Hacker News Reader

Hah! The same thing can happen in Washington!

I was pulled over for something, actually it might just have been this.

"Your license isn't valid." What? Why is it suspended?

"It's not suspended, it's just not valid."

What the hell does that mean?

"You'll have to talk to the DOL. And you can't drive your vehicle from here."

I'm meant to be working the next night, so I need to figure this out.

Go to the DOL's website. It literally says my license is valid, in bold green letters. Huh. For fun, I click on "Pay any amounts owed (citations, infractions, etc.)". "There are no amounts owed on your license."

I take print outs of both of these, and am at the DOL when it opens the next morning.

Similar to you. I paid, in person, by check, a fine a few years prior. Because it wasn't "processed" til after midnight, my license was suspended, but unsuspended the same (next) day. But (and I'm not sure how this is justified) there was a fee attached to removing the suspension (that I didn't know about), so my license was "invalidated".

To their credit, at least, the lady at the DOL was very sympathetic. She stamped all my print outs with a DOL stamp, and then all the print outs of the process to revalidate my license (to try to support my case, that there was no way I could have known this, as the DOL's own website tells me my license is valid and is not subject to any restriction).

Went to court to contest the "driving without a valid license". Still took me 20 minutes of repeating, several times over, to the prosecutor this whole flow, the first fifteen minutes of which he was insistent that none of my paperwork mattered because "they would have sent you a letter, so you must have known", before finally capitulating and dropping it.

> they would have sent you a letter

They're pretty bad at that step. They'll swear up and down it was sent, but questions like "to where" and "was it the same address I have on my driver's license," or "do you have the slightest shred of evidence" are met with deaf ears.

I had the damnedest time once explaining to the clerk why it mattered that the signature she was looking at wasn't my name, wasn't my handwriting, wasn't attached to a document with my name, and wasn't dated within a year of any ticket associated with my license. Her entire algorithm was (document_in_file && ink_in_signature_box).

It might be acceptable if you were at least entitled to a proper trial when they made blatant mistakes. The status quo causes problems though.

My license was suspended for a few weeks for a case of mistaken identity. It wasn’t deliberate identity theft as far as I could tell, but no one would tell me how I ended up the target of the court summons which I missed.

Fortunately everyone was friendly and willing to wipe my record clean, but that could easily have been much worse.

This is where countries like Vietnam excel. The level of corruption at all levels of government jobs is unparalleled.

All you have to do is find the right connection (usually through a family member), pay some "coffee money" and whatever you want, you can get.

This would have been resolved for probably $20-40, but it would have only taken a few minutes of your time and a lot less frustration.

One thing I like about America is that we have the same levels of corruption, you can just codify the same process in the law and call it due process

Many states, agencies have “expedited processing” options built in

Looks like Colorado’s DMV did not

At the state and municipal level, you might be surprised how easy it is to lobby for a tiny tweak you would personally like. You don’t have to be registered to vote there, and many times its not even a popular vote required. Just the mayor or a 5 member county board who are even more of a grifter than you are.

You make a very good point. Passport processing is another good example. However, it is so much more fun to pay someone directly where you know it is going to feed their family vs. just being an additional tax to the government. One guy once told me that my money was helping buy his kids books for school. I don't know if he was lying, but I appreciated the thought.

This soinds so weird and absurd to me: "i'd rather pay bribes to corrupt individuals than taxes to my government."

Have you lived in Vietnam or any country where this is a thing? It is weird, until you realize that it often works in your best interest.

For example, if I get pulled over in Vietnam while driving a motorbike, I can just pay the "fine" right then and there. While I admit, it is totally corrupt and questionable, it sure beats spending hours going to the police station and dealing with language issues.

Obviously, this isn't good for locals since it is used as a form of extortion, but it is what it is. I'm not in Vietnam to fix the problems there.

The world is indeed a strange place...

yeah its like this in parts of Mexico too, it is convenient and fun, like "wow everyone's so cool haha what a playful land as long as you have 50 pesos on you" but it can also be annoying as the 'incidentals' add up

This is why I paid someone to help me get a VN drivers license. At that point, the coffee money either goes away entirely or gets cut in half.

At the end of the day, $3 sure is a lot cheaper than $100's in a single ticket in the US.

> Have you lived in Vietnam or any country where this is a thing? It is weird, until you realize that it often works in your best interest. […] Obviously, this isn’t good for locals

Most people who have lived in places where this exists were also, at the time, locals, so your description is self-contradictory.

This might help with something benign, or with fixing an error, but what if it is vindictive?

Can I pay the police to make someone’s life miserable? The police sound more like a cartel or gang running a protection racket.

I don’t want the Vietnamese system, and while problems with the US system seem too common, I think I’d prefer the US system.

The police there are absolutely corrupt. The way the system works there is that you buy your job. This is what creates the incentive to find ways to use the system to make money. On the other hand, it also creates optimization incentives as well, so that things get done more quickly.

The harsh reality is that no system is perfect. Each one usually has its +/-'s and usually depends on which side of the fence you're sitting on.

As the Russian saying goes, "severity of the law is mitigated by not having to follow it".

Someone called the Russian constitution “tyranny mitigated by assasination.’

I haven't heard that one. And, to be honest, it doesn't really make much sense to me, because the modern Russian constitution is a pretty nice document overall, guaranteeing all the good stuff etc. It's just that it's never really been followed.

This isn't new, either - e.g. the 1936 Constitution of the USSR (adopted under Stalin) was considered a very liberal document for its time. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly were all guaranteed, there was strict separation of powers, universal franchise with secret voting, and so on. Ironically, most of the people who authored it would end up in gulags or with a bullet in their head within a few years of its publication.

This quote would be from the 19th century or a bit earlier. Either Abraham Lincoln or one of the American Founding Fathers.

So it would be talking about the Czars.

That still sounds off given that Russia didn't have any constitution at all until 1906, after the first Russian revolution. Getting one was the primary demand of Russian liberals throughout the 19th century, and was stubbornly resisted by the monarchy because a ruler bound by any kind of constitution is no longer a proper "autocrat", which was an important ideological distinction for the Empire.

Even when it comes to informal, customary constitutions, the only restriction that was universally upheld was that the reigning monarch had to be Eastern Orthodox (if they weren't, they ipso facto didn't have the divine right to rule). Everything else was ultimately subject to the Emperor's whim.

In theory the humans in the process should be exercising judgement to smooth over these bugs (e.g., it's why the US legal system works (or should work) the way it does). Someone somewhere either should have the authority to do it, or has it but lacks the personal agency/awareness to use it.

Public servants not following the laws to the letter can introduce legal risk. If OP had somehow found the right person at the DMV high up enough to do something about this, they probably could have, but giving discretion to bend the law at even a 'manager' level might be too much of a risk for the state.

Then bugs in the process need to be aggressively fixed, with liability for damages caused.

Unfortunately, most humans involved in these processes are satisfied with being cogs in the wheel. Nothing wrong with that, they have their own bills to pay and a hundred other things to be worried about.

A system that can even allow anyone to “flag” potential process issues to be bubbled up will be quite useful. Such as the role played by X and Google reviews for most private businesses. Or the “How was your experience?” machines outside washrooms with three smiley buttons goes a long way than not having any feedback loop.

This is exactly what a "rise of the machines" style attack looks like.

The bureaucratic world is so much easier to dominate than the physical world.

The future dystopia isn't 1984, it isn't Brave New World, it is Brazil.

I think you're correct, but it sucks. The dystopia of Brave New World is far more fun than the others.

Here is what I expect that to look like: https://youtu.be/LFlFIG22Y9E

This movie was released in 1985. At that time, a dystopian scenario like this was far out. In 2024 I don't think it's very far out—it's on the horizon.

Brazil, with a bit of Wall-E mixed in.

I had a similar thing except on a much longer timeframe. When I turned 21 I went to renew my license and register a truck I bought. I paid by check. When the lady told me it'd be one sixty three (or something like that) I wrote a check for $1.63. She took it, gave me my paperwork and sent me on my way.

Fast forward 10 years the state must have digitized everything and I received a collection notice in the mail. I hadn't even lived in that state or owned that vehicle for several years. At least my license wasn't invalid.

This happened to me in California. They completely lost all records of my payment, I was assessed a late fee, my license was suspended, and then my driving record got marks. I was unknowingly driving on a suspended license for months.

Anyway, no one could do anything about it until I wrote a letter to a judge in the court system and he wrote back and was able to reverse all the damage.

> no one could do anything about it until I wrote a letter to a judge in the court system

How did you know what judge to contact? Can citizens just appeal administrative stuff like this in California to judges without filing a whole suit?

So I found a copy of the letter that I wrote and it was just addressed to “Your Honor” and I physically dropped off the letter at the court in person to the front desk.

I left my mailing address and I got back a return letter in the mail a few weeks later or something.

I have no idea what you can do it for but it worked for my problem at least.

I believe you can generally get items to a judge like that, but do not do it with evidence (at least not in a proper trial). Things have to be entered into evidence, provided to the prosecution, etc.

Things like this are totally worth a try, though. The legal system can be much more flexible than it seems, and the humans underneath it are generally kind of occasionally overworked and frustrated.

I got out of a huge "parking in a handicapped spot" ticket when I was like 16. I was running late to school, the only parking space available was next to the handicapped spot. I thought I was just barely outside the space, turns out I was just barely inside (~3-4").

I just took pictures and went down to the courthouse. I told them what happened, that I didn't intend to deprive anyone of their handicap space and that I know they need them, and that even though I know I accidentally screwed up, the space should have still been usable. I asked if they could cut me a little slack, and they did. I got a little admonition about being more careful, which was eminently fair, and they dismissed the ticket.

New Jersey will take money to "lift your suspension" and blatantly neglect to mention you also have to pay a fee to "Restore your driving privileges". I think they got in trouble with this so now all NJ speeding tickets are court appearance mandatory so they can pull you into their insurance surcharges over three following years and other fee schemes legally. But the pro tip is notify DMV as soon as you move. And nowadays it is best to get set up with the DMV online.

To resolve it, did you really have to get a learners permit and retake your drivers test? Outrageous.

I did, yes. Retook a "written" permit test (which is now an ipad-based test), then had to wait for my permit to arrive via mail, then had to schedule and take a proper drivers test, after paying the adjusted late fee. Was a wild ride.

The people who enforce rules like this don't have the IQ to grasp the concept that rules could have a bug.

The people who enforce rules like that know that their bosses will fire them if they don’t, and I doubt that they’re paid so much that finding another job wouldn’t be a personal terror.

Politicians and pundits love to rail against government inefficiency or bureaucracy but that’s an intentional tactic to absolve the politicians who created the problem. If the law says there’s a penalty after 52 weeks, the DMV employee can’t override it unless they’re very specifically authorized to do so.

liquidise says the DMV recorded they received the check on time.

If that is true, and the records show what can only be explained by a clerical error - there is always a procedure to fix clerical errors. If liquidise wrote to his senator and the senator took up the cause, I guarantee the error could be corrected by an orderly and legal procedure.

Of course, whether that procedure is known to front-line workers, and whether they can do it fast enough to achieve their call processing time targets is another matter.

It is more a matter of time, energy and patience to find the person actually authorized to fix the clerical error.

Oh, no doubt. My point is that you don’t rail against someone doing their job, you follow that process for getting it corrected. Like if Verizon messes up my bill, being a jerk to the call center worker won’t do much but finding a contact who actually has the ability to authorize a change does.

> The people who enforce rules like that know that their bosses will fire them if they don’t, and I doubt that they’re paid so much that finding another job wouldn’t be a personal terror.

It's very difficult to fire a government employee. This is because of "due process" requirements that apply specifically to the government taking something from you (in this case, a job). The due process requirements are fairly burdensome and drawn out, so often the inept employee is just shuffled off to another office or put somewhere that he has minimal impact on others.

You’re overstating the difficulty: you have to show cause and demonstrate fairness, but in the scenario we’re talking about that’s very straightforward: show that a clerk had been trained on the rules, didn’t follow them, and didn’t improve when warned.

" ... had been trained on the rules, yet interpreted them compassionately according to sober interpretation of their intent, and didn't improve when warned ... "

It’s less IQ and more that they’re neither the ones writing the rules nor are they empowered to fix the situation.

Actually, I'd like to make it clear I'm including the makers also.

Robocat's law: people that think others have low IQ, tend to have low IQs.

Not quite Dunning-Kruger which might have been a statistical mistake.

Disclosure: former maker.

I suspect it is because lower IQ people struggle to recognise higher IQ in others.

Smartest guy I know said the smartest guy he knew delivered pies. Smart people are cryptic.

Robocat's perverse corollary: when you look for smartness in people you can always find it: usually in an unfamiliar area.

Assuming that it's a statistically useful, predictive principle, you'd still have to gather a documented history of me consistently underestimating people's IQs in order to suspect that mine might be low on that basis.

Statistical sampling: a typically academic smart reply.

I believe smartness is an ability to intuitively see patterns that others do not obviously see. Our writing is full of signals and some people are adept at reading a lot into a simple comment. I'm not suggesting I'm any good at it, and unfortunately there are also a lot of people who think they're good but are not.

Mentioning "IQ" at all is a huge flag: often used by people that are academically successful but that is a poor measure of how smart someone is.

While my comment was written in a cheeky style, I am actually writing about my own experience as a reasonably smart person dealing with my own lack of wisdom over the years.

Don't worry: I don't actually suspect you have a low IQ.

Yes, completely off-topic, I shouldn't bite I know!

It's not necessarily about IQ. I'm a US citizen (white, male, professional, no criminal record or questionable associations). For years, every time I would enter the US I would get detained and questioned by immigration officials. Once, while waiting for an immigration officer at a passport check, I noticed that she had paused and looked like there was a problem. I asked what the problem was, and she said "the computer said your face doesn't match your passport photo". I was standing right there, holding my passport, and anyone with eyes could see that I was the same person. I pleaded with her, and offered her two other forms of ID, but she refused to override the computer system and I was detained and questioned. It wasn't that she had a low IQ, it was that she didn't want to accept the consequences if her judgment call was wrong, much safer to just go with what the computer system says and not have a liability.

The next time I entered the US, it was Christmas Eve, and I flew straight to my hometown to spend time with family. Of course, they detained me. I asked what the issue was, and they said that the computer didn't match my passport photo. I told them that this keeps happening to me, and they looked a little closer and said "in the computer system where a photo of your face should be, we have a photo of a boarding pass". I asked them how to fix it, they said it wasn't possible but suggested that I get a new passport. I never got a new passport, but after that day, I never had trouble entering the US again, so I imagine that one of the officers felt some compassion for me and managed to get the bug in the system fixed for me.

I do think that maybe that officer had a bit of a higher EQ than most.

It has nothing to do with IQ, and everything with turning people into cogs in a machine. Following the rules, no matter how inane, is safe. Making a judgment call to break the rules exposes one to risk, and people who will review it later will likely be in the same conundrum themselves (i.e. it's always safer for them to conclude that breaking the rules was not justified), all the way to the top.

This is also why the larger and the more hierarchical any organization is, the more sociopathic it is as a whole, even if its bureaucracy is ran by people who aren't.