8 ms·

It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission

94 points by bemmu 15y ago

coryl 15y ago
Given that the postal workers seem to not have a clue about the proper protocol anyway, this is a gamble based on social engineering. You're betting that the postal workers don't know or care enough to go against the book, and you're probably making their job easier anyway.
- bemmu 15y ago
  A pretty good gamble though, probably the worst that can happen is that I have to do what I was already doing anyway. You're right this makes their job easier, as they no longer have to deal with my constant requests to get more and more of those forms.
  - ErrantX 15y ago
    According to sods law, some helpful post office worker will very soon knock on your door holding a thousand or so of them :)
patio11 15y ago
There are quite a few things about the Japanese regulatory state which are like this, so much so that half of the reason to have a lawyer/accountant/行政書士(+)　is so that you can have someone with a good guess as to which rules are rules and which rules are more of suggestions (and, relatedly, someone to argue the point with the relevant office when they notice your paperwork is out of compliance with ministerial regulation 437 b) xvii). I've had to sit through some very amusing telephone calls to Tokyo while the local Social Security Office was apprised that, nope, Japan really does occasionally sign treaties on the subject of taxes and "We can't help you with that" is in fact not acceptable procedure when asked for the relevant documentation to secure one's status under the treaty. (I subsequently learned that there are roughly 400 natural people who apply for that treaty's benefits in the entire world and 399 of them use one of a handful of legal firms in downtown Tokyo.) (+) for our American friends: a licensed form-filler-inner who are combination notaries, paralegals, and gophers who you can grant Power of Attorney to. For example, if you have a fairly straightforward visa situation, you could give one of them $2,000 and they'd prepare the relevant documents for you. (And, should the Ministry of Justice not agree that your situation is straightforward, everyone will politely pretend that "Really, are you sure about that?" does not mean "Look, he was good for $2,000, how bad could he possibly be? We've been buddies since high school, do me a favor here.")
recursive 15y ago
This reminds me of my experience freelancing in 2009. In my effort to try to figure out how to claim my income, aka "do the right thing", I submitted a 1099-MISC form, which apparently was a grave error. Since then, I've been trying to convince the IRS that I submitted the form in error, all the while with them sending me increasing bills for taxes and penalties on income I didn't actually received. I just got another letter last week. As it turns out, what I should have done was nothing. Instead of trying to figure out the proper, "by the book" procedure, I would have been much better off if I had either A) done nothing or B) just reported it as some kind of supplemental income on my 1040 or whatever. The lesson I learned is that strict rules and procedures in any system that largely involves humans can usually be ignored, at least on the first pass. If you've missed something that's actually important, they'll let you know. Otherwise, everyone's better off leaving well enough alone.
- rogerbinns 15y ago
  If you freelance you should never do your own taxes. There are so many federal, state and city rules that could bite you that you aren't even aware of. And if you make a mistake (which you will), you saw what happens. If I ever get elected president, I'd insist the tax code get smaller by 10% each year. If congress/senate can't figure that out then every item whose number ends in a particular digit would be automatically deleted (eg all ending in '3'). Over $12 billion is spent each year on tax preparation. That is a huge waste and there are many many better places for that to be spent.
  - alanfalcon 15y ago
    Replacing income tax with a national sales tax and a prebate check seems like it would make living in the USA 13% better just by making April a less stressful month on the whole. (Yeah, I speak mostly in jest, but I'm referring to the so-called "fair tax" which I like despite not really being qualified to have an opinion about it).
    - derleth 15y ago
      > Replacing income tax with a national sales tax Not in jest: This would be terrible for the poor and middle class and wonderful for the rich, which is the only reason you've ever heard of this cockamamie scheme. The reason is that the poor and middle class need to spend a greater proportion of their income just to survive, whereas the richest can more-or-less sit on most of their money (in banks and other investments, to be sure) and still live like rich people. Taxing spending is therefore what's known as a 'regressive tax', in that it affects the poor more than the rich, as opposed to a 'progressive tax', which affects the rich more than the poor.
leeoniya 15y ago
well, everything that could have been done to resolve the situation was tried within reason. it would be an entirely different situation if the process was easy but no attempts were made to use it.
alanfalcon 15y ago
The more I hear about your adventures with Candy Japan, the more I love it, even if the product is something that I would never be able to justify buying. (Replace candy with Gashapon–capsule toys–and I'd have a hard time not pulling the trigger).
- bemmu 15y ago
  Random ones?
  - alanfalcon 15y ago
    Well, maybe I should be careful what I wish for, but most of the ones I see are little robots or anime characters that tend to look cool and be well designed. But maybe only the neat looking ones make it to the places where I can find them in the states.
- minikomi 15y ago
  This is actually a very good idea.
jsavimbi 15y ago
> Phone calls ensued Pretty much what happened to me every time I sked a question in Japan. Extremely helpful people, even though some times the incompetence of the helper was too much to bear.
ThaddeusQuay2 15y ago
"It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission." Possibly, but people who are constantly apologizing are usually annoying, manipulative, cloying, or insincere.
- civilian 15y ago
  Psh! You only ask for forgiveness if someone says that you did something wrong. And, in the author's case, he hasn't had to ask for forgiveness yet.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
Why not print them using a font that looks like handwriting?
- bemmu 15y ago
  I do print my signature on them, which is an actual scan of my signature.
  - derleth 15y ago
    > I do print my signature on them, which is an actual scan of my signature. And this never seems to occur to people who think faxes are any more 'secure' than unencrypted email. This, plus any of the 'send a fax from my PC' services or software, just never seem or occur to anyone who demands faxes for security reasons.
    - Nate75Sanders 15y ago
      Handwritten signatures are a truly ridiculous form of verification.
      - skore 15y ago
        Recently, I had to send in a number of forms via a PostIdent procedure in Germany. You have to sign an additional form and be present with your papers for verification in the Post Office. There was a problem later on in the process - The signature I gave at the Post Office (produced in a crowded situation, under stress) did not match the one on the forms (6 pages, all individually signed in the comfort of my home). As a result, I was asked to re-send the 6 pages and have them match with my initial PostIdent signature. Not redo the process so all match - reproduce the PostIdent signature six times. As this was in dealing with an online service, I could see exactly what those pages and their signatures looked like in my account and indeed, the PostIdent signature looked a lot different. It looked: impossible to reproduce. Cutting the story short: I found myself having to fake my own signature 6 times. I tried for about half an hour to reproduce my meaningless squiggles. I ended up taking a completely different route than using this service - not solely based on this problem, but hugely influenced by it. That is to say: Yes, signatures truly are a ridiculous form of verification.
nandemo 15y ago
Bemmu, is your wife Japanese? I'm willing to bet that if you did an A/B test, with A=Bemmu and B=Bemmu's wife, you'd get more yes answers with B. (I'm aware that this might sound cynical to some, but it's pretty much common sense if you have lived in Japan for some time.)
- bemmu 15y ago
  Yes, but I was trying not to jump to that conclusion as I have no particular reason to think that. It probably has more to do with the office she happened to visit, it was the same one that gave me a nonchalant "yeah, whatever" -answer before.
  - nandemo 15y ago
    Ah, you hadn't said it was the same post office... In any case, I'm not saying being Japanese is the only factor. But it's very likely a factor.
kevinchen 15y ago
Did anybody else think this article was about Facebook before clicking the link?
hallman76 15y ago
Tangent: The phrase "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission" is attributed to Grace Hopper[1], who developed the first compiler(!) and is credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for fixing computer glitches. The phrase has always resonated with me and I was blown away to see that it originated with a pioneer in computer science. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
- batista 15y ago
  and I was blown away to see that it originated with a pioneer in computer science And also, a woman. Like, the first programmer, IIRC (Ada Lovelace). It took a woman to first get us programming, and another one to write the first compiler. Just a trivia to keep in mind.
  - kylebrown 15y ago
    IIRC, originally a "computer" was a term which referred to a (generally female) person, whose job was to feed numbers into an adding machine / calculator. So it makes sense that the first programmers would have been women; it was (is) a secretarial position of repetitive, mundane tasks below an idea-thinking boss-man. That programmers are now ~90% male, is surely just further evidence that the tables are turning, and women will be running the world soon. jk (kinda)
tstyle 15y ago
I was so convinced by the title that this article would be about Path, permissions, and iPhone contact list scraping
jakeonthemove 15y ago
There are lots of these small regulations that are totally stupid and don't help anyone but no one bothers to change or remove them because it inconveniences only a small number of people. That said, couldn't you get around it by printing them with a handwritten font (or even your own handwriting, scanned)? That's what I do with any PDF form that needs to be hand signed and faxed - sign with a handwritten font, fax using an online service...
dkersten 15y ago
"It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission." I used this technique to get three desks in two offices as an undergrad in uni (undergrads typically did not get any desks allocated at all). We were also given access to the postgrad labs and made use of the postgrad kitchen facilities (though we were careful not to get in the way of any of the actual postgrads and to leave it as we found it as we didn't want to be a burden to them).

94 points by bemmu 15y ago

coryl 15y ago

Given that the postal workers seem to not have a clue about the proper protocol anyway, this is a gamble based on social engineering. You're betting that the postal workers don't know or care enough to go against the book, and you're probably making their job easier anyway.

bemmu 15y ago
A pretty good gamble though, probably the worst that can happen is that I have to do what I was already doing anyway. You're right this makes their job easier, as they no longer have to deal with my constant requests to get more and more of those forms.
- ErrantX 15y ago
  According to sods law, some helpful post office worker will very soon knock on your door holding a thousand or so of them :)

patio11 15y ago

There are quite a few things about the Japanese regulatory state which are like this, so much so that half of the reason to have a lawyer/accountant/行政書士(+)　is so that you can have someone with a good guess as to which rules are rules and which rules are more of suggestions (and, relatedly, someone to argue the point with the relevant office when they notice your paperwork is out of compliance with ministerial regulation 437 b) xvii). I've had to sit through some very amusing telephone calls to Tokyo while the local Social Security Office was apprised that, nope, Japan really does occasionally sign treaties on the subject of taxes and "We can't help you with that" is in fact not acceptable procedure when asked for the relevant documentation to secure one's status under the treaty. (I subsequently learned that there are roughly 400 natural people who apply for that treaty's benefits in the entire world and 399 of them use one of a handful of legal firms in downtown Tokyo.) (+) for our American friends: a licensed form-filler-inner who are combination notaries, paralegals, and gophers who you can grant Power of Attorney to. For example, if you have a fairly straightforward visa situation, you could give one of them $2,000 and they'd prepare the relevant documents for you. (And, should the Ministry of Justice not agree that your situation is straightforward, everyone will politely pretend that "Really, are you sure about that?" does not mean "Look, he was good for $2,000, how bad could he possibly be? We've been buddies since high school, do me a favor here.")

recursive 15y ago

This reminds me of my experience freelancing in 2009. In my effort to try to figure out how to claim my income, aka "do the right thing", I submitted a 1099-MISC form, which apparently was a grave error. Since then, I've been trying to convince the IRS that I submitted the form in error, all the while with them sending me increasing bills for taxes and penalties on income I didn't actually received. I just got another letter last week. As it turns out, what I should have done was nothing. Instead of trying to figure out the proper, "by the book" procedure, I would have been much better off if I had either A) done nothing or B) just reported it as some kind of supplemental income on my 1040 or whatever. The lesson I learned is that strict rules and procedures in any system that largely involves humans can usually be ignored, at least on the first pass. If you've missed something that's actually important, they'll let you know. Otherwise, everyone's better off leaving well enough alone.

rogerbinns 15y ago
If you freelance you should never do your own taxes. There are so many federal, state and city rules that could bite you that you aren't even aware of. And if you make a mistake (which you will), you saw what happens. If I ever get elected president, I'd insist the tax code get smaller by 10% each year. If congress/senate can't figure that out then every item whose number ends in a particular digit would be automatically deleted (eg all ending in '3'). Over $12 billion is spent each year on tax preparation. That is a huge waste and there are many many better places for that to be spent.
- alanfalcon 15y ago
  Replacing income tax with a national sales tax and a prebate check seems like it would make living in the USA 13% better just by making April a less stressful month on the whole. (Yeah, I speak mostly in jest, but I'm referring to the so-called "fair tax" which I like despite not really being qualified to have an opinion about it).
  - derleth 15y ago
    > Replacing income tax with a national sales tax Not in jest: This would be terrible for the poor and middle class and wonderful for the rich, which is the only reason you've ever heard of this cockamamie scheme. The reason is that the poor and middle class need to spend a greater proportion of their income just to survive, whereas the richest can more-or-less sit on most of their money (in banks and other investments, to be sure) and still live like rich people. Taxing spending is therefore what's known as a 'regressive tax', in that it affects the poor more than the rich, as opposed to a 'progressive tax', which affects the rich more than the poor.

leeoniya 15y ago

well, everything that could have been done to resolve the situation was tried within reason. it would be an entirely different situation if the process was easy but no attempts were made to use it.

alanfalcon 15y ago

The more I hear about your adventures with Candy Japan, the more I love it, even if the product is something that I would never be able to justify buying. (Replace candy with Gashapon–capsule toys–and I'd have a hard time not pulling the trigger).

bemmu 15y ago
Random ones?
- alanfalcon 15y ago
  Well, maybe I should be careful what I wish for, but most of the ones I see are little robots or anime characters that tend to look cool and be well designed. But maybe only the neat looking ones make it to the places where I can find them in the states.
minikomi 15y ago
This is actually a very good idea.

jsavimbi 15y ago

> Phone calls ensued Pretty much what happened to me every time I sked a question in Japan. Extremely helpful people, even though some times the incompetence of the helper was too much to bear.

ThaddeusQuay2 15y ago

"It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission." Possibly, but people who are constantly apologizing are usually annoying, manipulative, cloying, or insincere.

civilian 15y ago
Psh! You only ask for forgiveness if someone says that you did something wrong. And, in the author's case, he hasn't had to ask for forgiveness yet.

pavel_lishin 15y ago

Why not print them using a font that looks like handwriting?

bemmu 15y ago
I do print my signature on them, which is an actual scan of my signature.
- derleth 15y ago
  > I do print my signature on them, which is an actual scan of my signature. And this never seems to occur to people who think faxes are any more 'secure' than unencrypted email. This, plus any of the 'send a fax from my PC' services or software, just never seem or occur to anyone who demands faxes for security reasons.
  - Nate75Sanders 15y ago
    Handwritten signatures are a truly ridiculous form of verification.
    - skore 15y ago
      Recently, I had to send in a number of forms via a PostIdent procedure in Germany. You have to sign an additional form and be present with your papers for verification in the Post Office. There was a problem later on in the process - The signature I gave at the Post Office (produced in a crowded situation, under stress) did not match the one on the forms (6 pages, all individually signed in the comfort of my home). As a result, I was asked to re-send the 6 pages and have them match with my initial PostIdent signature. Not redo the process so all match - reproduce the PostIdent signature six times. As this was in dealing with an online service, I could see exactly what those pages and their signatures looked like in my account and indeed, the PostIdent signature looked a lot different. It looked: impossible to reproduce. Cutting the story short: I found myself having to fake my own signature 6 times. I tried for about half an hour to reproduce my meaningless squiggles. I ended up taking a completely different route than using this service - not solely based on this problem, but hugely influenced by it. That is to say: Yes, signatures truly are a ridiculous form of verification.

nandemo 15y ago

Bemmu, is your wife Japanese? I'm willing to bet that if you did an A/B test, with A=Bemmu and B=Bemmu's wife, you'd get more yes answers with B. (I'm aware that this might sound cynical to some, but it's pretty much common sense if you have lived in Japan for some time.)

bemmu 15y ago
Yes, but I was trying not to jump to that conclusion as I have no particular reason to think that. It probably has more to do with the office she happened to visit, it was the same one that gave me a nonchalant "yeah, whatever" -answer before.
- nandemo 15y ago
  Ah, you hadn't said it was the same post office... In any case, I'm not saying being Japanese is the only factor. But it's very likely a factor.

kevinchen 15y ago

Did anybody else think this article was about Facebook before clicking the link?

hallman76 15y ago

Tangent: The phrase "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission" is attributed to Grace Hopper[1], who developed the first compiler(!) and is credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for fixing computer glitches. The phrase has always resonated with me and I was blown away to see that it originated with a pioneer in computer science. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

batista 15y ago
and I was blown away to see that it originated with a pioneer in computer science And also, a woman. Like, the first programmer, IIRC (Ada Lovelace). It took a woman to first get us programming, and another one to write the first compiler. Just a trivia to keep in mind.
- kylebrown 15y ago
  IIRC, originally a "computer" was a term which referred to a (generally female) person, whose job was to feed numbers into an adding machine / calculator. So it makes sense that the first programmers would have been women; it was (is) a secretarial position of repetitive, mundane tasks below an idea-thinking boss-man. That programmers are now ~90% male, is surely just further evidence that the tables are turning, and women will be running the world soon. jk (kinda)

tstyle 15y ago

I was so convinced by the title that this article would be about Path, permissions, and iPhone contact list scraping

jakeonthemove 15y ago

There are lots of these small regulations that are totally stupid and don't help anyone but no one bothers to change or remove them because it inconveniences only a small number of people. That said, couldn't you get around it by printing them with a handwritten font (or even your own handwriting, scanned)? That's what I do with any PDF form that needs to be hand signed and faxed - sign with a handwritten font, fax using an online service...

dkersten 15y ago

"It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission." I used this technique to get three desks in two offices as an undergrad in uni (undergrads typically did not get any desks allocated at all). We were also given access to the postgrad labs and made use of the postgrad kitchen facilities (though we were careful not to get in the way of any of the actual postgrads and to leave it as we found it as we didn't want to be a burden to them).