
Enough to do on the job …. is immaterial and irrelevant to ….
“Environmental connectedness describes an individual’s attachment to” ….. doing whatever the other government employees are doing to prevent themselves from being shunned and/or “badmouthed” by their co-workers…… and iffen its doing “green” then the liberal press will give them free publicity and high praises for doing their “green” thingys instead of doing their jobs …. and a large percentage of the local populace will follow suit with their “approval” simply because said populace is incapable of “making-the-connection” between …. public employees and the work they are being paid to perform.
Ok, OK. Fine! I’ll go to Lima and Copenhagen. But THAT’S IT!!!
Exactly my first thought. The other point they’ve not mentioned is the workplace pressure to perform these duties. All offices have bins for recyclable and not. So they have no choice but to comply, and then this gets spun as a morale duty.
Very poor science. Just like everything the left get their hands on.
I bet I’m not the first person to see another possible link between government employees and eco warriors.
The link is strongest in public academia from my (retired civil service employee) perspective. Particularly the young women of the faculty and staff were outspokenly frightened about the “human footprint on this planet”. There was a large contingent of Prius’s parked next to luxury cars and our (the staff’s) less-than-luxury cars in faculty/staff lots during my last year (2012) as I recall.
I also got kicked out of a band I played in after disclosing my views on climate manipulation to three K-12 teachers also in the band and recommending this blog. (“You perform OK, you’re just not working out well with the group…”)
What was the name of the band, “One Note Nelly”?
Que Eisenhower’s farewell address. Even I, after reading and posting this many times, did not realize that Eisenhower put the “scientific-technological elite” on the same level of threat as he did the military/industrial complex… Here is is..
_____________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
I would posit that what Eisenhower warned of related to
Thank you… sincerely.
Excellent.
Superb catch. Quoted this in my previous book, and still did not catch the full drift because used only the short military/industrial complex version…I like Ike.
You know, I have read this a hundred times but never went back to read in its full context. Ike put this on the same level of threat to liberty as the military industrial complex. I have been researching this for a while and an interesting aspect that Ike would have been familiar with is the phenomenon known as “Technocracy”. Today the word “technocrat” has a largely positive spin on it but from the end of WWI to the mid 1930’s it was a “movement” not unlike (actually it is the direct ancestor) the “Limits to Growth” style of appeal to authority.
In the between the wars period the appeal to authority was an engineering analysis related to the dramatic increase in productivity that according to their charts and graphs, would lead to the unemployment of millions and that the only solution was to turn the government over to the “technocrats” who understood technology and who could “manage” technological growth to lead us into a promised new age.
Sound familiar?
Oh, you bring up Ike…
That old conspiracy theorist.
/sarc
I find the phrase “public servant” to be one of the most disgusting oxymorons in current use today.
“Self-identified Lord and Master of the Peasantry” would be a far more fitting description.
If only they did serve us!
+1
I always loved it when Will Rodgers talked about going down to Washington to check on the hired help.
Will Rodgers also said,
We should be grateful we are not getting all the government our taxes pay for.
(or some such)
More like “public teat suckers”
I vote for “public self-serving servant”.
Public servants disrespect their public masters.
Actual story: people who belong to the left/collectivist side of the political spectrum tend to have indoctrinated eco-believer views, and tend to work for the government instead of private industry.
… and tend to hire only those with similar views.
That’s very true indeed! This is also the reason for the intellectual inbreeding in certain kinds of professions like e.g. teachers, journalists and – last but least – climate scientists… 😉
Ups: “last but NOT least” of course…
You were right the first time, they are definitely amongst the least of us.
“This is also the reason for the intellectual inbreeding in certain kinds of professions like e.g. teachers, journalists and – last but least – climate scientists… 😉”
——————
OOOH, …. now I liked that … cause it sure was a truly “goodern”.
In my experience, a solid majority of those who go in for govt work, wouldn’t be hirable in the private sector.
Do you honestly believe any of them are capable of work outside the public womb? i think not one of them has the right attitude for that.
There are a few who could be trained to say “Would you like fries with that?”.
I found that it really depends on the department one examines. In the Defense Department, the level of employability on the outside was inversely proportional to the distant their job was from actual missions. The civilians in operations and intelligence were usually dedicated, sharp and hard-working. The ones in deep logistics sometimes had to be blasted off their seats with a stick of TNT to get anything done. In the broader intelligence community, the folks at CIA tended to be more liberal than the DoD folks, but looked like extreme right-wingers when compared to the State Department guys. The FBI guys tended to be very territorial and one way with things and politically all over the map.The treasury guys were kind of laid back, but I didn’t work with them enough to really comment on their work ethic. When I retired, Homeland Security was still trying to get its legs under it and quite frankly was a bureaucratic mess. The culture there was sincere confusion, but maybe they have worked something out by now. Though with this administration ushering it through its growing pains, it is probably similar in culture to the State Department – left edge.
And studies conducted by professors at schools of Public and International Affairs tend to find good things out about people in the public sector and also probably about people involved in international affairs also.
…born with a higher need to serve the public…”?
Born with?
Need?
Semantic gibberish.
These are “otherwise unemployables.” “You know, morons.” (Blazing saddles)
Who needs to be elected when you can become a “public servant”……
I have late breaking news for you. Elected politicians; by definition ARE public servants.
Actually, no, by literal definition politicians are NOT public servants. Public servants are members of the “civil service.” The “public servant” position is protected by the fact that they are NOT elected. Watch some “Yes Minister” reruns, or better scan through some of these: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yes,_Minister.
In the US, the framers of the constitution exempted the pay of US politicians from electoral pressure. The congress can vote themselves raises or screw things up royally and never ever have to worry about their paycheck until an election comes around. A public servant on the other hand can have their pay stopped when political parties engage in zero-sum tactics and run the country into a spending halt, but they can’t be fired by a vote. That sort of thing will never effect a politician since they apparently are not paid through tax money, or, if they are, there’s always enough left to pay them indefinitely.
Also disrespecting of their public masters.
They are like they are because they are employed by politicians, and politicians have painted themselves into the CAGW corner and don’t know how to get themselves out.
MSM should expose this but they are in the same position as the politicians.
They don’t want to get out. Politicians seek to wield power and control. If you don’t have money, you can get control OVER money by becoming a politician.
Global warming provides everything they need to exert control over a vast amount of money. It’s not like they’re cowering in a corner saying “How the heck do we get out of this?”. They’re trying to make this last as long as they possibly can, so they can continue to control the power/money.
I like the name of the policeman.
Quite ironic isn’t it? I figured someone would catch it. I salute you.
because people in private industry have to earn a living and can be fired unlike their public servant counterparts??
Agenda 21/Smart Growth/Sustainable Development initiatives have been driven down from the U.N. to the federal government to the local government levels for years. It is a matter of repeated exposure through the government workplace that becomes/induces choice by default. Kinda like being forced to join a union.
Did Ike really repeat the 6th paragraph?
No, I messed up in the block quote.
Simple cure: ENFORCE THE HATCH ACT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act_of_1939
Some one please tell me this ‘study’ was not funded by government.
Oh, is that what they are doing. The road to hell…
What utter dime-store psychobabble Leftist drivel.
Sad to say but you have high-lighted all the positives of the study, Bruce Cobb.
That brought a big grin, thanks
When asked by an eco-activist if they support eco-activists, people tend to answer yes.
When asked by an armored knight if they support armored knights, people tend to answer yes.
When asked by a Girl Scout if they support the Girl Scouts, people tend to answer yes.
OMG, too funny!
When asked by the Self-identified Lord and Master of the Peasantry if they support the Self-identified Lord and Master of the Peasantry, people tend to answer yes.
Eco-activism, thinly disguised as “rule making” by zealots with a “high need to serve the public”, has resulted in the evolution of our system of government from the rule of law to the rule of men. In many cases, the normal legislative process is bypassed by those in government who only have the “best interests of the citizens” in mind.
When major environmental legislation is considered, the language in the bill has been, in most cases written by these same zealots and their allies in the NGO movement, who, after all, are not “self interested”, but have only the “environment” in mind. In addition, many of the “environmental activists” who are employed by “environmental organizations” move right into government positions to further their agenda.
In those positions, they avail themselves of the best “science” that money can buy.
And 75% of sceptics work for the private sector: Survey: Where have you mainly worked?
Wow, I really buck that trend…career military followed by university employment…definitely skeptical of AGW.
Shh…you’ll be sent for re-education if you’re not careful!
I had 23 years of undetected crime in the navy.
Most of the leadership I knew we conservative.
Liberals generally have trouble doing 20+
Too many rules and you don’t get to make them.
It makes sense. If we got the results their models do in any field we’d have been fired a long time ago.
“””””…..“Some people are born with a higher intrinsic need to serve the public,” said study co-author Robert K. Christensen, an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs. …..”””””
Unfortunately, they don’t have the necessary tools of discrimination to discern just what is actually ion the “public interest.”
Mostly, what is in the public interest, is to mind your own business.
And being “public servants”, it wouldn’t hurt if they actually did what their job description says they are being paid by the public to do. That is what the public interest really is; to have public servants do they job they are paid to do.
Which gene is that, the let me kick back and do as little as possible and screw with as many people as possible and get paid lots more than I’m worth gene?
Is that passed from the mother or father, generally?
They have higher intrinsic needs to serve others. Yea well there are a million ways to serve others. In fact the government couldn’t be more inefficient at serving others if they tried. Actually I think they have a higher gravy train desire than others. They love the unaccountability of bureaucratic policy to hide behind requiring no independent thought or real problem solving skills. Just check the box, don’t think, collect a check.
If you look for statistical averages of public vs. private, the title assumption of a preponderance of public employees makes some sense. But I suspect the green movement is more dependent upon certain classs than occupational cohorts.
In my experience, it’s leisured, middle, upper-middle and wealthy classes that have the time to dally with the green dreams of fixing societal ills, saving the rainforests, making a villain of Corporates, insinuating their views into everyday life, and clamping down on the priviledges that they can afford to feel “guilty” about, however briefly.
“””””…..New study translated: public servants are more likely to become eco-activists…..”””””
Eco-activist is a synonym for eco-terrorist.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help (the environment).
I’m from the government and I’m here to help (myself).
Y’all just typed Ronald Reagan’s “Nine Scariest Words Ever Heard!” (with parenthetical additions)
(And at your expense…)
“Eco initiatives involve things like recycling or energy conservation. Reusing water bottles and turning off your computer screen are examples.”
I do all that and I’m still not trembling in fear of climate change.
Anyway, the paper seems to discover a thing that is routinely re-discovered. I experienced it first-hand in Washington DC when a woman was screaming in a parking garage on a military base. The population on that base is mostly civilian, and they didn’t even turn their heads. But I, and about 30 other military persons, rushed over to the garage to intervene.
This has been discovered many times. Some people are “wired” (figuratively speaking) to intervene. Others are not. I can think of no way to go from one state of mind to the other or how it arises.
Could it be that public servants are required to follow the preferred government line accross many topics (or they usually lose their jobs). Contnued following of the official line over a number of years tends to quell any dissenting opinions and the official line is repeatedly re enforced, often to the point of fanatisism. Orwell called this “groupthink” in his novel 1984 and I’ve been convinced for a number of years that this is what we see in several government bodies around climate/environmental issues.
So the problem to a large extent is caused by organisational psychology.
Discovering that government employees endorse the green agenda is like discovering that dental hygienists endorse regular teeth cleaning.
OK, this is one of the few posts ever that actually made me laugh. This is a great thread!
I believe you have cause and effect backwards.
Eco-activists are more likely to become public servants.
Is it ironic the name of the cop arresting Hanson is “Green”…?
Yes. I saw that too. Funny. Also seeing Hanson tough sort of sticking out,… Senility is the diagnosis.
tongue, not tough
“Some people are born with a higher intrinsic need to serve the public”
Some people are also narcissistic and require attention.
As an employee of the public sector, I have witnessed a large disconnect between government supplied services, and resource based industries. My fellow employees are against any kind of resource based industry, be it fishing, forestry, mining, oil and gas, hydro electric power, etc., for environmental reasons. They have no idea where the money for their pay checks comes from.
I have to keep pointing out to my co-workers, that most of the local government’s revenues come from taxes, paid by these resource based industries. And that if my fellow employees expect any kind of a pay increase, or job security, the government has to collect taxes from these industries, in order to keep the services going.
You have hit the nail on the head as to why public sector employees should not be allowed to unionize. In the private sector, even when management and unionized workers are fighting, the underlying common link between them is that the company must have revenues sufficient enough to pay for the wages and benefits the unionized workers want. Thus, the workers need to be productive to produce that revenue. Public sector employees are paid with tax dollars that are not connected to their productivity so there is no incentive to do more than the least amount required to keep their job. Now, I have known public sector employees who do a wonderful job and are truly dedicated. Unfortunately that is not so in the majority of cases.
Socialists more likely to support socialism. Who would have guessed?
Wt’s you definition of socialism?
“The three key drivers are public service motivation, organizational commitment and environmental connectedness,” Stritch said. “The three work together to determine whether a person engages in eco initiatives.”
Other key drivers (probably more “key”) (and also mentioned by others here) are overly good pay and benefits, near-impossibility of getting fired, and hiring decisions made by eco-activists.
“Some people are born with a higher intrinsic need to serve the public.”
We call them “totalitarians” for short.
Helly says “We call them totalitarians…”
No, WE do not. You call them that. There is no “we”.
Those people that actually do serve the public (and not by mere direction) I call “charitable”.
They’re paid to do a job.
That’s not charity.
As in, “To Serve Man”?
You have entered another dimension.
Baloney! The few public servants we have are busing doing their job–to do the peoples’ will. The rat bags and egotists public employees are not servants, they are parasites infesting big government doing their personal will for their personal gain, not the job they were hired to do. This is why we need to shrink government by half, 3/4, who knows how much; but shrink it we must.
Leonard Lane writes “This is why we need to shrink government by half, 3/4, who knows how much; but shrink it we must.”
There is no “we”. Do you have any specific ideas on how you can start reducing government? If not, then multiplying it by 300 million still produces nothing. If you do have ideas, then multiplying can produce substantial change. But you are asking a beast to shrink itself. Good luck with that.
Outside of the military, small portions of the FBI, and the courts, it can all be gotten rid of.
Riiight. ‘Government of the the people, by the people, and for the people’, for a population that is defined by 1906? It’s already functioning at the government/population level of 1956–that’s how many Obama has either fired or not filled–but it’s still filled with Homeland Security, Defense, and Climate Change nerds, nothing else it seems. Obama has shrunk government by 1/3 of what Bush had. And you think that’s an advantage?
Shrinking government is not the issue. It’s simplistic.
Well, they do have insider knowledge of the existing and potential gravy train and the procedures to milk it.
And the real problem is that the smarties have no clue how the federal monetary system works so they don’t know how to change it.
“Eco initiatives are correlated with the public service motivation of an individual,” Christensen said. “Public servants with high public service motivation engage in micro citizenship behaviors to benefit society on a broader basis.”
Translation: They are good little collectivists who suffer from the Messiah complex.
In other news, hammers are attracted to nails.
Dare I suggest that those in the private sector are actually working? And would catch holy hell if they wasted time turning crap on and off all the time?
Honestly.
I run from one catastrophe to another basically from start to end of my shift. The phone rings 90 plus times in 12 hours. Sometimes I’ve got 1 phone in each hand, and 2 radios on different channels, and ALL of them are making relevant noises. I skip every break mandated for me by law. I wait, sometimes 10 hours, to take a leak. I never shut the truck off. I’m WORKING! How do these guys have enough time to be so bored that they make up pointless and ineffective sustainability crap to keep themselves busy during working hours? Exactly how little is expected from them that they have time to actually do this stuff?
In title, “public servants” should be in quotes. I doubt real public servants like police and fire fighters buy into this.
I’m a public employee. But I’m just one of the peed-ons. Many of my coworkers are very connected to nature. Like me they believe that all this “California-style” going Green is BS. But I doubt the study would consider them to be environmentally correct. They love to hunt and fish.
I was about to ask how many volunteer for organisations that actually do something?
I haven’t volunteered for a lot but organisations that provide first aid, service to the poor or emergency service volunteers do seem to have more people from blue collar jobs in private industry than public servants.
All for show maybe?
Great photo of the elusive Hanson in his
Natural habitat.
An effin’ Enviro-Aristocrat.
Onr thing that may also be relevant is the some of the public servants don’t have a lot do to so eco activism fills up their working day! I know that some of them do have jobs that take all the time but there are a lot of chair warmers too than don’t have much to do! No offence is intended to anyone but if the cap fits………………
Personally I don’t think they should cuff a guy when they’re taking him to the psych unit.
Studies show that researchers have revealed that there are findings of compelling, if not preliminary, evidence of disturbing data yet to be analysed which nonetheless point to the conclusion that most unversity departments could be shut down with no loss to anyone but themselves.
This post is close enough for government work.
I’m waiting for government at some level to create a “Department of Amish Barn Raisings.”
They’ll need public servants to; create rules and regulations, issue permits, keep records of the rules and regulations and permits; inspect the site for suitability, issue and retrieve and analyze environmental impacts at the barn site, study and approve of the diversity of the barn raisers, approve the menu of the noon meal for the barn raisers and inspect the kitchens and the nutritional value of the menu items, inspect and approve the safety gear and preparations for the barn raising to include 30 hours of training before starting the barn raising, and there’s the support staff at the main office to answer phones, enter data, file and shuffle all paper records and technical support for all computers used by the department.
Or, we could just let the Amish get on with their barn raisings as they have done since the early 1700’s.
So these people who are motivated to public service; should they work for that “Department of Amish Barn Raising” or should they just dive in, grab a hammer and lend a hand? And instead of eco-initiatives (just what the heck is an eco-initiative when it is at home?), can’t they just pick up litter and throw their diet Coke cans in the recycle bin rather than costing me an arm and a leg in taxes, telling me I’m better off for it, and that the world will end tomorrow if we cut staff?
/bizarre rant. I’m out of my usual 1 or 2-liner comments when it comes to the usefulness of most – not all! – government functions
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Ayn Rand
I wonder if the study have delved into educational backgrounds, ie. what percentage of these public spirited individuals have any grounding in the scientific method?
I think we know that they did not ask. The science is settled. Ha!
Trying to make a virtue out of justifying political correctness.
Complete BS in its purest and most unadulterated form.
http://www.epa.gov/ems/
The creeps are in. Time to kick them out.
Love the Freddie Hat.
Government and nonprofit managers, for example, typically have higher levels of public service motivation than business managers.”
Too bad they do less good.
I also participate in environmental initiatives. (Ultimately speaking, at the point of a gun.)
That attitude is because they think they are actually taxpayers.
But if all taxes were eliminated tomorrow, they would be out of a job. Ergo, they are NOT taxpayers, but tax consumers.
Which is not making a judgment call. We need some public servants. Mostly it is the Military whose public service we can’t survive without. I’m happy to pay taxes to support them. In fact the US Constitution says they are the first thing we can be taxed for. Well there’s the National Debt to pay as well. But there wouldn’t be a National Debt, if the government did what it is hired to do, and butted out of that which isn’t their business. Which leaves the Military to pay for.
Two likely reasons:
– they are more collectivist minded, whether or not they started out that way
– they want to do good, and feel they are doing something for their pay
Seriously, please do not term these wackos public servants. They may be public employees, but they are not public servants. They serve themselves and no one else, though they may be paid by taxpayers.
Perhaps 8 years ago I was driving a friend of my wife to the airport. This person was at the time the Chair of a Geology Dept at a major Midwestern University. We briefly discussed “Global Warming”. I mentioned to her that all the calculations I had seen indicated that it would not measurably matter if the US cut back on carbon dioxide emissions, so there was little point in doing so. She replied “I know, you’re right, but it would make me feel better”.
That’s really all one needs to know about these eco-wackos: it’s all about their feelings. And, they are perfectly happy to steal from others to make themselves feel better.
Feminism snuck in through the back door of science.
Lotsa feelings and little logic.
Brought to you by the Frankfurt School.
Universities today are full of this kind of junk.
““New study translated: public servants are more likely to become eco-activists”
Not quite. How about “New study: Eco-activists are more likely to become government agents”
Where is the control in this experiment? A statement is made about public service employees in a large city without subjecting comparable non-public employees in the same city to the same investigative procedure.
A more accurate assessment of public servants is that government employment attracts people who feel the need to control other people, and their government job is the vehicle they use to to do that.
I recall reading that the murderers Stalin used to enforce collectivization in Ukraine during “The Great Famine” would gather in the evening and read poetry to each other. No doubt these poets felt a compelling need to serve humanity.
Like the Vogons and they were not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous.
Working definitions for any of that are evidently proprietary.
Shocking. Government funded research finds that government employees are just plain wonderful people, and people who work in the private sector are mean, selfish jerks. Don’t sprain your arm while patting yourself on the back, buddy.
As many have said before, the common thread is that government employees are more likely left leaning, and hence love all things that lead to a bigger government role in everything, like eco-fascism. We really didn’t need a study to tell us this. But then of course this leach wouldn’t have a job.
The irony is that these well-meaning public servants, who are interested in enviro-wacko causes (not pragmatic and beneficial environmentalism) have ruined people’s lives, not made them better.
Yes, all Americans want clean air, and the US has cut REAL air pollutants by 50~99% just since 1980:
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/aqtrends.html
Many of these REAL pollutants are already so low, it makes absolutely no economic sense to cut them further, because the added costs to do so would yield virtually no quantitative nor qualitative health benefits.
To get around this conundrum, enviro-wackos and political hacks targeted CO2, to force evil capitalists to waste $trillions in cutting plant food emissions.
The CAGW scam has been a Bonanza for the public sector by creating millions of new public-sector jobs around the world, and wasting $trillions in added CO2: taxes, subsidies, rules and regulations and mandates and wind/solar mega-projects.
CAGW doesn’t work and is quickly becoming a political liability. As soon as support for CAGW costs politicians more votes than gains, the CAGW scam is finished. The way CAGW poll numbers and global temps are falling, this point of singularity will probably occur in about 5~7 years.
There is no way CAGW can survive almost a quarter of century of no global warming trends, no increase in global severe weather for 50~100+ years, increasing/recovering polar ice extents, 6 inches/century sea rise, etc.
Great to see that Homer Simpson has been taken into custody before he was able to wreck the power station.
Great to see that Homer Simpson has been taken into custody before he was able to wreck the power station.
So a solidly eco-wacky assistant professor manages to convince some local governmental agencies; e.g. fire services, police, human resource workers, and the city managers office, to participate in a ‘eco’ survey.
Key recognition factors include recycling and turning one’s monitor…
Phrased differently, local government employees get an official survey regarding their ‘politically correct’ opinions. (It is technically illegal to request governmental employee actions or beliefs).
DUH! What employee wouldn’t ‘like’ all of the politically correct concepts? Who would seriously believe that these employees would imply anything that might mar their image in their employment?
Obviously Stritch might be that daft.
As a long term Federal employee, including a number of years delivering mail, I have a few suggestions to all those who deride things they do not know.
Get a job yourself in those supposedly cushy positions with wonderful salaries! After working in the positions for several years with all the dismal promotion opportunities, then criticize the jobs! At least then you will know what you are talking about.
I’ve worked in both private industry and public service. I decided to apply for civil service because I was sick and tired of constantly running into nepotism. At least in the Federal service I wasn’t constantly training someone’s relative so they could be promoted.
If you are going to deride governmental employees, criticize the managers or elected official who allow bad work habits.
Governmental managers are susceptible to the temptation of ’empire building’. Governmental employees are ranked by numbers of employees, physical assets and/or cash flow. The easiest status increase to achieve are numbers of employees closely followed by physical assets (vehicles, equipment, buildings,…).
Empire builders tend to have huge egos, but their image is not usually service, efficiency or process based so public satisfaction is not high on their list.
There were always turkeys who thought that because I was in uniform, that I was at their beck and call. Like the wahoo who drove to the bottom of a hill and started honking his car’s horn long and loud. A few seconds after the first honks when I didn’t run down the hill to see what he wanted, he started cursing at me. When I finished delivering the houses along the hill’s crest, my path to my next delivery passed by the crackpot in the car. As I neared the car I got a bunch of profanity that included my parentage and employment.
His question, when he decided to ask before I walked off; he wanted directions to a person’s house that he knew the name of, but not the address nor phone number.
I suggested he go to the Post Office and inquire there or better yet, the Police Station just up the hill. He started cursing again as I walked off.
Just because a Postal carrier learns a lot of personal information regarding residents does not allow us to share that information without official orders. Let alone some lazy as___le who believes civil service employees should jump and run down a steep hill to answer improper questions.
That particular route required enough steps that the route averaged ten to twelve miles (depending on how many houses actually got delivery that day). Yes, the Postal Service counts how many steps a carrier takes as part of their ‘route reviews’.
I transferred to the carriers as it got me outside where working under the open sky is a miracle everyday.
The most unnerving times? Children play and people may complain about noisy kids right outside their house, but very few people realize that children add a few decibels to everyday noise outside. Every fall when schools started up the silence outside was eerie till one got used to the quiet again.
Quoted
““Some people are born with a higher intrinsic need to serve the public,” said study co-author Robert K. Christensen, an associate professor in the School of Public and International Affairs. “They have a desire to help others and serve society. Government and nonprofit managers, for example, typically have higher levels of public service motivation than business managers.”
____________________________________
Now lets try a little experiment;
Take a couple of government departments that are full of those, by their definition, caring, helpful , responsible bureaucrats and tell those employees that from this point on there will be no further tax payer funding for their department.
If they want their organisation / department and their employment to continue then they will have to come up with products that the public will buy and pay for voluntarily because the public likes and wants the products they are selling.
And there will be no coercive instruments permitted in the form of legislative requirements to force the public to purchase their products.
They will be on their own and will survive or disappear depending on their success in selling their products and making a profit..
And then a couple of years later conduct another very similar survey of the surviving employees of those departments. Thats if they still exist as business structures.
I would lay high odds that the [ quote ] “Some people are born with a higher intrinsic need to serve the public,” would by then be a very difficult characteristic to find under those real life circumstances identical to those that business people both large and small and micro in size have to deal with every single day.
It is damn easy to tell some pollster just how you want to serve society and help others when you are getting access to almost unlimited supplies of OPM, “Other Peoples Money” that you are never really required to account for in the way it is dispersed.
And unlike business owners and operators, you will rarely if ever be personally penalised financially for not performing.
If those same psuedo altruistic public servants were ever required to do business in the real world where you have to actually provide service and goods and products the public actually want and will pay over their hard earned money for, and then have to use their own hard eared cash to create such a business,
then I would lay odds that the somewhat fake bureaucratic altruistic vapourware claimed here would be very difficult to find in any sort of future survey of the remnants of those departments
I suspect this survey like most others today, seems to have been set up to find exactly what they wanted to find with a good helping of distorted analysis just to make sure of the required results.
Short version;
Few believe the claimed survey findings,
Particularly after dealing with real life public servants at least here in Australia.
Just another survey that as with most of these surveys stinks of manipulation to boost somebody’s profile and ego.
I finally got around to writing a song about little Jimmy H
It’s not a service ethic – it’s a desire to rule over the great unwashed.
The whole concept of “public servant” has been corrupted; an Orwellian example of how language is abused.
Is a waitress not serving the public? Is a clerk processing an insurance claim not serving the public? Someone who changes oil in peoples cars not serving the public? Truck drivers not serving the public? Anyone with a service or manufacturing job is serving the public. Any company or person that provides a service or product to the public is serving the public. And just like government “public servants” they receive compensation.
The idea that a government worker serves the public out of the goodness of their heart is grossly self-serving and ridiculous considering the perks and benefits they receive. We’d have a lot less government “public servants” if they were not well compensated.
Now there are real public servants, who for no pay or benefit serve on a regular basis. These include people who act as cross-walk monitors for children or mentor people from other countries in learning the English language to any number of other public volunteer work.
Meanwhile this study is further proof that there are no bounds to stupidity. This study is a conclusion with no controls, flawed premise, flawed methodology, literally no evidence to support the conclusion. The authors lack of insight into their limited research skills and biases is the only interesting aspect about this study.
The study is hog wash. “Public” servants have no altruistic desires. What they have is greed. Pure unadulterated greed. They earn more than the private sector. And they merely seek to perpetuate their gravy train, by any means possible. In another 20 years, that will be a new cause, possibly global cooling. But what ever brings in more money to the government, they will support. They do not care a wit about serving anyone, only being served. Of that there is no doubt. The worst customer service ratings, consistently, always has government agencies at the top.
The worst customer service ratings, consistently, always has government agencies at the top.
============
because the civil service has a monopoly and the customers cannot go elsewhere. Not happy with the government passport office? Don’t want to stand in line all day only to be told 3 months later you were rejected because you didn’t tick box 33 on page 7 of form xyz, and need to try it all once more. Well, try and go down the street and get your passport somewhere else. See how that works for you.
It worked for Snowden. 😉
But you are correct.
“need to serve the public”
. . . when they couldn’t find a job anywhere else.
Since Hansen’s picture tops the article i thought
I would recycle this poem I wrote a few years ago.
“OLD DEATH TRAIN” HANSEN —
Always good for a laugh
More holy than thou
He warns you of Venus
The only thing now
That hardens his penis
He rants at the crowds
A coot with the hypers
His mind in the clouds
A load in his diapers
He quotes from the Greens —
We work for the many!
(Diversity means
The colors of money)
He quotes from the Reds —
Consensus is dictum!
(Good socialist heads
Are all up one rectum)
A fascist he cries
This Goebbels of weather
The truth is in lies
The bigger the better!
So just like a skunk
His sight is alarming
His science is junk
There’s no global warming
Eugene WR Gallun
I stand in awe…
The authors of this trash misunderstood and twisted way out of proportion the phrase “public service”, or indeed “public servant” in order to fit their agenda, and many here fell into the same trap. In industry, there are two sectors; goods or services, and the service industry is divided into public and private. The public part simply means governmental, though there are some exceptions – here in New Hampshire our biggest supplier of electricity is Public Service of NH (PSNH). Then, to add still more confusion, we have the word “servant”, which used to mean someone who worked in a household, performing household duties.
There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about working in the public sector.
the government teat flows freely when people play social and eco justice warriors.
This study is rubbish. Looking at jobs statistics in the west, it becomes quite obvious what motivates public service. High wages and benefits and generous pensions, job security, and the ability to be lazy and unproductive with the backing of huge Unions. Compare any private sector job with its public counterpart and you quickly find that the public sector wage/benefit package pays more. Anybody who tells you different in the employ of public service is lying to you.
Is it any wonder living inside this taxpayer funded bubble world, protected from the chaos of actually generating wealth and surviving in the real world, that you advocate and agitate for more policies that drive the cost of living up and taxes for your fellow workers in the private sector, knowing full well that your Union will compensate you for those increases in the next blackmailing/extortion union contract negotiations. It all sounds good knowing full well someone else is paying for it. Whats not to like. The managers in public service who preside over this massive moneypit are also complicit. They fully understand that any wage/benefits/pension increase they agree to from the Unions, is used as justification for their own wage/salary benefits increases. And this cycle repeats every 4 to 6 years.
That is the reality.
There is a golden rule in the civil service. Never criticize a fellow worker, no matter how bad a job they are doing. If you do, you can expect to get fired, not the person doing the bad job. The civil service is all about going along to get along, regardless of the quality of work. In this fashion no one need worry about getting fired. The real work in the civil service is done by outside consultants for extremely high fees. It is the consultants that are expected and required to fall on their swords when projects go wrong. The civil servants never make mistakes, because you have to actually do something to make a mistake. If you do nothing you cannot ever be found to have done something wrong. How do you avoid doing anything? Sit on every document received for 3-6 months, then ask for clarification. Sit on the clarification, then call for a meeting if questioned, as you still don’t understand. By then whatever was wrong will have been replaced by some more pressing matter. Rinse and repeat. In this fashion you will always have tons of work you are “working on”, but none that ever gets completed. The fine art of doing nothing while appearing super busy.
That subject has been covered extensively by Prof. C. Northcote Parkinson in his book Parkinson’s Law. Definitely worth reading.
the civil service doesn’t worry about their employer going bankrupt and thus doesn’t care how destructive their policies are to everyone outside the civil service. so what if a million people are thrown out of work to “save” the burrowing owl, so long as no civil servants are harmed in the process.
PhD from ASU and post doc at UGa.
This makes me sad.
Our tax dollars at work — Instead of performing the work (for the public) they are hired to do, government employees can instead spending their working hours on things they personally feel are important to them.
I hate this study. What if I turn out lights for entirely financial reasons?
I didn’t read the article until it was 136 comments in so this may have been said already. I think they have the causal relationship wrong. Instead of
“Public servants are more likely to become eco-activists”
It should read
Eco-activists are more likely to become public servants
Then you get into like attracting like which follows with the herd mentality. Ultimately the only thing that collapses it is eventually you run out of other people’s money.
Cheers
It is too easy to be generous with money that is not your own. In fact one of the roots of our current over-reach by government, including funding “science” that is designed far more to advance socialist ideology than to advance honest science inquiry. It is no coincidence that solutions supported by both environmentalist and government bureaucrats all converge at the same teleological point: increased government, decreased liberty and prosperity.
One of the roots a wasteful, foolish, intrusive, thuggish, and sometimes tyrannous government is the ease with which it can create almost unlimited amounts of money out of thin air. Near-infinite money buys near-infinite government, and a bureaucracy that is generously funded can entertain an open-ended dream about how to expand its realm.
Every day more people are coming to the judgment that a carefully organized effort to repair the constitution via the States’ power to propose and ratify amendments poses less risk to our liberty and prosperity than the present trajectory of the federal government and especially the federal bureaucracy whose self-published rules carry the weight of law.
The first order of business of an Article V Convention must be to limit government’s ability to create and spend near-infinite amounts of money.
So if I am lobbying and demonstrating to encourage actions that will increase funding for my “empire”, increase my job security, and possibly get me a better raise, is that noble or materialistic? “They have a desire to help others and serve society.” As the Church lady would say, ‘Weeellll Isn’t that convenient?’ What you are lobbying for helps your finances, but is it really serving others? There are two sides to every story, the government has its reasons for doing what it does, and even though NOT doing some eco-friendly things hurts some people’s pocket book (like James Hansen), it helps the quality of life of others. There has yet to be a demonstration in favor of some action no one has ever thought of. But our government doesn’t operate by doing whats best for the environment or any one cause without consideration of other consequences, like economic hardships, it has to do whats it thinks is best for the whole. You can disagree, and you can protest, but that doesn’t mean you are right. That is selfish arrogance if you think that.
“… and when I saw what that bull did to that cow, I understood why they called it public service.” – Will Rogers? I think?
There are some public workers, but most are ‘public servants’. See if you can spot which is which.
The “worker” is the contractor. They are the ones that actually do the work. And are not technically employed by the feds.
Test
[Use the Test Thread (see top of page above for link) for all testing. .mod]
In my all-time fav HBO series “Deadwood” there is a character named Woolcot (George Hearst’s geologist) who has this *wonderful* line:
“I am a sinner who does not expect to be forgiven, but I am not a government official.”
Applies well here, I think.
Maybe Lewandowski could do of his famous psychological studies on this.