7 ms·

What sucks is that fiscal policy, ie government spending, is also often not very efficient. Even when rampant corruption doesn’t destroy efficiency, crushing bu

What sucks is that fiscal policy, ie government spending, is also often not very efficient. Even when rampant corruption doesn’t destroy efficiency, crushing bureaucracy or just plain incompetence will. (Is the DMV a model of efficiency?) So you need a smart balance. And you need competent, honest people in both business AND government. I don’t think that government necessarily is inefficient. The DMV could be a very efficient place. The fact that it isn’t should cause at least some pause for those advocating more government spending (such as myself). And the same is true for business. Comcast is terrible. But it doesn’t HAVE to be. Rent-seeking and anti-competitive behavior makes it terrible.

joebob42 4y ago
I think by the time you're saying "my system depends on the people in it being honest and competent" you've kind of already lost. Some people are competent, most aren't. Many people are honest, but some aren't. You aren't going to change that so you have to be resilient to it.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  Every system works better with honest and competent people. That’s my point! Some systems are more resilient to dishonesty and incompetence than others. I suspect a mixed system is the most resilient. But we CAN change the behavior by choosing to reward competence and honesty by who we elect, who we hire, and who we do business with.
SauciestGNU 4y ago
People keep using the DMV as an example of government inefficiency, but my state has made it run so painlessly I don't think I've spent more than 15 minutes in an office over the last 5 years. I think government can be efficient if you put technocrats in charge of implementation rather than elected officials who are subject to the electoral whims of the uninformed masses. The problem with the above is it weakens democratic institutions by removing the exercise of power from the people the population select to lead. Inefficiency to me can not possibly be more clearly demonstrated than by ape pictures losing hundreds of thousands of dollars for their purchasers. But we also have examples like Uber spending cash on hand to drive competitors under without having a plan to maintain their own services without heavy subsidy.
- dangrossman 4y ago
  The DMV in my state requires you make an appointment 4-6 months out right now. Walk-in appointments are unavailable or only available during a few hours a few days a week, if they happen to have staff that day. Good luck if you have your drivers license stolen. I sold a car of mine to Carvana in October. I returned the license plate to the DMV immediately, which is how they're notified that you no longer own the vehicle, waited 7 days, then cancelled my insurance policy on that car. A month later, I got a letter from the DMV that it is a crime to not carry insurance on my vehicle and I will have to reinstate the insurance and pay a $70 fine for letting it lapse. On the car I no longer own, that was now titled in another state and resold by Carvana already. It took 2 more months and 3 different forms to get the DMV to accept that I no longer owned the car and to stop pursuing me for this "crime".
  - api 4y ago
    California right?
    - lanstin 4y ago
      I have bought 3 used cars and gotten 2 teenagers thru permit and drivers test and license. Never had any appointments except for the driving test, and never had any long waits. All waits were much shorter than when I transferred my out of state license to CA in 2008 or 2009. Impressively well run bureaucracy, I'd say. And this with covid precautions to work around. Much better than the several east coast states I had prior experience with. Now I do chose the office to visit with some care, and also (as an "elite WFH software engineer") time it so that the lines are likely to be shorter, so YMMV.
    - brigade 4y ago
      Can't be, in CA you can't return normal plates, they explicitly don't want them back. And you don't really have to return vanity plates either. Rather, there's an online form for notifying them of a sale.
      - 4y ago
abathur 4y ago
I think bureaucracies do tend to suck, but I also think there are often people who stand to gain from making a bureaucracy suck. For that reason, I suspect it's good idea to leave interpretive space for the possibility that a given bureaucracy has been intentionally hamstrung, or is Kafkaesque by design. I suspect calling Comcast is miserable because the process is designed to exhaust and manipulate you out of quitting, for example. I suspect it's possible to build systems that enable you to ensure an ER visit will cost $500 instead of $10000--but our insurance companies may feel like the uncertainty deters people from seeking care.
petra 4y ago
The DMV outsourced it's service in some areas. Service improved. So it's possible to benefit from the benefits of public spending and private efficiencies. It's a pretty common method for governments to spend money.
- more_corn 4y ago
  AAA DMV services is amazing. Phenomenally more humanized and efficient. My favorite example of public private partnership.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
    They are pretty amazing. I had a trailer I assembled titled at a AAA office and it took about 30 minutes start to finish.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  I wonder if the DMV is a bit of a special case, not necessarily a good example of government bureaucracy. The customers are almost universally resentful, because they are paying the government money to let them drive. They're angry because it's slow, and it's slow because the process requires bringing in third-party paperwork (e.g. insurance, sales receipt, dealer paperwork, whatever) and there's a lot of opportunities to get it wrong. So it often involves more than one trip. If I had to deal with customers at the DMV, I think I'd be grouchy too. Another reason to try and get as much of it online as possible, which I think is most of it nowadays.
rhizome 4y ago
This is due to tax policies reducing the revenue pool. This makes it easier to judge individual divisions of the total because there are necessarily fewer outlets, and since it's a smaller pool there's more reason to fight. The idle rich who can't find anywhere worthwhile to play with their nearly-free money (until recently ZIRPish) are a bug in the system. Oh, but lets pretend we are captains of industry by saturating the world with sure-failures. "I wEnT tO GsB!" And government is absolutely inefficient, which is a good thing actually. Despite the efforts of conservatives, government still has to account for many many corner cases and special needs. Ask any Agile TDD aficionado how this affects velocity.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  I don’t think the government being inefficient is good. It gives ammo to those who are ideologically opposed to government doing things. We should strive to improve government efficiency, especially those of us who think the government should be taking on more tasks.
  - briandear 4y ago
    Ideological opposition to extensive government is because government is inefficient. See the Laffer Curve. Actual demonstrated inefficiency is the proof, not the justification.
    - rhizome 4y ago
      Laffer Curve, really? The inefficiency is neither proof nor justification, it's a side-effect of fairness.
      - Robotbeat 4y ago
        It’s not. For a constant level of fairness, there’s a wide array of efficiency.
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      You see the moral hazard of electing people to run government who have a vested interest in being proven right about government being inefficient, don’t you? I am fine with people who are realistic about government being inefficient, but I insist that they nonetheless try their very best to improve that efficiency (fully considered efficiency, not just making life worse for government workers or people seeking government services). The problem is when you elect people who have an interest in making sure the government is inefficient because then they can use that as justification to enact their ideological goals of cutting government services.
NordSteve 4y ago
I know people reactively complain about Comcast, but in my area they do a great job. It's not cheap due to lack of competition, but no complaints about service.
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  Their prices are high and punitive to existing customers. Their customer service is laughably bad. One of my requirements of a retirement destination is municipal broadband. No BS, just a fair price for a service that's actually treated like a utility.
ripe 4y ago
What's with the hate for DMVs? Maybe they're bad in some US states, but in mine (Massachusetts), I really can't imagine a better-run business, private or public, that accomplishes so much with so little investment. You can do most things online with a much better UX than most commercial websites. No crappy ads or pop-ups. Plus when you do need to go in, you book a time slot at a DMV center online. Recently I had to bring my daughter for a driving license to the one in Brockton, MA. When you go in, they give you a token number. The currently processing token number is shown on a huge LED display on the wall. Hundreds of customers are in there, many of them don't speak much English, etc., but things move pretty smoothly and fast. Very efficient.

joebob42 4y ago

I think by the time you're saying "my system depends on the people in it being honest and competent" you've kind of already lost. Some people are competent, most aren't. Many people are honest, but some aren't. You aren't going to change that so you have to be resilient to it.

Robotbeat 4y ago
Every system works better with honest and competent people. That’s my point! Some systems are more resilient to dishonesty and incompetence than others. I suspect a mixed system is the most resilient. But we CAN change the behavior by choosing to reward competence and honesty by who we elect, who we hire, and who we do business with.

SauciestGNU 4y ago

People keep using the DMV as an example of government inefficiency, but my state has made it run so painlessly I don't think I've spent more than 15 minutes in an office over the last 5 years. I think government can be efficient if you put technocrats in charge of implementation rather than elected officials who are subject to the electoral whims of the uninformed masses. The problem with the above is it weakens democratic institutions by removing the exercise of power from the people the population select to lead. Inefficiency to me can not possibly be more clearly demonstrated than by ape pictures losing hundreds of thousands of dollars for their purchasers. But we also have examples like Uber spending cash on hand to drive competitors under without having a plan to maintain their own services without heavy subsidy.

dangrossman 4y ago
The DMV in my state requires you make an appointment 4-6 months out right now. Walk-in appointments are unavailable or only available during a few hours a few days a week, if they happen to have staff that day. Good luck if you have your drivers license stolen. I sold a car of mine to Carvana in October. I returned the license plate to the DMV immediately, which is how they're notified that you no longer own the vehicle, waited 7 days, then cancelled my insurance policy on that car. A month later, I got a letter from the DMV that it is a crime to not carry insurance on my vehicle and I will have to reinstate the insurance and pay a $70 fine for letting it lapse. On the car I no longer own, that was now titled in another state and resold by Carvana already. It took 2 more months and 3 different forms to get the DMV to accept that I no longer owned the car and to stop pursuing me for this "crime".
- api 4y ago
  California right?
  - lanstin 4y ago
    I have bought 3 used cars and gotten 2 teenagers thru permit and drivers test and license. Never had any appointments except for the driving test, and never had any long waits. All waits were much shorter than when I transferred my out of state license to CA in 2008 or 2009. Impressively well run bureaucracy, I'd say. And this with covid precautions to work around. Much better than the several east coast states I had prior experience with. Now I do chose the office to visit with some care, and also (as an "elite WFH software engineer") time it so that the lines are likely to be shorter, so YMMV.
  - brigade 4y ago
    Can't be, in CA you can't return normal plates, they explicitly don't want them back. And you don't really have to return vanity plates either. Rather, there's an online form for notifying them of a sale.
    - 4y ago

abathur 4y ago

I think bureaucracies do tend to suck, but I also think there are often people who stand to gain from making a bureaucracy suck. For that reason, I suspect it's good idea to leave interpretive space for the possibility that a given bureaucracy has been intentionally hamstrung, or is Kafkaesque by design. I suspect calling Comcast is miserable because the process is designed to exhaust and manipulate you out of quitting, for example. I suspect it's possible to build systems that enable you to ensure an ER visit will cost $500 instead of $10000--but our insurance companies may feel like the uncertainty deters people from seeking care.

petra 4y ago

The DMV outsourced it's service in some areas. Service improved. So it's possible to benefit from the benefits of public spending and private efficiencies. It's a pretty common method for governments to spend money.

more_corn 4y ago
AAA DMV services is amazing. Phenomenally more humanized and efficient. My favorite example of public private partnership.
- omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
  They are pretty amazing. I had a trailer I assembled titled at a AAA office and it took about 30 minutes start to finish.
rootusrootus 4y ago
I wonder if the DMV is a bit of a special case, not necessarily a good example of government bureaucracy. The customers are almost universally resentful, because they are paying the government money to let them drive. They're angry because it's slow, and it's slow because the process requires bringing in third-party paperwork (e.g. insurance, sales receipt, dealer paperwork, whatever) and there's a lot of opportunities to get it wrong. So it often involves more than one trip. If I had to deal with customers at the DMV, I think I'd be grouchy too. Another reason to try and get as much of it online as possible, which I think is most of it nowadays.

rhizome 4y ago

This is due to tax policies reducing the revenue pool. This makes it easier to judge individual divisions of the total because there are necessarily fewer outlets, and since it's a smaller pool there's more reason to fight. The idle rich who can't find anywhere worthwhile to play with their nearly-free money (until recently ZIRPish) are a bug in the system. Oh, but lets pretend we are captains of industry by saturating the world with sure-failures. "I wEnT tO GsB!" And government is absolutely inefficient, which is a good thing actually. Despite the efforts of conservatives, government still has to account for many many corner cases and special needs. Ask any Agile TDD aficionado how this affects velocity.

Robotbeat 4y ago
I don’t think the government being inefficient is good. It gives ammo to those who are ideologically opposed to government doing things. We should strive to improve government efficiency, especially those of us who think the government should be taking on more tasks.
- briandear 4y ago
  Ideological opposition to extensive government is because government is inefficient. See the Laffer Curve. Actual demonstrated inefficiency is the proof, not the justification.
  - rhizome 4y ago
    Laffer Curve, really? The inefficiency is neither proof nor justification, it's a side-effect of fairness.
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      It’s not. For a constant level of fairness, there’s a wide array of efficiency.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    You see the moral hazard of electing people to run government who have a vested interest in being proven right about government being inefficient, don’t you? I am fine with people who are realistic about government being inefficient, but I insist that they nonetheless try their very best to improve that efficiency (fully considered efficiency, not just making life worse for government workers or people seeking government services). The problem is when you elect people who have an interest in making sure the government is inefficient because then they can use that as justification to enact their ideological goals of cutting government services.

NordSteve 4y ago

I know people reactively complain about Comcast, but in my area they do a great job. It's not cheap due to lack of competition, but no complaints about service.

wing-_-nuts 4y ago
Their prices are high and punitive to existing customers. Their customer service is laughably bad. One of my requirements of a retirement destination is municipal broadband. No BS, just a fair price for a service that's actually treated like a utility.

ripe 4y ago

What's with the hate for DMVs? Maybe they're bad in some US states, but in mine (Massachusetts), I really can't imagine a better-run business, private or public, that accomplishes so much with so little investment. You can do most things online with a much better UX than most commercial websites. No crappy ads or pop-ups. Plus when you do need to go in, you book a time slot at a DMV center online. Recently I had to bring my daughter for a driving license to the one in Brockton, MA. When you go in, they give you a token number. The currently processing token number is shown on a huge LED display on the wall. Hundreds of customers are in there, many of them don't speak much English, etc., but things move pretty smoothly and fast. Very efficient.