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Comment by ovis | Hacker News Reader

The politician who raises taxes or shuts down water delivery may be replaced at the next election by the one that doesn't and keeps the lead pipes.

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Sure, that's why you end up with incompetent and corrupt people in power.

I don't think you can call this fictional public servant incompetent and corrupt. He's just doing what the people wanted. That shortsightedness and aversion to investment is problem of the electorate.

When the people's wishes result in poisoning children, a good public servant doesn't just say "OK" and do it. "Just following orders" isn't any better just because those orders come through a democratic process. When it's that bad you fight it, you show people the consequences of what they're asking for, and if they insist then you either refuse or resign in protest.

Edit: it occurs to me that this characterization of "just doing what the people wanted" is probably completely wrong anyway. I'm sure there was never a public meeting in Flint, for example, where city officials stood up before the public and laid out the plan to switch water supplies and the subsequent poisoning of the entire city that would result.

But that's not the situation outlined in the thread. It's the public servant that see the lead pipes, the dangerous and untenable situation and takes action. Then he's sacked for taking action. What then?

Then someone new takes the position and the process repeats.

You can certainly blame the public for electing incompetent or corrupt public officials. Said officials also shoulder the blame for fucking up the water system. That they would be fired for doing the right thing does not absolve them in the least.

I'm not saying you can't blame the people for who they choose to govern, merely that the people who govern are also to blame.

The situation for Flint specifically is complicated by the fact that the city has an emergency manager appointed by the governor. The elected council approved the decision to switch as well, so the locals aren't free from responsibility either, but there's plenty of opportunity for finger-pointing in many directions.

I find the scenario believable, but I think the mechanism by which the 'good' politician is getting sacked is more complex. I think s/he is getting sacked because s/he spent a lot of political capitol on a difficult undertaking that doesn't bring much credit back to her/him. Improving decaying infrastructure doesn't insert a positive 'this politician accomplished' association into many voters minds. S/he's just doing the things that voters assume happen on their own anyway. On the other hand, the 'bad' politician that ignored the issue had a nice extra bit of political capitol to spend on flashier issues like crime, lowering taxes, etc.

So, rather than it being a "the people have spoken" situation, I think that the situation is driven by constraints on public attention for political issues. I don't think you would get many voters endorsing continued poisoning of the population when a marginal increase (or reshifting) of taxes could address the issue. Rather I think that it is rarely ever politically advantageous to spearhead these kind of issues (that is until it explodes into an attention grabbing crisis, as is now the case with Flint lead poisoning).

We can see this sort of thing in microcosm in office politics as well. How often are we complaining about always being reactionary and putting out fires instead of proactively taking care of problems before they can cause a lot of damage? Well, once a fire starts, everyone is keen to figure out what's causing it and how to deal with it. But recognizing the pre-conditions that could potentially lead to a fire, and then eliminating them sound much more boring[1], and often requires a concerted information campaign just to get people invested in supporting the mitigation. But if there's an actual [2] fire, people are immediately interested by the inherent drama of the situation, and attention is no longer a barrier to overcome.

[1] even that description of it sounded much more boring than the bit about fire! [2] an 'actual' figurative 'fire'. I know the wording is sub-optimal, but I'm pot committed to this metaphor so...

When a certain political party actively campaigns to convince people that (a) privatizing everything and (b) cutting all taxes will help the little guy, then it's absolutely to speak of moral and ethical corruption.

When you fail to communicate the urgency of replacing dangerous pipes to your electorate, you're (at best) incompetent.

Except this specific thread is all about how the municipal system is failing because either the populace won't vote for investment or higher political bodies block it.

In that case privatisation can work because it removes short term political incentives from the equation. Corporate structures enable investment and charging what is needed - plus things like water conservation ironically are often pursued more by those with financial stake in the game.

A private water utility can be sued into oblivion or killed by regulators over lead issues - yet a public system gets some soul searching articles that still mostly manage to blame capitalists while ignoring the failures of regulators. "Better regulation" is hard to achieve, but America in many ways seems to be truly shocking in how poorly regulated many areas are.

There is no chance that government can just hand over a hard problem to a private entity, and then make the private entity accountable for screwing it up. What private company would take that deal, and how would you draw blood from the stone when they screw up?

And the town that votes this way gets lead in its pipes.

Now that we've stated the obvious, it shouldn't be too hard to agree that "privatise everything" and "cut all taxes" is an extraordinarily stupid way to vote. Flint is evidence that some things are too critical to be privatized.

Is Flint's water privatized?

Part of the problem is that Flint neither voted this way, nor is it privatized. The state took over the city government and installed a city manager who made the decisions that led to this situation.

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