It will be hilarious to see this one play out because ChatGPT and Perplexity already do wonders for small-claim issues like tenancy laws, various personal letters, etc.
I dont mean 'frivolous' like prisoners who file pro-se about their ice cream melting [1], but a level or two above that , that costs time and money to produce records and testimony to defend, even if nary a dime is paid out. Basically ask GPT to figure out the terms and theories to file to get your lawsuit accepted, and done by poor people who cannot afford to post $ or repay if they lose. aka "asymmetric warfare" that benefits the little guy, just like the kind private equity or other terrible corporations wield against the poor via"mandatory arbitration" clauses or damages caps and similar rules that always benefit corporations.
1. https://www.deseret.com/1994/3/21/19098386/melted-ice-cream-...
Landlords, tenants, vendors, business and former romantic partners, clients, banks, even your local gym is way more likely to try to fuck you over than the government is.
If a governmental employee gets the address wrong, gets the name wrong, accidentally knocks the mail in the trash, lazily marks the job as complete without sending anything, etc, the burden shifts to the poor person to prove not just that they didn't receive the mail but that the sending office didn't behave correctly.
Other cases behave similarly. In a he-said/she-said, the government wins.
You can sue both in small claims court. You don't need money or a lawyer for that.
You're right it's not unique to the government. But you have uniquely little recourse and the stakes are uniquely high when the government does it.
I've had an old ISP threatening to send me to collections for years over a "you didn't cancel" vs "but I have the confirmation" type dispute from an old apartment. The government would've escalated the fine to thousands and applied violence by now.
>And you receive a lot more demands for money from people who aren't the government than you do from it.
If you do much beyond live in the pod and eat the bugs the government reaches parity real quick. My buddy needed four agencies to sign off on a mail order shed (would've been 3 but he was within 200ft of a stream). Next time he's not asking.
>You can sue both in small claims court. You don't need money or a lawyer for that.
You cannot "just sue" the government for petty cock ups in small claims. Well you can but it'll be dismissed instantly. You have to go through rounds of "administrative" appeals processes that are tilted against you and invariably make traffic court (also administrative BTW) look like a shining beacon of due process. Furthermore, these processes are usually allowed to impose expense on you. Stuff like "well if you want to contest X you have to hire a third party Y for four figures" type stuff. Only after several rounds of that does it go to court. And this takes years, can you say opportunity cost.
I would rather be wrongfully harassed by actual gun toting crime investigating law enforcement any day because at least you have well established and protected rights when those guys come after you.