3 ms·

This is such a lame trope, and if you just repeat it without even considering its (biased) basis it does not make it better. As a proxy for "bureaucracy": Gove

This is such a lame trope, and if you just repeat it without even considering its (biased) basis it does not make it better. As a proxy for "bureaucracy": Government effectiveness - Country rankings -- https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/wb_government_effectiveness/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/wb_government_effe... (US: 25, Germany: 26 - of 192) There are many, many countries with far worse and far less effective bureaucracy. In that list, the US is just one place above Germany, and as someone who has lived in the US for almost a decade, I had exactly that impression too. Anyone who thinks Germany is the example for bad bureaucracy needs to get out more, into the world, not just into the one or two dozen best places.

pavlov 4y ago
Nowadays it’s the US at the forefront of actualizing Kafka’s vision of social interaction. One fine example is the phone/cable/newspaper/etc. contracts that you can’t cancel without spending 20+ minutes on the phone with a desperate customer service agent. Buying a car. Doing anything at a bank. Renting an apartment. Moving in and out. Doing your taxes. A lot of the daily life in USA is stuck in a bad 1950s time warp combined with a vicious cycle of MBA optimization to squeeze out every penny from you.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I cannot relate to any of this. I call 611 and it was trivial to cancel and move my phone (with ATT/T-Mobile/Verizon). Cable was the same calling Comcast, although we only had cable internet. Newspaper, I do not know about, but California laws make it pretty easy. Buying a car, you just email the dealers until you find an agreeable price and it takes about 1 to 2 hours at the dealership to finish title/insurance/loan paperwork. Unless going for business loans or depositing cash, I can do all my bank related stuff on my computer, including mailing checks to anyone and refinancing a house. Renting and moving was trivial, at least as of 5 years ago. You search on Craigslist/apartment company website/Zillow. Email back and forth details, fill out pdf application online, use bank website’s bill pay to mail them a check, and move? Taxes are pretty easy unless you have a business, and even then it is doable yourself. Or hire a CPA. This one definitely could be better like in many other countries, but I can still do my own in a about 3 hours using IRS free fillable forms website. It is definitely easier than things were in the 1990s or 2000s, so I imagine it most certainly is not as bad as it was in the 1950s. I find it quite remarkable just how much of modern life I can do via a handheld device or laptop.
tjungblut 4y ago
Consider this anecdata. My car got stolen recently and I had to fill out a 40 pager for my insurance claim. Of course, they sent it as a PDF, yet I had to fill and print to send via snail mail. Of course, with another 20 pages of copies about inspections, overall history of the car and photos. A week later the police sent me another 40 pager to fill via snail mail. Where I had to fill exactly the same information by hand - again send it back with the same 20 pages about inspections and so on. Of course, the insurance needs to be kept up to date with the latest information the police receives, so I had to copy the whole thing and sent it to the insurance again. If you don't call that bureaucracy, I don't know what qualifies as such. I don't even talk about the process of unregistering the car, which is another similar story.
- throwbadubadu 4y ago
  Yeah.. at least we start supporting "online formulars" - in form of boxes where you can put them in (Really, there are multiple places now I had seen that approach :D). Another anecdote.. we missed to update our address for the car registration (we did properly at the Burgeramt for passport). At some point we got a grumpy letter, to that new address, about that they had to look up our current address and now need us to get to the Amt, in person with appointment no way around it, to update also car's address to the new address they just had sent the letter to... oh well.
- pgeorgi 4y ago
  Insurance companies erecting arbitrary barriers between you and a claims payment? Color me unsurprised. As for unregistering the car, I've heard of (US-based) DMV jokes (like "Flash" in Zootopia) but I didn't run into (Germany-based) "Kfz-Zulassungsstellenwitze" yet.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > but I didn't run into (Germany-based) "Kfz-Zulassungsstellenwitze" yet. Well... the situation used to be so bad that making jokes was inappropriate. Like, you had to wait months to even get an appointment to register your freshly bought car in 2020 [1] - and that was not due to covid, extremely long wait times were a common complaint for many years before. [1] https://www.autobild.de/artikel/kfz-zulassung-chaos-bei-den-behoerden-17392601.html https://www.autobild.de/artikel/kfz-zulassung-chaos-bei-den-...

pavlov 4y ago

Nowadays it’s the US at the forefront of actualizing Kafka’s vision of social interaction. One fine example is the phone/cable/newspaper/etc. contracts that you can’t cancel without spending 20+ minutes on the phone with a desperate customer service agent. Buying a car. Doing anything at a bank. Renting an apartment. Moving in and out. Doing your taxes. A lot of the daily life in USA is stuck in a bad 1950s time warp combined with a vicious cycle of MBA optimization to squeeze out every penny from you.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
I cannot relate to any of this. I call 611 and it was trivial to cancel and move my phone (with ATT/T-Mobile/Verizon). Cable was the same calling Comcast, although we only had cable internet. Newspaper, I do not know about, but California laws make it pretty easy. Buying a car, you just email the dealers until you find an agreeable price and it takes about 1 to 2 hours at the dealership to finish title/insurance/loan paperwork. Unless going for business loans or depositing cash, I can do all my bank related stuff on my computer, including mailing checks to anyone and refinancing a house. Renting and moving was trivial, at least as of 5 years ago. You search on Craigslist/apartment company website/Zillow. Email back and forth details, fill out pdf application online, use bank website’s bill pay to mail them a check, and move? Taxes are pretty easy unless you have a business, and even then it is doable yourself. Or hire a CPA. This one definitely could be better like in many other countries, but I can still do my own in a about 3 hours using IRS free fillable forms website. It is definitely easier than things were in the 1990s or 2000s, so I imagine it most certainly is not as bad as it was in the 1950s. I find it quite remarkable just how much of modern life I can do via a handheld device or laptop.

tjungblut 4y ago

Consider this anecdata. My car got stolen recently and I had to fill out a 40 pager for my insurance claim. Of course, they sent it as a PDF, yet I had to fill and print to send via snail mail. Of course, with another 20 pages of copies about inspections, overall history of the car and photos. A week later the police sent me another 40 pager to fill via snail mail. Where I had to fill exactly the same information by hand - again send it back with the same 20 pages about inspections and so on. Of course, the insurance needs to be kept up to date with the latest information the police receives, so I had to copy the whole thing and sent it to the insurance again. If you don't call that bureaucracy, I don't know what qualifies as such. I don't even talk about the process of unregistering the car, which is another similar story.

throwbadubadu 4y ago
Yeah.. at least we start supporting "online formulars" - in form of boxes where you can put them in (Really, there are multiple places now I had seen that approach :D). Another anecdote.. we missed to update our address for the car registration (we did properly at the Burgeramt for passport). At some point we got a grumpy letter, to that new address, about that they had to look up our current address and now need us to get to the Amt, in person with appointment no way around it, to update also car's address to the new address they just had sent the letter to... oh well.
pgeorgi 4y ago
Insurance companies erecting arbitrary barriers between you and a claims payment? Color me unsurprised. As for unregistering the car, I've heard of (US-based) DMV jokes (like "Flash" in Zootopia) but I didn't run into (Germany-based) "Kfz-Zulassungsstellenwitze" yet.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > but I didn't run into (Germany-based) "Kfz-Zulassungsstellenwitze" yet. Well... the situation used to be so bad that making jokes was inappropriate. Like, you had to wait months to even get an appointment to register your freshly bought car in 2020 [1] - and that was not due to covid, extremely long wait times were a common complaint for many years before. [1] https://www.autobild.de/artikel/kfz-zulassung-chaos-bei-den-behoerden-17392601.html https://www.autobild.de/artikel/kfz-zulassung-chaos-bei-den-...