On the fairness of bureaucrats: a story not often recognised as a fairytale

When a government defines us as "customers", it believes it must "deliver" us something - a product or a service. When it realises that we are citizens, not customers, it is free to facilitate our desires to achieve our own goals, to let us take the responsibility for the achievement of the desired outcome. We take the responsibility, not the government. We, as a result, feel empowered, not blocked.

Consider the difference between the executive branch of government and the judiciary. What we expect from courts is appropriate responses to crimes against society, within the legislative constraints set by the democratic process. Unlike the civil servants of the bureaucracy, judges have some flexibility to adapt the punishment to the situation, the context. Without that flexibility, civil servants, bureaucrats, have no means of being adaptive, of giving appropriate responses to the situations they encounter. As citizens, we wonder at their inflexibility, their lack of adaptation and appropriate response.

The answer is relatively simple: stop treating us as customers. Stop "delivering us service". Stop measuring our "consumer satisfaction" with the "services that are delivered". The truth is, we are not satisfied. We are tolerant, we are inured, we exhibit "learned helplessness" before the idiocies of our governments.

Our governments do not deliver what we want because they can't and they shouldn't. We can do things for ourselves perfectly well - if you, the government, facilitate us as citizens, help us build our skills, help us build our capacities, help us develop our abilities. Teach us, aid us, foster us, nurture us, exhort us - just don't take on yourselves responsibilities that should be ours.

All of the above does not imply some right-wing, laissez-faire approach to governance. On the contrary. There is a place for support for the unable, support for the less able. Just make sure the support is aimed at clients, not cases. At citizens, not customers.