The Plight of the Parasites

The Z Blog ^ | 2/23/2017 | thezman

[RightGeek]

Probably since the dawn of settled society, there have been people who found some way to live off the labor of others. Even hunter-gatherer populations had some freeloading, as some members of the group would be less productive than others. Settled society made freeloading a bit easier. Settled life required rules, which required enforcement and that meant government. Even the most streamlined administrations had extras and hangers-on, who figured out how to game the system so they could get paid to do nothing.

In modern America, government is a form of workfare for the most part. There are roughly 2.8 million Federal workers, not including uniformed personnel. When you add in state and local government, there are roughly 22 million people employed by government in the United States. The labor force is roughly 150 million so that means 15% of the nation’s workers are employed by government. Of course, literally no one knows the size of the contract workforce. The best guess is about 5 million, but it could be much more.

Then you get into the vendor side of things. The Imperial Capital is ringed by companies that do nothing but serve the government. It is not uncommon to run into firms that have done business with no one other than government. Some of these firms exist solely to fulfill diversity clauses in government contracts. There are firms around DC that don’t actually do real work. They just provide the right amount of color to the vendor pool as subcontractors in a contract. How many of these exist is an unknown.

The fact is, about a third of the people working today are in jobs that exist because of government. The fact that blacks are over represented in these fields is well known and deliberate. In cities across America, a city job has been a form of workfare and patronage for generations. If the government was ever pared back to just what is needed, the essential services like police and road maintenance, tens of millions would be thrown out of work and we would have riots in our major cities. A government job is riot insurance.

The thing is, even without automation, most of these jobs are pointless. There’s no getting around the fact that we support millions of freeloaders this way. The cost of the job is not the only cost. There’s the nuisance factor and the damage caused by battalions of government bureaucrats meddling in the productive economy. Then there is the layer of senior bureaucrats that sit atop the workforce, dreaming up ways to game the system so the managerial class can skim from the economy. This is very expensive riot insurance.

Of course, this leads to the basic question of where is the tipping point? At what point does it become prohibitive to carry all of these freeloaders? That’s been a libertarian topic for generations. A bigger question though is what happens when the essential point of government becomes less important? In a town with no crime, for example, there’s no need for cops. If renewing a driving license can be done at a kiosk or on-line, what’s the point of having a department of motor vehicles fully staffed with bureaucrats?

Smart people like to wring their hands in public about the robot revolution eliminating jobs for the Dirt People, but there’s a similar force working on the Cloud People and their army of soldiers known as the bureaucracy. It’s not just robots taking the jobs of functionaries at the Post Office either. It’s changes in society that are eliminating the need for constant supervision by our rulers. Crime is the most obvious example. For instance, car theft has collapsed as a criminal pastime due to technology. The same thing is happening with home security systems that make burglary a high risk, low reward occupation.

It is not just the government end of the managerial state that will come under extreme pressure from the changes wrought by technology. Look at the media. CNN draws an average 2 million viewers for its top shows. They get a little over a buck per month from every cable household, even though 99% do not watch CNN. Cord cutting is blowing up this model, which means technology is threatening 95% of CNN’s revenue base. This is the crisis facing every cable TV channel. When the damn breaks and those revenues disappear, it means jobs for media people disappear with them.

Just look at the pop music business. Technology obliterated their business model. The mp3 revolution killed the album business and now less than half the number of people are employed in the music business compared to twenty years ago. Not only that, there’s less music being produced. It turns out that all those extra people in the music business were busying themselves making records that no one bought. In other words, the changes that come with technology seem to be closing off the points of entry for freeloaders.

The thing is though, the Dirt People have been adjusting to automation for decades. The dreaded private sector is already very automated and efficient as anyone with a job can attest. It is not unusual to walk into an office of an old company and see a lot of empty desks. The reason is they used to have many more people but automation eliminated the need. The real impact for Dirt People has been the slowing of job growth, not so much the elimination of existing jobs.

The world of the Cloud People, on the other hand, has always been littered with freeloaders. In fact, it is a world where most are freeloaders, which is why they invest so heavily in the self-actualizing part of the career. In the Cloud, you are not defined by your work product, so much as by your titles within your field. A “senior correspondent” for CNN does the same thing as a correspondent, but the “senior” modifier to his title confers extra status. Title are coveted in the Cloud because hardly anyone does real work so titles are how they keep score.

There’s a lot of extra that can be cut even before technology knocks the legs out from under them. This is why newspapers went through round after round of layoffs in the last 20 years. Long before technology undermined them, they suffered from what all monopolies suffer, a lack of cost control. As a result, there was much that could be cut, but a resistance to doing it. When the red ink spread, we saw wave after wave of cuts and downsizing. The same fate awaits many parts of the Cloud economy.

Much of the Cloud infrastructure has value to the people in charge so they will seek to maintain much of it. Billionaires buying dead newspapers being an obvious example. Other parts of the system will she sloughed off, like the vast army of vendors and contractors that work as a shadow government. Just as technology made private enterprise more efficient and more ruthless, the world of the Cloud people is about to get smaller and much more ruthless, with one another at first and then with the rest of us.

[RightGeek]

A little something beyond the MSM outrage of the day.

[rdcbn]

Since the dawn of time the parasites have wanted to tax everything including the air we breath.

Now they are getting closer with global warming - not the air we breath perhaps, just the air we exhale

[IWontSubmit]

Stuck On An Escalator

Sometimes one gets stuck!

[marktwain]

The problem that conservatives face is that government is necessary. We have learned that from long, painful, experience.

The difficulty is finding the optimum level of government. It is *not* obvious or easy to discern. If it were, there would not be any argument.

Are Police necessary? We lived without them for hundreds of year. But experience shows that police do reduce crime rates.

Is a robust military necessary? Experience has shown that it is. Then you need a robust weapons research and procurement program for it, and a robust intelligence network to show where and when force is best applied.

Is the EPA necessary? I think it has grown far beyond its usefulness; but in 1970, it was pretty obvious that we needed a federally coordinated approach to pollution that crossed state lines.

I do not believe we need any Department of Education.

But the problem is drawing the line, and it is something we are constantly evaluating and arguing about.

[poconopundit]

This is a highly interesting discussion.

Point of clarification: Are the Dirt people private industry? Are the Cloud people government workers?

My first observation is that the 20 million government workers seems high. A Google fact sheet say there are 2.79 million non-uniform federal workers. Judging from that I’d guess when you include all government workers it comes to more like 12 million maybe(?)

Though the indirect contractors is absolutely a worry.

And then when you exclude postal workers (federal), local police, firemen and other essential personnel, the number of govt employees in local and state levels is not as far out of whack as it seems.

My other hunch is that the efficiency of customer service people is not bad in Penn and Georgia constantly improves. When you go to places like the Dept of Motor Vehicles, they have introduced some automation (web ordering of licenses etc.), and the people seem to be busy doing moderately challenging clerical tasks.

But I hear what you’re saying. In a local city, town or county government you could have a kiosk or simple website tell you everything you need to know. Lots of efficiencies are still needed. So much duplication.

And there’s a reason why companies like Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft love selling to government: they can make more money there because the government is not clever enough in purchasing or the job skills to avoid computing costs are not there.

Anyway, I look forward to reading what others have to say here. Good post.

[soycd]

It all boils down to good and bad people. We breed too many lazy, criminal, unwanted bad people and that needs to be stopped.

[zeestephen]

In January 2008, just before the Great Recession, 25% of employed Black college graduates were working for a government agency or for a government contractor.

Based on personal experience, I will guess the other 75% were working in the Human Resources (HR) department of large and medium size corporations.

[JerryBlackwell]

With no real statistics and just a bit of personal experience I suggest that half the government employees could be fired with no resulting change in the quality or quantity of work performed and firing three quarters would actually improve the quality and quantity of work.

Everything comes down to haves and have nots. In this case we are the have nots, having no sick leave, annual leave, golden parachute pension, cushy undemanding job, etc. and we gaze longingly at the haves while we bust our humps every day to pay the bills.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

The problem that conservatives face is that government is necessary. We have learned that from long, painful, experience.

When was that?

[dljordan]

“there have been people who found some way to live off the labor of others”

Bankers?

[marktwain]

The problem that conservatives face is that government is necessary. We have learned that from long, painful, experience.

When was that?

---

From about 4,000 BCE to present.

In more recent times. Medieval Europe learned it was necessary to repel the Islamic invaders.

The colonists learned it was necessary to make a successful break from England.

All the Amerindians learned it was necessary to defend their country... because they were unable to do so as loosely associated tribes.

Places that were unable or unwilling to develop governments were conquered by those who did.

So... Show me some counter examples. I am willing to be convinced.

I recommend War before Civilization as a good source about why governments are necessary.

https://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126

[ROCKLOBSTER]

Show me some counter examples. I am willing to be convinced.

Obviously the framers believed in a good Navy, but that's about it.

Practically everything else can be done by the states.

[marktwain]

We have way too much federal government.

I think we can agree on that.

Actually, a Navy was a (relatively) late development. A reliable judiciary and the postal system came first.

The Navy was partly necessary to collect tariffs, which were needed to fund the federal government.

Keeping the states in check and from arguing with each other was a strong reason for the Federal government. It is a beautifully designed system.

[DUMBGRUNT]

Long ago I attended a management class,the instructor had a cliche for ‘large organizations’.

One third, does two thirds of the output.
One third does near nothing.
One third does what’s left.

IIRC?

[ROCKLOBSTER]

I know of the 80/20 rule. Where 20% of the people do 80% of the work.

[Teacher317]

Change that one Executive Administrative Rule about requiring certain percentages of minority employees in government contracts, and you’ll quickly see some massive movement.

[Bon mots]

Federal government workers are only the tip of the iceberg. There are massive state workforces and cities as well.

Then add up all the welfare parasites...

There are a number of 'Death Spiral States' where the "FeedMe Index" or ratio of parasites to workers is greater than 1-1.

• New Mexico – 148 dependents per 100 private sector workers
• West Virginia – 116 dependents per 100 private sector workers
• California – 114 dependents per 100 private sector workers
• Mississippi – 111 dependents per 100 private sector workers
• New York – 108 dependents per 100 private sector workers
• Arkansas – 103 dependents per 100 private sector workers

[poconopundit]

Thanks for opening my eyes. I took a look at the Death Spiral States you referred to. Here's the story on California:

[With a population of 39 million,] California has... 14 million private-sector jobs. It also has burdens: welfare recipients (12.6 million), generously paid government employees (2.1 million) and people collecting government pensions (1.3 million).

Scary. I would be interested in knowing the financials behind these numbers. Now the population of California should not include illegal aliens, but if there another 5 million of those, it's another burden. Add up the numbers. There are 114 clients drawing from the government for every 100 people chipping in by working outside the government and paying taxes. We’re calling this the Feedme Ratio. Six states have a number over 100.