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Comment by bell-cot | Hacker News Reader

> Problem is, the city doesn’t have a modern, reliable way to track the vehicles’ new locations, leaving owners wandering the streets for days or weeks, looking for their cars.

They could do vastly better than the status quo with century-old multi-part paper form technology. "White Copy - Central PD Tow Office", "Yellow Copy - Precinct PD Tow Clerk", "Pink Copy - DMV, to mail to vehicle owner", ...

This kind of worse-than-brain-dead sh*t-show is why so many people emotionally identify with "the government is the problem", "de-fund the police", and similar slogans.

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> This kind of worse-than-brain-dead sh*t-show is why so many people emotionally identify with "the government is the problem", "de-fund the police", and similar slogans.

Those people are right. That is not just emotional, that is rational - that is the only sane attitude towards the fact that these groups with the power of violence over society are so incompetent or even malicious.

Us people have some nuance and quite a bit of disagreement amongst ourselves. Personally I’m all in on defunding the police, but (I still feel weird saying this even after almost six years as a former anarchist) I don’t believe the government is inherently the problem, even if this particular implementation of it is obviously a problem.

Another version of government could and should use its power to prevent these kinds of abuses rather than enable and benefit from them. But that form of government would look radically different from the one we have.

Prevent who from doing these abuses? I only seem to have these types of problems with the government. I have been illegally towed before. I got a letter from the IRS a few months back saying I owe another $1000 of taxes for reasons I can't understand. The letter says call a phone number if you don't understand. I have called it at least 50 times and it always gives me a recording that they can't take my call now. I will probably just have to pay. Only the government can do this to me because they are the only organization I have to obey.

You get paid a fixed salary and can’t make a penny more until your union-negotiated contract says you can (more years of labor). You basically can’t get fired. Your job never changes and you can’t improve your job. You do the same thing day in and day out waiting for retirement.

So you can screw with some people, maybe get a bribe to help them. It isn’t unreasonable to see why government employees are unhelpful - the system is dumb, wasteful, and nothing they do can fix it, and leaving the job means they will never have it as cushy again.

> maybe get a bribe to help them

Can you point to any bribery for common, "retail" interactions with local governments? Outside the south? I'm actually curious, I didn't think most of the country was that far gone yet.

Why outside the south? Is there something special about the south so that the police take more or less bribes or something?

> They could do vastly better than the status quo

But why should they have to? It’s 2022, get a LoJack or AirTag for your private property that you leave lying around illegally in public space.

The cars are towed away from legal spots.

I think the article misstates this. They’re normally legal spots, but at the time of the special event, they’re not legal.(Usually temporary signs are placed a day or two in advance.)

> (Usually temporary signs are placed a day or two in advance.)

Based on the stories here, not not sure this is happening.

Even if it is, that’s not sufficient to inform car owners to move their vehicles. Where I live, all public parking (whether you have a parking permit or park in spots which don’t require one) has a 72 hour limit. If you put up temporary No Parking signs with less than 72 hours notice, you’re guaranteeing many people will have their cars towed inappropriately.

if they were parked illegally, they would just be towed

they were "courtesy towed" because the space became illegal after the car was already there

AirTags are a whole seperate rant - I am not the only user of my car, but I can’t share my AirTag.

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