Comment by hattmall | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hattmall | Hacker News Reader

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For most people, particularly those who don't work in government. The federal government represents problems, aggravation, frustration and general resentment. Practically no one walks away from interactions with the federal government with a positive feeling.

Dealing with the bureaucracy is generally awful. Most of the time you will go through several employees over the course of hours/days/weeks or even years and you wonder how they manage to get dressed each day. Eventually you get someone who solves your problem in about 20 seconds.

I don't know if you have ever dealt with the TSA in any meaningful capacity but they are by far the most competent government agency that interacts with the public.

I've worked with law enforcement dealing with computer forensics and our state investigators are reasonably competent. We have had to deal with people in federal agencies and it's mind boggling. I'm talking like a PDF emailed of html source code for a login page with the subject "Run this in power shell". That's coming in on a Friday at 4:55 when we have been waiting for a week and they don't respond back until Wednesday with a reply like "team is checking this out".

Eventually someone will mail you a DVD of a screen recording of them logging into a system that's running on a local IP and then 12 minutes of explaining boolean operators.

I mean, I feel like you might be aware of this, but what you're describing is literally PR and propaganda.

Many millions of people get social security/etc payments every month from the federal government, but of course that doesn't count. "Keep the gov out of my medicare!" anyone?

People have a real short memory and nobody appreciates the lack of mercury and arsenic in their sausages today, it's all about "what are you going to do tomorrow?"

I'm probably not cruel enough to do it but I wish every person who spoke like you just did would have to live a month or whatever without all of the benefits of the government.

I'm speaking to the experience of dealing with the government. It's not propaganda, this is literally what happens. Everyone independently coming to the same conclusion based on their personal experience isn't propaganda. It's reality.

Have you ever tried to deal with the government. I have unfortunately had a lot of dealing with Social security, medicare, medicaid, etc. From having to deal with aging parents. Yes, perhaps once you have gone through the extreme myriad of hoops to get everything set up and your check is automatically coming then yes it's ok. But you better hope no one gets some piece of PII and files something that throws it off.

>I'm probably not cruel enough to do it but I wish every person who spoke like you just did would have to live a month or whatever without all of the benefits of the government.

This is a horrible authoritarian justification. People shouldn't be made to starve so they can appreciate the gruel they are given versus having nothing. We should have a functional, efficient, and pleasant government that isn't adversarial to the general population.

Do you have any idea how long it can take to get a Medicare / SSI disability claim approved?

It was two years for my family member and that's with a very legitimate non-controversial terminal diagnosis. She finally got approved about 3 months before she was on Hospice. And this is someone with reasonable resources and active family members advocating for her. I can't imagine what it's like for low income people without resources or education.

That's not just me though, here's a reddit thread of lots of other people with similar or worse experiences, ( and some better).

https://www.reddit.com/r/SocialSecurity/comments/1c0e8uk/how...

The fact of the matter is the majority of people don't have positive experiences when dealing with the government. I'm not even sure who is supposed to be pushing this propaganda. I would love for it to be the other way around and the government provides clear value in a helpful way, but that is simply not what people experience.

And that's not even getting into what it's like when you start getting copious amounts of automated nonsensical threatening form letters from the IRS.

> Everyone independently coming to the same conclusion based on their personal experience isn't propaganda. It's reality.

I am not discounting your experience; to say this is everyone's experience or even the majority of experiences fails to take into account the "reddit thread of lots of other people with similar or worse experiences" exist because people are more likely to post a bad experience than one that goes smoothly and without issue.

It makes it look as though dealing with government agencies is a completely broken total disaster, but it simply works for the majority of people. They only notice it being "broken" when they have an experience that ran into issues and did not go as planned. I imagine with all the random cuts to employees and entire departments, these experiences will increase.

> start getting copious amounts of automated nonsensical threatening form letters from the IRS

Have not personally encountered this or know of anyone else that has, and who also deals with taxes. I do get calls and letters from the "IRS" but they are scams. Again, not discounting your experience and you would know better than I who the letters are coming from, but "IRS" scams are a thing too.

The other commenter says he will not discount your experience. I, however, will discount your experience.

Your experience isn’t real. What I mean is, you’re not actually talking about your experience, you’re talking about a very small subset of it.

When things work right, the result is invisible. Nobody sees payments that come in on time, meat that isn’t rotten, chemicals that aren’t in our water supply, or roads that aren’t shoddy. The visible part is when things DON’T work right. Since this is all you can see, this is all you think it is.

We cannot imagine a time without these regulations and bureaucrats because we haven’t lived it. But, it did exist. And it was horrifying. Evil beyond the comprehensions of modern men.

We have, largely, eliminated that. However, we did it too well. Now, modern men do not understand the plight. They do not understand that companies used to knowingly sell HIV infected medicine. They do not understand that chemicals used to leave newborns with facial deformities. They do not understand that meat used to kill you. They do not understand that our elderly worked until death. They do not understand that tobacco used to plague our country. They do not understand that people used to live at work. They do not understand that union members and their family were massacred on the streets.

You’re walking a fine line. I recommend working to understand what problems these institutions solve, and then research how good they are at solving them. I assure you, it is much, much higher than you think.

> This is a horrible authoritarian justification. People shouldn't be made to starve so they can appreciate the gruel they are given versus having nothing. We should have a functional, efficient, and pleasant government that isn't adversarial to the general population.

We absolutely should. Do you think elon musk is on his way to accomplishing that? I sure don't.

Like, yes, there are things and situations that absolutely suck dealing with the government. They also suck dealing with corporations and neighbors and anything else involving humans.

The answer is to fix the problems.

Filing taxes is an easy and obvious pain point. It's annoying and tedious and wastes a ton of money that could be automated away by a more efficient and pleasant government.

Here's the actual history of how that's gone:

Democrats: the IRS has started to create electronic versions of the forms people can use to file their taxes without involving a tax prepaper.

Republicans: “We don’t want the tax system to be simple. We want it to be hard so that people realize how much they’re paying.”

> In December 2024, Representative Adrian Smith (R-NE), along with 27 House Republicans, urged President-elect Donald Trump to terminate the IRS's free tax filing service, known as Direct File, on his first day in office. They expressed concerns that the program could lead to government overreach into tax preparation services

> In June 2024, House Republicans introduced a policy rider in the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill aiming to eliminate funding for the IRS's Direct File program. This move was part of a broader effort to prevent the IRS from developing its own tax preparation software, reflecting concerns about government competition with private tax preparation companies.

Are the democrats amazing angels who will solve everything if given power? Obviously not. Are they at least making some small amounts of progress? YES. The republicans are out here actively trying to go BACKWARDS.

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, the answer to problems with government is to fix them. It's possible that the fix in some situations is for the agency/rule/etc to stop existing, but that decision should probably be made by someone with at least an average level IQ and possibly empathy.

Baha

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