Civil Service, Public Administration, Public Sector

- Civil Service.

. . . a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil servant, also known as a public servant or public employee, is a person employed in the public sector by a government department or agency for public sector undertakings. Civil servants work for central and state governments, and answer to the government, not a political party.

- Public Administration.

. . . the implementation of public policy, administration of government establishment (public governance), management of non-profit establishment (nonprofit governance), and also a subfield of political science taught in public policy schools that studies this implementation and prepares people, especially civil servants in administrative positions for working in the public sector, voluntary sector, some industries in the private sector dealing with government relations, regulatory affairs, legislative assistance, corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental, social, governance (ESG), public procurement (PP), public-private partnerships (P3), and business-to-government marketing/sales (B2G) as well as those working at think tanks, non-profit organizations, consulting firms, trade associations, or in other positions that uses similar skills found in public administration.

- Public Sector.

. . . the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, infrastructure, public transit, public education, along with health care and those working for the government itself, such as elected officials. The public sector might provide services that a non-payer cannot be excluded from (such as street lighting), services which benefit all of society rather than just the individual who uses the service.[1] Public enterprises, or state-owned enterprises, are self-financing commercial enterprises that are under public ownership which provide various private goods and services for sale and usually operate on a commercial basis.

From the Atlantic: The Postal Service Is a Civic Institution, Not a Business

2301 students wrote about the Post Office, and its recent problems, a few months back.

Here's a take on why it ought to be preserved. Congress is debating how to address its financial health.

Public v Private Compensation

Here's a link to a study comparing public sector pay vs. private sector pay across the states. Texas is at the bottom of the list in benefits for public employees.

Government and the Free Market

From Esther Dyson, useful commentary on the relative roles of the public and private sectors in fostering new industries:

It is this free-market economy, which rewards useful innovation and purposeful risk-taking, that we should honor and recognize. The U.S. government (or European governments, for that matter) can't get us out of our current economic mess any better than they can get us to the moon at this point. In most areas of endeavor, the government should be a demanding customer rather than a provider (or subsidizer).

In the United States, government fostered the airline business—largely by buying cargo services from private airlines. It also built what became the Internet—and then sensibly left most of the development and day-to-day operations to the private sector.