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The worst example of this is Oregon has their own version of the FAA. It’s grandfathered in because it was established before the FAA. You pay $12 a year for an

The worst example of this is Oregon has their own version of the FAA. It’s grandfathered in because it was established before the FAA. You pay $12 a year for an Oregon pilot’s registration. And in return for this bureaucracy, society gets... nothing.

beebeepka 5y ago
Does it not create jobs? Not saying it's good nor bad.
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  According to their website, there are 15.5 FT employees. I don't consider healthy adults getting paid to do meaningless work a benefit to society.
  - echelon 5y ago
    It can function as a jobs program, giving living wages to more people, and letting them spend their salary back into the economy. But it would be nice if jobs programs produced more benefit.
    - savant_penguin 5y ago
      What generally happens is that a select few get to receive pay for a fake job and everyone else of worse off by having to pay for it by force. Actual benefit comes when people get paid by other people voluntarily making the exchange
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      There's plenty of work of more value than pumping gas that would give people a living wage and put a lot more back into the economy. Right now it's a drain on the economy, albeit miniscule compare to the whole. Either way, it drives up prices and costs of operation. A jobs program should at least have some benefit beyond being an indirect tax on everyone. Otherwise we might as well just take the same people and pay them to dig holes they fill in the next day while letting people buying gas get through the process a little faster without having to wait for a spare attendant at a busy station. It's always frustrating to pull up to a station with 12 pumps and just 1 or 2 attendants on a busy day as a dozen cars lined up behind the ones at the pumps. Then have to wait 10 minutes just to get the pump started in your own car. And all I can think about are the two attendants running back & forth trying to get as many pumps going as they can, running ragged for a completely bogus reason. Then sometimes the attendants don't even try and the wait is longer, yet those are making the more rational choice of not driving themselves crazy making shit money for a worthless task.
  - gpvos 5y ago
    I understand that 95% of American defense is a jobs program. Let's fry the bigger fish first.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      To be fair, you can actually use that for some purpose if you really wanted. I don’t think that is the case for a redundant board.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      By what metric? About 25% of the military budget is in salaries, and a professional military has to be paid whether or not they're in combat.
  - hellbannedguy 5y ago
    I got through college doing meaningless jobs. Security jobs, and working at a gas station, allowed me to do all my homework.
- influx 5y ago
  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window for why this is bad.
  - JuettnerDistrib 5y ago
    So is there also a kind of "reverse broken window" fallacy, e.g., for housing, where not tearing down an old... excuse me... "historic" building prevents the creation of bigger and better things?
- an_opabinia 5y ago
  I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. Much, if not all, of politics, on both sides, for ordinary people, is concerning who gets what welfare. For every Oregon FAA there are probably 100 offices in the military and government agricultural sector that provide a small number of good but sort of meaningless jobs. For every 1 soldier actually shooting bullets or 1 bonafide back-bending farmer there are 999 comfy desk jobs for college educated people in the same org chart. Many for whom college was paid for by that government. Is that good or bad?
  - hallway_monitor 5y ago
    People who want the "star trek future" don't seem to understand that, yes, work is valuable in its own right. It's better to work for your meal than have it handed to you. So, a primary concern of society is indeed keeping its people gainfully employed and we see outcomes that would not make sense were this not the case.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - travisjungroth 5y ago
    > Is that good or bad? I’m gonna go with bad.
    - echelon 5y ago
      Do you just fire them and let them go on unemployment? If everything else is held constant, then there's nothing done and more people without money. It's an even greater drain on society, not to mention these people's lives.
      - dantheman 5y ago
        You fire them and let them get a job where they can do something beneficial for society. There's more than enough work out there, hell just picking up trash would provide more value than they currently do. I'd rather have people on welfare than in these bureaucratic jobs that actually hamper progress, because well they need to be 'involved'
- Noumenon72 5y ago
  If it creates jobs and doesn't do anything, it is bad, like anything else that has a cost but no benefits. Jobs are costs -- they force you to spend your life doing one thing when you could be doing all manner of other useful things. Only if your job produces useful things does that benefit outweigh the cost of having to spend your life on it.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    No benefits? It keeps people off the streets and gives them something to do, pointless or not. The net benefit to society is positive, which is why it keeps getting voted for. I live in a place with a severe homeless problem. I wish these people had pointless government jobs rather than be out begging on the street.
    - Noumenon72 5y ago
      That makes sense, thanks!
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Some quick searching showed there are about 10,000 gas station attendant jobs in NJ. So we could take 5,000 of them and have them dig holes all day. And the other 5,000 could fill in the holes on the following days. That's about as productive. Or, if we're viewing it purely as a jobs program, find meaningful work, even if it was just patrolling the town they would have pumped gas in & instead picking up any and every piece of litter and garbage they see, documenting potholes they see in the road or loose branches around power lines for the town's DPW to deal with proactively.
wwweston 5y ago
While it's always possible OR AA employees do little (certainly plenty of organizations public and private have such employees), it also seems plausible that it does regional AA things that would otherwise be ... regional FAA jobs. Bureaucracy isn't that different from code. Some of it's dead legacy that needs to be removed, some of it's legacy that needs to be improved/replaced, some of it's legacy that's good enough, some of it's there for a damn good reason no matter how ugly it looks. And when it comes to code, you probably trust devs who have specific insights into issues with code and promising replacements.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Oregon’s gas pumping laws has some hilarious justifications. > “The dangers of crime and slick surfaces described in subsection (3) of this section are enhanced because Oregon’s weather is uniquely adverse, causing wet pavement and reduced visibility” More here: https://medium.com/policy-northwest/the-insanity-of-oregons-self-serve-gas-ban-c45a1b57d64 https://medium.com/policy-northwest/the-insanity-of-oregons-... Safety is important but wet pavements are also a hazard when you leave your house or literally do anything outside. Laws that try to masquerade for progressive causes for the sake of your “safety” are rampant in Oregon. There are so many of these insane laws piled up over the years. A friend of mine who was an licensed Architect in the state of Oregon recently moved to Phoenix. Reason? Unbelievable mess of laws and regulations that make it impossible to construct anything but a bog standard house.
- banana_giraffe 5y ago
  My favorite result of that law was when I stopped to get gas in Washington state near the border with Oregon. I made eye contact with two 20-somethings that were arguing back and forth about something. After I'm done one of them worked up enough courage to approach me and ask for help. Being from Oregon, this was their first attempt to fill up a car on their own, and they couldn't figure out how to make the pump work (they didn't push the handle with enough force to engage the vapor recovery).
- irrational 5y ago
  I live in Oregon, but grew up outside the state so fortunately I do know how to pump my own gas. One thing that has fascinated me is that our gas is no more expensive, and often cheaper, than surrounding states despite providing many jobs. One benefit of this system was shown recently when no truck beds or plastic bags were filled with gasoline.
  - cloverich 5y ago
    But they are paid from some other budget, or perhaps from state income taxes. That has a real effect on something, it’s just not apparent what. Any job that only exists via mandate is taking the place of some other economic activity.
labcomputer 5y ago
Do you have a link where I can learn more about that? Some quick googling turns up nothing more than the state Department of Aviation, which looks serve the same purpose as other states' departments of aviation. Namely, to maintain state-owned airfields and support some planning functions.

beebeepka 5y ago

Does it not create jobs? Not saying it's good nor bad.

travisjungroth 5y ago
According to their website, there are 15.5 FT employees. I don't consider healthy adults getting paid to do meaningless work a benefit to society.
- echelon 5y ago
  It can function as a jobs program, giving living wages to more people, and letting them spend their salary back into the economy. But it would be nice if jobs programs produced more benefit.
  - savant_penguin 5y ago
    What generally happens is that a select few get to receive pay for a fake job and everyone else of worse off by having to pay for it by force. Actual benefit comes when people get paid by other people voluntarily making the exchange
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    There's plenty of work of more value than pumping gas that would give people a living wage and put a lot more back into the economy. Right now it's a drain on the economy, albeit miniscule compare to the whole. Either way, it drives up prices and costs of operation. A jobs program should at least have some benefit beyond being an indirect tax on everyone. Otherwise we might as well just take the same people and pay them to dig holes they fill in the next day while letting people buying gas get through the process a little faster without having to wait for a spare attendant at a busy station. It's always frustrating to pull up to a station with 12 pumps and just 1 or 2 attendants on a busy day as a dozen cars lined up behind the ones at the pumps. Then have to wait 10 minutes just to get the pump started in your own car. And all I can think about are the two attendants running back & forth trying to get as many pumps going as they can, running ragged for a completely bogus reason. Then sometimes the attendants don't even try and the wait is longer, yet those are making the more rational choice of not driving themselves crazy making shit money for a worthless task.
- gpvos 5y ago
  I understand that 95% of American defense is a jobs program. Let's fry the bigger fish first.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    To be fair, you can actually use that for some purpose if you really wanted. I don’t think that is the case for a redundant board.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    By what metric? About 25% of the military budget is in salaries, and a professional military has to be paid whether or not they're in combat.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  I got through college doing meaningless jobs. Security jobs, and working at a gas station, allowed me to do all my homework.
influx 5y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window for why this is bad.
- JuettnerDistrib 5y ago
  So is there also a kind of "reverse broken window" fallacy, e.g., for housing, where not tearing down an old... excuse me... "historic" building prevents the creation of bigger and better things?
an_opabinia 5y ago
I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. Much, if not all, of politics, on both sides, for ordinary people, is concerning who gets what welfare. For every Oregon FAA there are probably 100 offices in the military and government agricultural sector that provide a small number of good but sort of meaningless jobs. For every 1 soldier actually shooting bullets or 1 bonafide back-bending farmer there are 999 comfy desk jobs for college educated people in the same org chart. Many for whom college was paid for by that government. Is that good or bad?
- hallway_monitor 5y ago
  People who want the "star trek future" don't seem to understand that, yes, work is valuable in its own right. It's better to work for your meal than have it handed to you. So, a primary concern of society is indeed keeping its people gainfully employed and we see outcomes that would not make sense were this not the case.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  > Is that good or bad? I’m gonna go with bad.
  - echelon 5y ago
    Do you just fire them and let them go on unemployment? If everything else is held constant, then there's nothing done and more people without money. It's an even greater drain on society, not to mention these people's lives.
    - dantheman 5y ago
      You fire them and let them get a job where they can do something beneficial for society. There's more than enough work out there, hell just picking up trash would provide more value than they currently do. I'd rather have people on welfare than in these bureaucratic jobs that actually hamper progress, because well they need to be 'involved'
Noumenon72 5y ago
If it creates jobs and doesn't do anything, it is bad, like anything else that has a cost but no benefits. Jobs are costs -- they force you to spend your life doing one thing when you could be doing all manner of other useful things. Only if your job produces useful things does that benefit outweigh the cost of having to spend your life on it.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  No benefits? It keeps people off the streets and gives them something to do, pointless or not. The net benefit to society is positive, which is why it keeps getting voted for. I live in a place with a severe homeless problem. I wish these people had pointless government jobs rather than be out begging on the street.
  - Noumenon72 5y ago
    That makes sense, thanks!
ineedasername 5y ago
Some quick searching showed there are about 10,000 gas station attendant jobs in NJ. So we could take 5,000 of them and have them dig holes all day. And the other 5,000 could fill in the holes on the following days. That's about as productive. Or, if we're viewing it purely as a jobs program, find meaningful work, even if it was just patrolling the town they would have pumped gas in & instead picking up any and every piece of litter and garbage they see, documenting potholes they see in the road or loose branches around power lines for the town's DPW to deal with proactively.

wwweston 5y ago

While it's always possible OR AA employees do little (certainly plenty of organizations public and private have such employees), it also seems plausible that it does regional AA things that would otherwise be ... regional FAA jobs. Bureaucracy isn't that different from code. Some of it's dead legacy that needs to be removed, some of it's legacy that needs to be improved/replaced, some of it's legacy that's good enough, some of it's there for a damn good reason no matter how ugly it looks. And when it comes to code, you probably trust devs who have specific insights into issues with code and promising replacements.

systemvoltage 5y ago

Oregon’s gas pumping laws has some hilarious justifications. > “The dangers of crime and slick surfaces described in subsection (3) of this section are enhanced because Oregon’s weather is uniquely adverse, causing wet pavement and reduced visibility” More here: https://medium.com/policy-northwest/the-insanity-of-oregons-self-serve-gas-ban-c45a1b57d64 https://medium.com/policy-northwest/the-insanity-of-oregons-... Safety is important but wet pavements are also a hazard when you leave your house or literally do anything outside. Laws that try to masquerade for progressive causes for the sake of your “safety” are rampant in Oregon. There are so many of these insane laws piled up over the years. A friend of mine who was an licensed Architect in the state of Oregon recently moved to Phoenix. Reason? Unbelievable mess of laws and regulations that make it impossible to construct anything but a bog standard house.

banana_giraffe 5y ago
My favorite result of that law was when I stopped to get gas in Washington state near the border with Oregon. I made eye contact with two 20-somethings that were arguing back and forth about something. After I'm done one of them worked up enough courage to approach me and ask for help. Being from Oregon, this was their first attempt to fill up a car on their own, and they couldn't figure out how to make the pump work (they didn't push the handle with enough force to engage the vapor recovery).
irrational 5y ago
I live in Oregon, but grew up outside the state so fortunately I do know how to pump my own gas. One thing that has fascinated me is that our gas is no more expensive, and often cheaper, than surrounding states despite providing many jobs. One benefit of this system was shown recently when no truck beds or plastic bags were filled with gasoline.
- cloverich 5y ago
  But they are paid from some other budget, or perhaps from state income taxes. That has a real effect on something, it’s just not apparent what. Any job that only exists via mandate is taking the place of some other economic activity.

labcomputer 5y ago

Do you have a link where I can learn more about that? Some quick googling turns up nothing more than the state Department of Aviation, which looks serve the same purpose as other states' departments of aviation. Namely, to maintain state-owned airfields and support some planning functions.