Comment by 0x3f
7 hours ago
> in my experience bureaucrats fall into a position they enjoy.
What possible kind of 'experience' could you have to judge such a thing, save for personal preconceptions and biases?
7 hours ago
> in my experience bureaucrats fall into a position they enjoy.
What possible kind of 'experience' could you have to judge such a thing, save for personal preconceptions and biases?
The only experience I can have is personal. In my experience of dealing with and working with them, only those that I've had experience with.
I've worked in a variety of places. Public sector, banks, places with higher and lower levels of bureaucracy. As everyone else, I've also been on the receiving end of dealing with bureaucracy. There seems to be a big divide in how long people have been working at places like that - up to 1-2 years, or 20+ years, and a big difference in the type of people in those two groups.
Assuming that it's a preconception and not observed is a bizarre assumption.
> The only experience I can have is personal.
Right, and the point was that personal observations and impressions are a really poor way to judge the internal thoughts, feelings and motivations of random strangers. I.e. that nobody could possibly come to this determination in any robust way.
Moreover, it's exactly the kind of conclusion that suffers from common biases, and that we should be inherently skeptical of.
"Assuming that it's a preconception and not observed is a bizarre assumption."
It's really not, it's basic psychology. People rarely change their opinions based on evidence.
Having said that, in 50 years on this planet and countless interactions with government employees, I haven't had a single bad one. I do try to be kind and accommodating because I know their jobs are often shit and they have to deal with asshats all day long, and maybe that has an impact on how they treat me.