4 ms·

How do you structure + incentivize government orgs to prevent these sorts of issues?

GuiA 9y ago
It's a hard problem, but I think it lies in great part with the "underpaid, incompetent [government] employees". If you make sure that your government employees are educated, provided with good benefits, feel like they have an impact, etc., the outcomes will invariably be for the better. A very good example of this is teachers. The OECD tells us: "[...]in nearly all countries, when teachers perceive that appraisal and feedback lead to changes in their teaching practice, they also report greater job satisfaction. When teachers believe that appraisal and feedback is performed only for administrative purposes they report less job satisfaction. In addition, teachers who report that they participate in decision making at school also report greater job satisfaction. Indeed, although fewer than a third of teachers believe that teaching is a valued profession in their country, those teachers who report that they can contribute to school decisions are more likely to report that teaching is valued in their society." http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/TALIS-2013-Executive-Summary.pdf http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/TALIS-2013-Executive-Summary.... And other sources tell us that satisfied teachers tend to lead to better outcomes. "TN teachers’ job satisfaction linked to performance scores" https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/02/01/tn-teachers-job-satisfaction-linked-to-performance-scores/ https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/02/01/tn-teachers-job-satis... In other words, much like regular companies, governments with happier employees tend to have better outcomes. This should be hardly surprising to most HN readers.
- zghst 9y ago
  Higher paid employees means less reach especially without the use of good software.
- colechristensen 9y ago
  They aren't always government employees. For lots of programs the funding is awarded as a contract to a company to administer and fund the people in need.
- noahth 9y ago
  It's not a hard problem, and it certainly isn't the fault of the individuals tasked with administering a broken and underfunded system. America's elites just aren't interested in solving it. They'd rather pass on indescribable fortunes to their children while the wretched masses beg for insulin online.
  - colechristensen 9y ago
    This really isn't it. The American voting public has not the interest or attention span in tackling small complicated problems. The politicians they elect therefore has little interest or motivation to fix these small complicated problems because doing so usually involves spending political capital on compromises. Sometimes a few of them get big ideas about civic duty, but not very many people vote for that. They just vote for whomever yells the loudest about their set of pet issues which are usually red herrings erected to distract the population from actual issues. (abortion, gun control, immigration, etc. not that this issues are _unimportant_ but politicians use them to secure power on both sides and keep up the yelling because if they actually solved them, they would have to tackle the sorts of issues that threaten the powerful)
- rangibaby 9y ago
  Government employees in Japan have excellent hours, pay, and benefits compared to working in the private sector. Becoming one is very competitive and requires passing difficult exams. In 10 years of various levels of being a model citizen (or not), all of my dealings with the local and national government have been satisfactory, even when they were in a position where they could make me have a very, very bad day if they felt like it. My one negative interaction with the police (coerced into accepting a search of my bag) was because I was doing something else illegal, listening to music while riding my bicycle, and I am smart enough to know the difference between beating the rap and beating the ride.
  - kamaal 9y ago
    >>Becoming one is very competitive and requires passing difficult exams. Same in India. Pay is very good(you also get to make a fortune through bribes), working hours are non-existent and you get other benefits like a lot of holidays, health care and fat pensions after retirement.
zghst 9y ago
I’d love any discussion around this if anyone has answers....
- flukus 9y ago
  Does it really need a discussion when you could look at examples from practically every other developed and many developing countries where the idea of starting a gofundme to pay for common medicine is an alien concept?
colechristensen 9y ago
Do epidemiological studies on the benefits of different ways of doing things. Share stories of what being in a program is like. Focus on the cost of administering complex vs. simple programs.
- guelo 9y ago
  Don't elect politicians that hate government and will do everything they can to undermine government agencies.
  - colechristensen 9y ago
    Honestly, I've had these experiences with state and local programs in one of the most liberal and progressive places in the country.
    - muglug 9y ago
      Yeah, but that's still incredibly relative to the rest of the world (assuming you're talking about America). However liberal your locality, it's still hamstrung by a variety of state and federal laws that make building effective government systems much more challenging than in other developed nations.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
"You won't get more resources until you can demonstrate efficient usage of what you do have"
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  Aka The beatings shall continue until morale improves.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    More like "you're not getting a bigger budget so rearrange what you do get to reflect your priorities" Negative incentives work far better for organizations than they do for individuals.
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      I did consider trying to find a way to say actually, the beatings shall continue even if morale improves, but wasn't feeling witty enough to pull it off. I still don't feel that witty. I spent some time homeless and on food stamps. When the lack of resources and lack of compassion for your plight can cause you to literally go hungry -- well, it felt to me like a "beating." It felt actively hostile. That is what I was trying to capture and convey.
AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> How do you structure + incentivize government orgs to prevent these sorts of issues? The basic problem comes from making things too complicated. For example, there are a million programs that provide subsidies to the poor. The poor can't afford housing, so we have housing vouchers. The poor can't afford food, so we have food stamps. Heat, school, medicine, the list goes on. The problem with all of these programs is that they're bureaucratic nightmares to navigate and cause all kinds of perverse incentives, e.g. inflating the price of school/medicine/housing, forcing people to buy a specific amount of the subsidized thing instead of spending some of the money on something they might need even more. And the programs are all trying to do the exact same thing, which is to give money to the poor. Which we could instead do directly with a universal basic income and erase all of that unnecessary complexity from existence.
- andrewem 9y ago
  I'm not saying a universal basic income is good or bad, but notice the pivot you did there. You criticize programs that don't just spend all their money by giving it to the poor, then you say: "Which we could instead do directly with a universal basic income". That's a program which probably spends most of its money on something other than giving it to the poor, because lots of the money goes to people who aren't poor. Such a program could well have all kinds of perverse incentives too.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    > That's a program which probably spends most of its money on something other than giving it to the poor, because lots of the money goes to people who aren't poor. A UBI is pure redistribution. There is no money that doesn't go to the poor, because where else would it go? Taking money from the rich and then giving them some of it back is just the same thing as only taking the difference to begin with, and the entire difference goes to the poor. It's equivalent to a government benefit with a phase out rate equal to the tax rate.
  - Chathamization 9y ago
    With the right tax structures, it would end up focusing on giving money to lower income individuals. You have an increased progressive taxation structure such that for upper-middle income people the UBI is a wash (IE, someone making $100,000 a year is getting and additional $12,000 from UBI but paying $12,000 more than they would have before). The reason why UBI works well is because it's a cash handout (like the other person said, you're not specifying the needs of the individual), it's a universal and not means tested program (you don't have to go through a bureaucratic maze every time you become eligible), and it's instantaneous for people who have sudden changes in fortune (IE, the income stream is already set up).

GuiA 9y ago

It's a hard problem, but I think it lies in great part with the "underpaid, incompetent [government] employees". If you make sure that your government employees are educated, provided with good benefits, feel like they have an impact, etc., the outcomes will invariably be for the better. A very good example of this is teachers. The OECD tells us: "[...]in nearly all countries, when teachers perceive that appraisal and feedback lead to changes in their teaching practice, they also report greater job satisfaction. When teachers believe that appraisal and feedback is performed only for administrative purposes they report less job satisfaction. In addition, teachers who report that they participate in decision making at school also report greater job satisfaction. Indeed, although fewer than a third of teachers believe that teaching is a valued profession in their country, those teachers who report that they can contribute to school decisions are more likely to report that teaching is valued in their society." http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/TALIS-2013-Executive-Summary.pdf http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/TALIS-2013-Executive-Summary.... And other sources tell us that satisfied teachers tend to lead to better outcomes. "TN teachers’ job satisfaction linked to performance scores" https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/02/01/tn-teachers-job-satisfaction-linked-to-performance-scores/ https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/02/01/tn-teachers-job-satis... In other words, much like regular companies, governments with happier employees tend to have better outcomes. This should be hardly surprising to most HN readers.

zghst 9y ago
Higher paid employees means less reach especially without the use of good software.
colechristensen 9y ago
They aren't always government employees. For lots of programs the funding is awarded as a contract to a company to administer and fund the people in need.
noahth 9y ago
It's not a hard problem, and it certainly isn't the fault of the individuals tasked with administering a broken and underfunded system. America's elites just aren't interested in solving it. They'd rather pass on indescribable fortunes to their children while the wretched masses beg for insulin online.
- colechristensen 9y ago
  This really isn't it. The American voting public has not the interest or attention span in tackling small complicated problems. The politicians they elect therefore has little interest or motivation to fix these small complicated problems because doing so usually involves spending political capital on compromises. Sometimes a few of them get big ideas about civic duty, but not very many people vote for that. They just vote for whomever yells the loudest about their set of pet issues which are usually red herrings erected to distract the population from actual issues. (abortion, gun control, immigration, etc. not that this issues are _unimportant_ but politicians use them to secure power on both sides and keep up the yelling because if they actually solved them, they would have to tackle the sorts of issues that threaten the powerful)
rangibaby 9y ago
Government employees in Japan have excellent hours, pay, and benefits compared to working in the private sector. Becoming one is very competitive and requires passing difficult exams. In 10 years of various levels of being a model citizen (or not), all of my dealings with the local and national government have been satisfactory, even when they were in a position where they could make me have a very, very bad day if they felt like it. My one negative interaction with the police (coerced into accepting a search of my bag) was because I was doing something else illegal, listening to music while riding my bicycle, and I am smart enough to know the difference between beating the rap and beating the ride.
- kamaal 9y ago
  >>Becoming one is very competitive and requires passing difficult exams. Same in India. Pay is very good(you also get to make a fortune through bribes), working hours are non-existent and you get other benefits like a lot of holidays, health care and fat pensions after retirement.

zghst 9y ago

I’d love any discussion around this if anyone has answers....

flukus 9y ago
Does it really need a discussion when you could look at examples from practically every other developed and many developing countries where the idea of starting a gofundme to pay for common medicine is an alien concept?

colechristensen 9y ago

Do epidemiological studies on the benefits of different ways of doing things. Share stories of what being in a program is like. Focus on the cost of administering complex vs. simple programs.

guelo 9y ago
Don't elect politicians that hate government and will do everything they can to undermine government agencies.
- colechristensen 9y ago
  Honestly, I've had these experiences with state and local programs in one of the most liberal and progressive places in the country.
  - muglug 9y ago
    Yeah, but that's still incredibly relative to the rest of the world (assuming you're talking about America). However liberal your locality, it's still hamstrung by a variety of state and federal laws that make building effective government systems much more challenging than in other developed nations.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

"You won't get more resources until you can demonstrate efficient usage of what you do have"

DoreenMichele 9y ago
Aka The beatings shall continue until morale improves.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  More like "you're not getting a bigger budget so rearrange what you do get to reflect your priorities" Negative incentives work far better for organizations than they do for individuals.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    I did consider trying to find a way to say actually, the beatings shall continue even if morale improves, but wasn't feeling witty enough to pull it off. I still don't feel that witty. I spent some time homeless and on food stamps. When the lack of resources and lack of compassion for your plight can cause you to literally go hungry -- well, it felt to me like a "beating." It felt actively hostile. That is what I was trying to capture and convey.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago

> How do you structure + incentivize government orgs to prevent these sorts of issues? The basic problem comes from making things too complicated. For example, there are a million programs that provide subsidies to the poor. The poor can't afford housing, so we have housing vouchers. The poor can't afford food, so we have food stamps. Heat, school, medicine, the list goes on. The problem with all of these programs is that they're bureaucratic nightmares to navigate and cause all kinds of perverse incentives, e.g. inflating the price of school/medicine/housing, forcing people to buy a specific amount of the subsidized thing instead of spending some of the money on something they might need even more. And the programs are all trying to do the exact same thing, which is to give money to the poor. Which we could instead do directly with a universal basic income and erase all of that unnecessary complexity from existence.

andrewem 9y ago
I'm not saying a universal basic income is good or bad, but notice the pivot you did there. You criticize programs that don't just spend all their money by giving it to the poor, then you say: "Which we could instead do directly with a universal basic income". That's a program which probably spends most of its money on something other than giving it to the poor, because lots of the money goes to people who aren't poor. Such a program could well have all kinds of perverse incentives too.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  > That's a program which probably spends most of its money on something other than giving it to the poor, because lots of the money goes to people who aren't poor. A UBI is pure redistribution. There is no money that doesn't go to the poor, because where else would it go? Taking money from the rich and then giving them some of it back is just the same thing as only taking the difference to begin with, and the entire difference goes to the poor. It's equivalent to a government benefit with a phase out rate equal to the tax rate.
- Chathamization 9y ago
  With the right tax structures, it would end up focusing on giving money to lower income individuals. You have an increased progressive taxation structure such that for upper-middle income people the UBI is a wash (IE, someone making $100,000 a year is getting and additional $12,000 from UBI but paying $12,000 more than they would have before). The reason why UBI works well is because it's a cash handout (like the other person said, you're not specifying the needs of the individual), it's a universal and not means tested program (you don't have to go through a bureaucratic maze every time you become eligible), and it's instantaneous for people who have sudden changes in fortune (IE, the income stream is already set up).