But Can You Fire Him? Robert Higgs on “Public Servants”

(From the President’s Corner section in Volume 19, No. 13 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)

Public “servants.” We pay their salaries, right? So they work for us, right?

Well… no. The great libertarian writer Robert Higgs recently posted this imaginary dialogue at his always-enlightening Facebook page:

Did you hire him?
No.
Can you fire him?
No.
Did you write his job description?
No.
Do you pay him?
Yes, but only because I’ll be put in prison if I refuse.
So, do you still believe he works for you.
Oh, yes, absolutely.
Why do you think so?
Because he says he does, and the people who hired him say so, too.