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There's a very predictable cycle. 1. "Small government people" demanding that the government stop providing services, because the private sector is better at e

by vkou 4y ago

There's a very predictable cycle. 1. "Small government people" demanding that the government stop providing services, because the private sector is better at everything. 2. Government services get outsourced to vendors, NGOs, non-profits, etc. 3. These vendors need to justify that they are effective at their job, producing mountains of paperwork. 4. Government offices fill with beurocrats to review all that paperwork. 5. Some of those vendors turn out to be doing a bad job. 6. People complain about how the private sector is incapable of providing these services. <--- We are here. 7. Government pulls funding, starts providing these services itself. 8. Go to step 1. At least, that's what happens when everyone's operating in good faith. When people are criticizing in bad faith, step 7 is 'Pull all funding for services with no replacement' and step 8 is 'Complain about tent cities and people sleeping on benches.'

willcipriano 4y ago
I don't get the impression that small government people have a lot of say in SF, this looks like typical big government graft and mismanagement that turns people paying attention into small government types.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
There are some types of services where it's straightforward to monitor private vendors: if you contract out trash pickup, and the vendor doesn't pick up people's trash, you will immediately get many loud, angry complaints from the populace. You hardly even need to proactively monitor them, really, it would just be instantly obvious if they did nothing. In contrast, if you give non-profits money to help the homeless population, the feedback loop is more...ambiguous. If they just blow the money instead of helping anyone, who's gonna complain? The people that should've been helped won't even be aware of some random contract, and are used to different government and private entities failing them anyhow. The lack of clear impact from non-action means it's easier for organizations to get away with doing nothing, or at least doing nothing useful. Now I'm sure there are some organizations doing great work, but how do you separate them from the grifters?
- ericmcer 4y ago
  Bare minimum? An accounting of how money is spent and who is interacted with. Homeless people aren't faceless people, most have SSNs, names and histories. If small tech companies have measures around their arbitrary software goals surely SF government has a handful of metrics to monitor the state of the homeless population.
- tornadron 4y ago
  Speaking of garbage pickup...there was that whole scandal about the public workds department taking bribes: https://sfstandard.com/politics/scandal-ridden-sf-garbage-collector-may-lose-one-of-its-contracts-with-the-city/ https://sfstandard.com/politics/scandal-ridden-sf-garbage-co...
WillPostForFood 4y ago
Who are these "Small government people" in San Francisco? Here is a much simpler description of the cycle in SF: 1: Govt funds vendors, NGOs, non-profits 2: Vendors, NGOs, non-profits fund politicians 3: go to step 1
- vkou 4y ago
  > Who are these "Small government people" in San Francisco? That would be your run-of-the-mill weed-smoking, I-have-dozens-of-lgbt-immigrant-friends yuppie, who immediately goes to 'Get the government hand out of my pocket' when you ask them to actually fund social services. In short, socially liberal, fiscally conservative 'progressives'. Very open to nice-sounding things, as long as they don't cost anything. Lots of them post here, and all of them feel completely justified in their views.
ericmcer 4y ago
Yeah mostly agree, why do government programs always result in so much misuse and fraud? I don't really agree with how you portray the Govt. as a helpless participant that is just responding to peoples complaints. It is a failure of the government to me, giving away billions with no oversight is an invitation to bad actors. Exploitative people will always appear anytime an opportunity to make money springs up, the Govts job is to prevent that. This is literally a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me scenario but the people being fooled are govt officials we trust billions of $s to.
- vkou 4y ago
  > Yeah mostly agree, why do government programs always result in so much misuse and fraud? * Inefficiency from steps 3, 4. * Money going to advocacy groups who are really good at advocacy, but not actually good at execution. * Impossible to build execution-focused groups when funds appear one year, and go poof the next year. * Lack of economies of scale. One group can manage 800 housing/shelter units for vastly less money than 80 different groups managing 10 housing/shelter units each. Most of these problems are actually solved by having the government provide these services in-house, instead of subcontracting to 80 different non-profits, with each of them having a ton of overhead, waste, lack of continuity of mission, etc. You also have direct democratic control of this, because council has direct influence, and can be held accountable for how the city's departments run.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by vkou 4y ago

willcipriano 4y ago

I don't get the impression that small government people have a lot of say in SF, this looks like typical big government graft and mismanagement that turns people paying attention into small government types.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

There are some types of services where it's straightforward to monitor private vendors: if you contract out trash pickup, and the vendor doesn't pick up people's trash, you will immediately get many loud, angry complaints from the populace. You hardly even need to proactively monitor them, really, it would just be instantly obvious if they did nothing. In contrast, if you give non-profits money to help the homeless population, the feedback loop is more...ambiguous. If they just blow the money instead of helping anyone, who's gonna complain? The people that should've been helped won't even be aware of some random contract, and are used to different government and private entities failing them anyhow. The lack of clear impact from non-action means it's easier for organizations to get away with doing nothing, or at least doing nothing useful. Now I'm sure there are some organizations doing great work, but how do you separate them from the grifters?

ericmcer 4y ago
Bare minimum? An accounting of how money is spent and who is interacted with. Homeless people aren't faceless people, most have SSNs, names and histories. If small tech companies have measures around their arbitrary software goals surely SF government has a handful of metrics to monitor the state of the homeless population.
tornadron 4y ago
Speaking of garbage pickup...there was that whole scandal about the public workds department taking bribes: https://sfstandard.com/politics/scandal-ridden-sf-garbage-collector-may-lose-one-of-its-contracts-with-the-city/ https://sfstandard.com/politics/scandal-ridden-sf-garbage-co...

WillPostForFood 4y ago

Who are these "Small government people" in San Francisco? Here is a much simpler description of the cycle in SF: 1: Govt funds vendors, NGOs, non-profits 2: Vendors, NGOs, non-profits fund politicians 3: go to step 1

vkou 4y ago
> Who are these "Small government people" in San Francisco? That would be your run-of-the-mill weed-smoking, I-have-dozens-of-lgbt-immigrant-friends yuppie, who immediately goes to 'Get the government hand out of my pocket' when you ask them to actually fund social services. In short, socially liberal, fiscally conservative 'progressives'. Very open to nice-sounding things, as long as they don't cost anything. Lots of them post here, and all of them feel completely justified in their views.

ericmcer 4y ago

Yeah mostly agree, why do government programs always result in so much misuse and fraud? I don't really agree with how you portray the Govt. as a helpless participant that is just responding to peoples complaints. It is a failure of the government to me, giving away billions with no oversight is an invitation to bad actors. Exploitative people will always appear anytime an opportunity to make money springs up, the Govts job is to prevent that. This is literally a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me scenario but the people being fooled are govt officials we trust billions of $s to.

vkou 4y ago
> Yeah mostly agree, why do government programs always result in so much misuse and fraud? * Inefficiency from steps 3, 4. * Money going to advocacy groups who are really good at advocacy, but not actually good at execution. * Impossible to build execution-focused groups when funds appear one year, and go poof the next year. * Lack of economies of scale. One group can manage 800 housing/shelter units for vastly less money than 80 different groups managing 10 housing/shelter units each. Most of these problems are actually solved by having the government provide these services in-house, instead of subcontracting to 80 different non-profits, with each of them having a ton of overhead, waste, lack of continuity of mission, etc. You also have direct democratic control of this, because council has direct influence, and can be held accountable for how the city's departments run.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]