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I hear this a lot whenever antitrust is brought up. Do you have concrete examples of how, say, the DMV or Kansas Board of Consumer Welfare costs society more th

I hear this a lot whenever antitrust is brought up. Do you have concrete examples of how, say, the DMV or Kansas Board of Consumer Welfare costs society more that, say, UnitedHealth's price gouging, Microsoft's SaaS, or Google and Apple's backdoor deals with Apple or Amazon's practices?

willcipriano 2y ago
War is probably the largest line item for most people. Losing decades long wars is expensive. You have the social decay that comes with focusing abroad rather than at home. Homelessness, drug addiction (my friends probably were killed by heroin made from poppies that a marine was tasked with protecting, maybe some of yours too) Running a close second (maybe first) is regulatory capture, things like patents and certificates of need. Requirements for patented safety features in cars, patents on medicine, copyright on characters your grandma grew up with.
VincentEvans 2y ago
Haha, DMV… I just moved to North Carolina, and the next available appointment at the DMV to change the address on my driver license is in September (it’s beginning of June as I am writing this). When I moved the last time in a different state - the appointment to change my address on my driver license was same week and took about 15 mins, most of which I spent trying to get a decent picture. So I “know” it doesn’t take very long to print a plastic card.
- Closi 2y ago
  Doesnt that likely demonstrate insufficient resource/capacity rather than OPs point that there are too many bureaucrats?
  - michaelt 2y ago
    In my country, you wouldn’t need an in person ‘appointment’ to merely change an address on a driving license. Seems rather inefficient to have offices all over the state, appointments, inefficiencies like missed appointments, and the waste of citizens’ time, for a process that can be done by mail.
    - yuliyp 2y ago
      Moving states requires validating the information from the previous state too. It's not a matter of the new state just updating an entry in its database. It's an entirely new entry. Given that, in person validation makes sense. Moving within a state is simpler, and indeed can be done online in most states. Granted in many countries there's a national ID system. Also a part of the point of government-issued IDs is that there's more validation around its issuance, and many other parts of society take advantage of that.
  - teitoklien 2y ago
    Maybe there are too many bureaucrats that all the expenses are bloated and funding payroll of unproductive gov workers. Personally ive found that to be more true in most countries. Civil service/Gov workers get tons of new unnecessary roles with bloated titles for departments that barely do anything, just to maintain a cycle of promotion, to keep the gov workforce “motivated”. Not that i disagree that United Health is price gouging that there are way too many corrupt unnatural monopolistic companies preventing america from growing fast and allowing innovation to take place. I think both things are true at the same time. Talk to any gov department and they’ll often tell you, the budgeting is structured in a horrible way that it encourages them to do wasteful spending, they must keep spending entirety of their “budget” to retain a similar sized budget next year, “use it or lose it”, to avoid going through hassle of convincing politicians to re-boost budget later, departments resort to wasting money with meaningless expenses just to retain their budgets… Extrapolate that to a gov that spends more than a trillion dollars annually at times and this is a disastrous level of wasteful spending.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- passwordoops 2y ago
  Ever try to reach Google customer support?
- jrmg 2y ago
  You can just go to the NC DMV in the afternoon. Afternoons are not appointment based. I updated my license two days after moving here. I had to wait an hour or so.
- nonameiguess 2y ago
  This isn't really the DMV's doing on its own. Same thing happened when I moved to Texas (or at least when I first needed to get a driver's license). In both cases, the root cause is GOP control of a purplish state trending blue shutting down offices and restricting ID services on purpose to suppress voting turnout.
sneak 2y ago
How about the wars the US is fighting directly in 13 different sovereign countries presently? That’s gotta be slightly costly.
- tekla 2y ago
  Damn I must have missed this news. What countries is the US at war with?
  - sneak 2y ago
    None of it is declared war; it’s all just “special military operation” kinda stuff. It’s actually crazy how many different places the US has boots on the ground. More details in the ET podcast episode, in public rn and can’t find/transcribe. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Fcid5hjKbdgLWmvHreOpV https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Fcid5hjKbdgLWmvHreOpV
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
luckylion 2y ago
Some DMV would be a part of the government, it wouldn't be _the_ government. To not build up a straw man, you'd have to compare it to, say, Apple's battery quality control department or Amazon's warehouse maintenance team.

willcipriano 2y ago

War is probably the largest line item for most people. Losing decades long wars is expensive. You have the social decay that comes with focusing abroad rather than at home. Homelessness, drug addiction (my friends probably were killed by heroin made from poppies that a marine was tasked with protecting, maybe some of yours too) Running a close second (maybe first) is regulatory capture, things like patents and certificates of need. Requirements for patented safety features in cars, patents on medicine, copyright on characters your grandma grew up with.

VincentEvans 2y ago

Haha, DMV… I just moved to North Carolina, and the next available appointment at the DMV to change the address on my driver license is in September (it’s beginning of June as I am writing this). When I moved the last time in a different state - the appointment to change my address on my driver license was same week and took about 15 mins, most of which I spent trying to get a decent picture. So I “know” it doesn’t take very long to print a plastic card.

Closi 2y ago
Doesnt that likely demonstrate insufficient resource/capacity rather than OPs point that there are too many bureaucrats?
- michaelt 2y ago
  In my country, you wouldn’t need an in person ‘appointment’ to merely change an address on a driving license. Seems rather inefficient to have offices all over the state, appointments, inefficiencies like missed appointments, and the waste of citizens’ time, for a process that can be done by mail.
  - yuliyp 2y ago
    Moving states requires validating the information from the previous state too. It's not a matter of the new state just updating an entry in its database. It's an entirely new entry. Given that, in person validation makes sense. Moving within a state is simpler, and indeed can be done online in most states. Granted in many countries there's a national ID system. Also a part of the point of government-issued IDs is that there's more validation around its issuance, and many other parts of society take advantage of that.
- teitoklien 2y ago
  Maybe there are too many bureaucrats that all the expenses are bloated and funding payroll of unproductive gov workers. Personally ive found that to be more true in most countries. Civil service/Gov workers get tons of new unnecessary roles with bloated titles for departments that barely do anything, just to maintain a cycle of promotion, to keep the gov workforce “motivated”. Not that i disagree that United Health is price gouging that there are way too many corrupt unnatural monopolistic companies preventing america from growing fast and allowing innovation to take place. I think both things are true at the same time. Talk to any gov department and they’ll often tell you, the budgeting is structured in a horrible way that it encourages them to do wasteful spending, they must keep spending entirety of their “budget” to retain a similar sized budget next year, “use it or lose it”, to avoid going through hassle of convincing politicians to re-boost budget later, departments resort to wasting money with meaningless expenses just to retain their budgets… Extrapolate that to a gov that spends more than a trillion dollars annually at times and this is a disastrous level of wasteful spending.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
passwordoops 2y ago
Ever try to reach Google customer support?
jrmg 2y ago
You can just go to the NC DMV in the afternoon. Afternoons are not appointment based. I updated my license two days after moving here. I had to wait an hour or so.
nonameiguess 2y ago
This isn't really the DMV's doing on its own. Same thing happened when I moved to Texas (or at least when I first needed to get a driver's license). In both cases, the root cause is GOP control of a purplish state trending blue shutting down offices and restricting ID services on purpose to suppress voting turnout.

sneak 2y ago

How about the wars the US is fighting directly in 13 different sovereign countries presently? That’s gotta be slightly costly.

tekla 2y ago
Damn I must have missed this news. What countries is the US at war with?
- sneak 2y ago
  None of it is declared war; it’s all just “special military operation” kinda stuff. It’s actually crazy how many different places the US has boots on the ground. More details in the ET podcast episode, in public rn and can’t find/transcribe. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Fcid5hjKbdgLWmvHreOpV https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Fcid5hjKbdgLWmvHreOpV
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

luckylion 2y ago

Some DMV would be a part of the government, it wouldn't be _the_ government. To not build up a straw man, you'd have to compare it to, say, Apple's battery quality control department or Amazon's warehouse maintenance team.