"Robert A. Heinlein - Take back your Government" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

underpaid building inspector ten or twenty bucks not to report some violation
of die building code? Have you ever patronized a prostitute? Have you ever
taken a drink of bootleg liquor? Have you ever patronized a black, or even a
light grey, market?
If you have done any of these things your own moral state is no higher
than that of the Machine under which they exist. The man who believes in
capital punishment cannot afford to turn up his nose at the hangman, nor can
the man who offers a ten-dollar bribe to a petty official afford to be righteously
indignant when he finds that die scoundrels have stolen die city treasury. Nor
can you expect a judge to fix a parking ticket for you on Monday but refuse to
spring a known criminal on Tuesday. The difference is one of size, not of
kind. Being a private citizen, your contact with graft and corruption is likely to
be retail, but the man you deal with is a professional - necessarily! For him it
is wholesale.
Your own record of civic virtue may be absolutely spodess; I have known
many, many people who never violate public morals in any way.
Nevertheless, even if you are such a person, you are aware that your friends
and neighbours do such things as those listed above. Sometimes they give
die excuse that die system forces such derelictions on them. This excuse is
rarely if ever valid, but how often is it accompanied by an all-out effort to
correct the conditions complained of? I have yet to find such a case.


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 Very well political dishonesty is a condition shared by the boss and the
body politic. I have stated that the boss is more honest than the average of
the lay public. I will attempt to prove it.
I am speaking here of the boss who stays in power, year after year, not of
the man who suddenly climbs to power, overreaches himself, and gets
promptly thrown out. The boss who stays in power is a businessman. Like all
businessmen he deals daily in numerous transactions which are intended,
over the long pull, to cause a profit to accrue to him. These transactions
strongly resemble those of other businessmen, i.e., they are intended to
benefit, one way or another, both parties to the transaction, and they must
be, if not legal, at least not of such a nature as to cause the formation of
vigilante societies by angry citizens. Most of them are mild in nature and
stack up favorably when compared with the daily labors of the second hand
automobile business, the cosmetics trade, the public relations profession, the
undertaking business, the real estate business, and the "opportunity"
schools.
But the business of the machine boss differs in an important respect from
that of these respectable, legitimate occupations. His business is transacted
orally, usually for future delivery on his part. And his word is better than the
bond of most people!
Consider how it must be. (Later on you will find that I am right, through
your own experience, but now let us tackle it by analysis.) This man deals in
wind, in oral statements. Political commitments are not written down. These
contracts are settled with such remarks as, "Okay, Joe, I'll see the
commissioner next week and take care of it," or "All right, then, we'll support
your man," or "That street will be repaved in six weeks." That's all.24