… is from pages 178-179 of Thomas Sowell’s Compassion Versus Guilt, a 1987 collection of some of his popular essays; specifically, it’s from Sowell’s May 31st, 1985, column titled “Staff Infection”:
People in many occupations serve the public: grocers, doctors, bus-drivers, telephone repairmen. Indirectly, so do farmers, factory workers, and in fact everybody who produces a good or service that others use. But when the deep thinkers speak of going into “public service,” with that special unction in their voice, they mean becoming a bureaucrat or politician.
The vision that is unfurled to the departing graduates is one of self-sacrifice for the common good. This is contrasted with going into the grubby world of business to make money for yourself.
Why it is nobler to seek power over others rather than be a producing part of the economy is never really explained.
