I go back and forth on the value of a "devil's advocate". I hope someone else will chime in to help me out if I don't explain this eloquently. This is a case w

I go back and forth on the value of a "devil's advocate". I hope someone else will chime in to help me out if I don't explain this eloquently. This is a case where I believe the topic won't be properly discussed unless someone is willing to take a hard stance on the negative side. Someone has to point out all the potential failings of the system that so many people are pouring their lives into building. Even if that person ends up taking a much harder stance than they actually believe in, and becoming a little too disconnected from reality. The situations being described in the article are horrifying, and sound an awful lot like what you might expect from software bugs in their early stages. That wouldn't be a problem if there was an appropriate human force behind the systems going online, but we've all seen stakeholders push systems into production before they're ready without adequate support. You're probably on the right track to call it a "badly designed government process", but I'd wager the human element is what softened the blow from that bureaucracy. It shifts the burden of proof from the case worker to the support seeker. It changes the conversation from "You think you deserve benefits? Let's look over your evidence" to "You've already been rejected, why should we support you?". When you're talking about people surviving, that's a significant difference.