Government employees work in a monopoly where the fallen nature is encouraged.  Private employees work in competitive environments which discourage self-interest. 
 
What happened to the term “civil servant?”  Honestly, I have not heard that term used in twenty years.  The idea was that workers who earned their living in the public sector were serving society.  Not so much anymore. 
 
Sand on the Tracks
Roy Orr was a Democrat, who served a term as the President of the National Association of Counties.  I was once part of a leadership group interviewing Orr, and he continually used the phrase, “Sand on the tracks…That’s all we were, sand on the tracks.”  Okay, here’s the explanation: If a train gets stuck on a steep hill, or the tracks are iced over, they throw sand on the tracks for traction.  The sand gets smashed by the extremely heavy locomotive.  During a visit to a policy-making committee in Washington, he was dismayed that the staff was not showing much interest in his proposals.  The bureaucrats told him in private, “You’re just sand on the tracks.”  Meaning: Mr. Orr would soon be gone, and the bureaucrat could do what he wanted.  See why this podcast is titled “The Death of the Civil Servant?”  That’s because they are not serving society anymore, they are serving their own self-interest. 
 
Work is Good
It’s the title of podcast #24, and it earns a spot on the ten Biblical Commandments of Economics in the book titled Biblical Economic Policy that I wrote with Sergiy Saydometov.   When folks work in the private sector, they work in a competitive environment.  That means, they must serve the customer before they get served.  It’s one of my favorite lessons of economics that I will explain to my sophomores at DBU next week.  In a competitive environment, the firm must serve the customer first, before the firm gets served.  In a competitive environment, discrimination harms the discriminator. 
But the public arena is non-competitive.  People work in a monopoly: There is only one street department, one sewer department, one police department, and only one public library.  If you don’t like their service, you have no competitive supplier to switch to.
Okay, certainly there are good people who work in government.  In the Christian worldview, we believe everything was made for God’s good purpose.  But all of it CAN be used for bad purposes.  My point today is that public government jobs encourage the fallen nature, while the private, competitive sector punishes the fallen nature. 
Historically, civil servants were paid less than private servants.  The reason was a simple concept from finance: Risk and return.  Working in the public sector was seen as having less risk, so there was less pay.  Now, that kinda makes sense.  When the economy is bad, as it is today – I could read a dozen business headlines about companies laying off employees – workers in the private sector lose their jobs.  In the public service corps, there seldom are staff reductions.  The assumption is that when others lose their jobs, there is even MORE work for the public sector to do, to make up for it.  In economics, John Maynard Keynes said that the government must “spend against the wind,” and he was right.  Banks and other private institutions naturally retreat in the face of a recession.  If every entity does that, it takes a long time to recover.