… is from page 184 of Thomas Sowell’s 1995 book, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (original emphasis):
The call for more “public service” is then a call for more people to work in jobs not representing the preferences of the public, as revealed through the marketplace, but the preferences of third parties enforced through government and paid for by the power of taxation. Sometimes work for foundations and other nonprofit organizations is also included in “public service.” What is crucial is that public service not be service defined by the public itself through its choices of how to spend its own money in market transactions, but defined for them by third-party elites.
