Does the Government Work?

There are questions that are worth asking and others that are simply taxing. Usually this depends on the one answering the question (as anyone who has ever heard our Prime Minister attempt to answer a question can attest to).

Here's a question that is worth the ask, and I'm sure you've wondered this as well:

Does the government (as an entity) do "work"?

Like, not necessarily individuals within the government per se, but the government as a whole.

I asked myself this question today and lucky for me (and now for you as well) I also had an answer, so before you just presume that it does or does not...

It really depends on your definition of the word "work" - and there are MANY.

One definition in particular seems to imply that the government does, in fact do work. It is as follows:

"activity that a person engages in regularly to earn a livelihood"

There is definitely something going on there and we're all well aware that they're being paid to do whatever it is they're doing, so I suppose that could count as work…

The government is kind of a special case though because they seem to work as hard at nullifying their own work as they do trying to achieve something. So while it appears that they're working terribly hard (twice as long to do the initial work and then the same amount of time to nullify a good portion of it, and possibly that much more time to do it again), the end result is often negligible (sometimes even negative) work. So, if the "appearance of work" qualifies as work, or if "people doing stuff" is considered to be work then I guess the government does work...

Here's my favourite definition:

"the transference of energy that is produced by the motion of the point of application of a force and is measured by multiplying the force and the displacement of its point of application in the line of action"

This is a real measurement of work that's been done. Notice that "the point" has been displaced, meaning it actually moved.

Now, let's combine the preceding definition with this one:

"to get into a specified condition by slow or imperceptible movements"

With these two definitions working together, I can almost see that yes, technically the government does do work, assuming that the point in the first definition actually moved. This may however, turn out to be a hasty and irresponsible assumption. And even if it does move ever so slightly, most often it happens so slowly that it truly is imperceptible, and then one feels the need to ask one more question:

Is it more likely that while we were watching the government work, someone else came along and moved that point instead?