4 ms·
Exactly, and government is the largest bureaucracy out there. My point is that people, particularly libertarians, like to ascribe to malfeasance government beh
by redthrowaway 11y ago
Exactly, and government is the largest bureaucracy out there. My point is that people, particularly libertarians, like to ascribe to malfeasance government behaviours that are better explained by poorly designed systems and misaligned incentives.
There are very few government employees and elected officials actively looking to screw over taxpayers. Almost every single public employee I've spoken to has expressed how much they care about the job they do and how constrained they are by bureaucracy and lack of resources. And elected officials are overwhelmingly concerned citizens who want to do everything they can to help their constituents.
The fact that they often fail to do so has much more to do with maladaptive systems and perverse incentives than it does with the motivations of the people involved. It's tragically comic that the people on this site, who should be hyper aware of the effects of bad architecture on an system's output, are so quick to write it off as a cause and instead resort to facile ad hominems about the people in question.
You don't blame the silicon when your app becomes unresponsive. It's weird that we do so for countries.
- jerf 11y agoNo, I'm an equal opportunity "big system" hater. Hating Wal-Mart but thinking the US Government is the bee's knees makes no sense to me.