Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site spar.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!decvax!decwrl!spar!baba From: baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: National Defense (we need a new subject title!) Message-ID: <535@spar.UUCP> Date: Tue, 24-Sep-85 01:16:30 EDT Article-I.D.: spar.535 Posted: Tue Sep 24 01:16:30 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 26-Sep-85 08:26:41 EDT References: <3476@topaz.UUCP> <28200087@inmet.UUCP> <145@l5.uucp> Organization: The Institute for Impure Science Lines: 27 Laura Creighton writes: > What i do not want is full time (career) civil servants. There undoubtably > are people who would make good full time Judges, policemen and law makers > but there are far too many who are not. Therefore I propose limiting how > long one can work for the state to 2 terms of (say) 5 years each. This will > mean that there is a need for a great turnover of state employees. There > is no such thing as a free lunch, folks, so I think that the price that > citizens of libertaria will have to pay to have their rights respected and > a small state is compulsory work for the state for one term. This does > not mean that one must work as an infantry soldier, of course -- you can be > a judge or a mayor or an elected official or a secretary or a programmer. > Do not expect the salary to be good, however. I find this strangely reminiscent of Jacksonian democracy. There too, the nominal objective was to prevent the coagulation of a bureaucracy by institutionalizing a high turnover rate in public office, and there was an egalitarian assumption that anyone should be able to assume a public official's duties. But I have to wonder: If most people would make poor full-time judges and generals, ought we not to spend some energy to find men of rare wisdom and justice, imagination and energy, for such positions, rather than rotating through a succession of functionaries statistically doomed to incompetence? And just how impartial can a judge afford to be if he *knows* he's going to have to hunt for work in the private sector within a few years? Baba