Yesterday was a great day to work .and. unproductive people in positions of authority

Yesterday was a beautiful day to work outside.

I went to The Property and worked on the two (future) Dacha orchards.

I made a 16' "measuring chain" from bailing twine for spacing the T-posts within the row and a 24' "measuring chain" to space the row.

I added one more row of five trees to both future orchards. I cut the weeds that were within 6' of the T-post with a billhook and sprayed the vegetation with herbicide. Now we wait. The herbicide will not act very quickly due to the lower temperatures.

Unproductive people in positions of authority

One conundrum with public, make-work jobs is that they are difficult to eliminate. Since they are hard to eliminate, there is no incentive to streamline processes or consolidate positions. The thinking inside of Dot-gov is "If we lay them off then they will go on welfare and Medicaid and the state will not save a dime." So every employee is given a fraction of a full work-load and everybody is happy.

Except that the under-worked employees make work to signal their importance, often by demanding attention from productive people in the private sector. That is, they deny permits to people until they submit "one more report" or "rewrite their application to explain how they are going to dispose of the sawdust from treated lumber" or some other bit of minutia.

This is not a new phenomena. It is documented in Matthew chapter 23 where Jesus says of the scribes and Pharisees (the clerks and people who interpret the Law)

The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.(that is, place of high honor) Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens [hard to carry] and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them. All their works are performed to be seen . They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels (virtue signaling in today's language). They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’