2011-04-15

Paying Volunteers Is The Best They Got In The Halls Of Ideas?

This is wrong. Just plain wrong. Wrong on so many levels. Wrong.

Not everything needs to have a monetary value attached to it.

If you can't see anything wrong with this, then you lost your sense of independence. Of what a volunteer in a free society offering their time to enhance their community.

It's another wrongheaded, misplaced statist idiocy that rips the soul out of what we should be as free-thinking, acting and rational players in the social realm.

The government is bent on removing what precious little is left of our personal dignity.

Actually, it's telling of where our mindset is these days for suggesting paying volunteers is a good idea for society.

***

The above article got me thinking about an old and wise adage oft repeated in sports: A good official or referee is one in which you never hear or see. I'd expand it by adding, a good team is one that is not overcoached.

A referee is there to simply enforce the laws or rules of a sport or game. He (or she) are not there to intrude and intervene in every action to ensure those laws are observed. If they did so, there would be no flow. In fact, it usually leads to unnecessary frustration and flare ups that could have been avoided.

They're merely there to preserve the integrity of the game and league to which the participants collectively agreed to be a part of. Not influence it. A ref is not there to determine who ought to win, or how they should win, or make sure everyone is a winner.

Let the players decided.

A classic and inevitable aspect of sports is the "settling" of accounts. Everyone knows this exists. Let the players decide.

Why pretend it doesn't happen?

The greatest games are those by which the players play within the rules and as such govern themselves in a mysterious but symbionic poetic pace. A lot of shit will happen but you can't penalize everything right? You can't save everyone right? Sometimes you just have to let things go. A lesson we're unwilling to heed when it comes to letting corporate bums fail as natural selection would.

A ref's interference screws and skews the contest.

***

Today, there can be no doubt, quite frankly I can't see how anyone can argue otherwise (read the link), that politicians and the state interfere way too much into the daily actions of the citizens it is expected to govern.

A leader not heard or seen is the best leader. Civil servants of which politicians are included, are the refs of society. They are there to protect and preserve the integrity of our institutions. Not interfere in everything (and coopt with special interest of whatever kind) in our lives from how much salt we eat to whether we lock up our own liquor cabinets. The biggest lie heaped upon us all is the concept of "protecting us from ourselves."

I do happen to think if you leave people alone, they will perform not unlike two teams competing on the pitch, field, court or ice. Ironically, a true sense of socialistic cooperation would have a better chance at succeeding (with smaller populations of course). After all, are teams sports nothing but (Darwinistic) socialism in an athletic setting?

Jam us up with insidiously numerous state laws and ordinances and all you've done is confuse the issue by frustrating people who just want to get on with it. Not spend time going back and forth sometimes arguing with different levels of government to stick a fence on their land or start a business. Or even be able to sell food on the streets without a "feasiblity test."

Nothing can't be done within the prescribed limits of a few pieces of paper within one or two departments.

The rest is just inefficient and pointless bullshit dressed up as improving the 'greater good.'

The greater good.

A myth.

How come know one talks about the 'greater bad?'

4 comments:

  1. Would that be paid volunteers or underpaid cheap staff?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Two completely different things.

    Volunteers offer their free time. It has NOTHING to do with monetary exchange or paid labor.

    Volunteers are the backbone of our communities. At my daughter's dance show the production was by volunteers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I was too concise. I agree volunteers have an important role to play in our societies.
    What I meant is that paying them is a perversion of voluntarism and transforms volunteers into cheap labour.
    Volunteer firemen are the main example. They perform a civic duty in small towns where a permanenmt fire brigade is out of their means. Giving a stipend other than paying their equipment and travel expenses when called turns them into cheap labour.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ah. I wasn't sure what you meant.

    I agree with that.

    ReplyDelete

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