There's still a
lot of objectivity in . . . the government
I think that depends on what you consider objectivity.
I deal regularly with government in several areas. One is the Department of Social and Health Services for custody, abuse, and child support issues and the planning department on land use issues. I find that most employees want to do a good job, but also that they are almost all motivated by certain principles, generally unstated, and that their actions, probably mostly unconscious, mirror their biases.
For example: almost every employee of the planning department believes that government can make better decisions about land use issues than property owners, and that the more planning there is and the more control of land use there is, the better society will be. So when they draft regulations to enforce general land use policies, the philosophy is never to write in principles which generally trust the landowner to do the right thing within certain parameters, but to write in as limiting a set of rules, based on their biases about what is the best way for society to interpret the general legislative mandate, as they can. There was even a strong movement afoot in the planning department here a few years ago, which got squelched only by a major public outcry, to produce a small palette of colors which were acceptable colors to paint shoreline homes. No other color would have been permitted. That's only one of numerous examples. I pointed out earlier on some SI thread that when they recalculated the size of the house we were building they included some space the builder hadn't, which put our house just over 4,000 feet. So they required us to put in a sprinkler system. Now, why would a house of 3,999 feet not need a sprinkler system, but one of 4,000 feet would? And why is it any concern of the planning department, anyhow? Isn't my own safety my concern, not theirs? And if the purpose is to protect the community, not the family, why isn't a fire that starts in a 3,500 foot house just as likely to spread to other homes as one that starts in a 4,000 foot house? And there's nothing in the regs that applies to how close the house is to others. A 4,000 foot house in the middle of a 100 acre field needs a sprinkler system, a 3,500 row house doesn't. How does that make sense?
Sure, they enforce the regulations with objectivity. 4,011 feet requires the sprinkler. No exceptions. Objective enforcement. But the creation of the regulations indicates a very strong bias.
As to DSHS, IME child abuse employees go into that underpaid and highly stressful work in large part because they have a much different belief in what constitutes child abuse than the common person on the street. We have had several incidences in Washington of totally out of control DSHS enforcements. Other states have them, too. I'm sure the employees think they're applying the rules objectively, but they are starting with a strong bias, and their enforcement actions of necessity reflect those biases.
As to collecting child support, I have both male and female clients getting support services from DSHS. IME again, the enforcement actions against fathers who owe support to mothers is MUCH stronger than the enforcement against mothers who owe support to fathers. I have one of the latter; the mother is tens of thousands of dollars in arrears, but DSHS didn't even grab her income tax refund of $1,400. Wheres in another case of a father owing the mother much less than that, the refund check was intercepted. Is this intentional bias? I don't think so. But I do think that these workers, most of whom are women, have a bias that women raising the children really need the money and men are out to screw them, whereas men raising the children are probably doing okay and women aren't out to screw them. Which, in my cases, isn't true, but it's a bias which seems to affect their enforcement actions.
So two things. First, I believe that people go into certain branches of government service because they start with biases as to the proper role of government vs. individual interests and IMO generally believe more in the benefits of government than does the average person. Second, those biases color their very approach toward their jobs, the regulations they draft, the discretionary decision they make, etc.
I'm not saying this doesn't make sense -- why would anybody take a job as a government planner if their basic belief was Jeffersonian? And I'm not saying that these are intentional biases or that they're purposely being non-objective in the way they do their jobs. But I am saying that IME, there is precious little true objectivity in government employees. |
