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Comment by cascom | Hacker News Reader

shocker - government program is poorly administered and a private contractor is poorly supervised.

The thing that shocks me is how Americans casually accept that government will pooprly run some programs. It’s almost expected that this be the case. Indeed, one of the two major parties sometimes actively seeks to prove incompetence.

It is worse than that, the republicans seek to actively destroy programs that help people out. There is no reason we need private loan servicers for example.

And your opinion is exactly why nothing ever gets reformed. Republicans almost never want to "destroy" programs, they want to make them more efficient. My state spends $1k more per capita on public services than Texas, but no one would ever claim we get $1k more per capita in public services. We do have many more per capita administrators for our departments.

But anyone who wants to solve this probably of deep institutional inefficiency is accused of "destroying programs".

See Betsy Devos and Mick Mulvaney. They are literally gutting their respective Departments for the direct benefit of private corporations. You can tell yourself that they are just trimming fat all you want but please explain how removing protections for student loan borrowers or dismantling consumer financial protections helps anyone but corporate bigwigs?

I completely agree with your point.

However, I don't think the purpose of institutions is to be more efficient, but it is to grow and further entrench themselves. It's the error of the Democrat voter in believing that more complexity will help and the error of the Republican voter that efficiency can be achieved.

Not really what the answer is other than having an informed populace, but this is hard to do with the poor education we have.

Republicans have actively sought to undermine Obamacare even though it is mostly a Republican plan from the 1990s. They actively seek to undermine Social Security and Medicare. From my perspective they do not seek to genuinely improve on programs in terms of helping more people or making the standard of care better.

They claim to be for efficiency, but their ideas around how to be more efficient are funnel money into private corporations (owned by their donors) for no apparent reason.

This is why we have private prisons, student loan servicers, and a the owner of a student loan debt collection agency overseeing student loan reforms.

Not to say Democrats don't do the same shit, but there's an undeniable difference between Trump appointments and Obama appointments. Trump had no problem putting into power Scott Pruitt, Rex Tillerson, Ajit Pai, and Betsy fucking DeVos -- all of whom are absolutely corrupt business leaders whose entire purpose in government life is to shovel as much money as possible from tax payers into their own pockets.

Those people weren't personally picked by Trump, they were recommended by high-ranking Republicans.

All of the talk about reform or making government more efficient is baloney. As is this idea that there is a "deep institutional inefficiency" that permeates government. It's a shell game to distract voters and a wedge issue used to divide the electorate. The reason republicans pitch efficiency is that they want to cut taxes or re-appropriate tax revenues.

If you want to understand politics: Follow the money and then follow the votes.

Wanting to reform government institutions is seen as anti-government or anti-public service by a majority of people. My state spends $1k/per capita more on public services than a much more successful and well off neighboring state with much better services, but politicians who want to reform our public services to be just as efficient are seen as nutjobs.

My experience is often times the high per capita costs result from deliberate inefficiencies to benefit some industry. I’m all for making things more efficient but usually that just means, to certain politicians, making it private and thus worse in the long run.

It depends on the details. I’m leary when a elimating I efficiencies is touted but no details given. It’s just then an empty slogan.

It's not just that. The system has ballooned on top of itself: the arms race that is higher education is in no small part a result of government issued loans that seem great at the time but turn out to be a nightmare in practice. Students get caught up in the hype of needing to be a part of the arms race (go to a "good" school) and borrow exorbitantly from their future without understanding what they're actually getting into. Then many companies that pay the best only recruit at the "best" schools, which fortifies the entire system and leaves many students from lower tier programs with a degree, a mountain of debt, and no job.

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