in bureaucratic hell

[calimac]

I've just spent two and a half hours on the phone with Medicare representatives, trying to straighten out a problem with my late mother's claims.  That's on top of the hour I spent yesterday on the same thing.

Am I ready to disavow my liberal faith in government and let the lean and mean private sector take over our business?  Absolutely not, and here's why.

1) Most of these people were actually trying to be helpful, even if they didn't know anything, and went beyond the call of duty in trying to get me information.  Especially the last one, who was in the wrong department, but who listened when I explained that hers was the only department I could reach, and who really went the extra mile by contacting the right department (unreachable by outside phone) and getting a definitive answer, and chatting agreeably as we waited.

2) These departments that I was communicating with were those of a private contractor, not the government in the strict sense.  And I reached them because I was given the number by a volunteer assistance program whose representatives also took a little extra effort to help.

3) All around, it was far less frustrating than the oceans of time I spent waiting on hold and being shuttled back and forth to the same numbers that had previously been unable to help me, and being assured that something was done when it was not done, and being told I should have asked the previous person to do something they'd told me they could not do, that I had trying to set up AT&T internet service a few years ago.  In this case today, when I reported that someone else could not help me, I was listened to, and something else was tried.

Winston Churchill once said (quoting an old proverb, or so he claimed) that democracy was the worst form of government except for all the others.  So I can say that government bureaucracies are the worst bureaucracies in the world, except for all the corporate ones.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Corporate bureaucracies do have one advantage over government ones: If you don't like the one you're dealing with you can try a different corporate bureaucracy. I found AT&T unsatisfactory when I tried to set up Internet service with them a few years back; so now I'm with Cox. (I'd like there to be more options; two choices isn't really what I call a competitive market!) It doesn't make sense to have competing government offices doing the same job, so you can't have that option for the things government does.

There's a classic book about this, called Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, that I found worth reading a number of years back.

Over the past year, Cox has given me good service; when I had problems they were resolved quickly. Apple has given me first-rate service over the many years I've been dealing with them. There are some corporate bureaucracies that function admirably.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If you don't like the one you're dealing with you can try a different corporate bureaucracy.

HA HA HA HA. HO HO HO HO. HEE HEE HEE. Of all the ...

Look, the only reason I tolerated the AT&T bureaucracy was because otherwise I'd have to go back to Comcast. No one else offers the services I need.

Two companies I loathe to the point where I refuse to do business with them if at all possible are Amazon and Facebook. I can still buy books from Barnes & Noble, but for how long? I'm still occasionally stuck with Amazon, because B&N doesn't carry some things. As for Facebook, I have other reasons for not joining it, but I am really cutting myself off from the major channel of my friends' communication by standing on that principle and restricting myself to e-mail lists and LJ, both rapidly dying.

If I listened to every "this airline's customer service was so bad, I'll never fly them again" report I get from my friends, I'd have crossed every airline in the US off my list. That includes the supposedly friendly Southwest, the "we don't like fat people" airline. There aren't any left. They're all like that, and that's true of every corporation in every industry in the world.

Corporate customer choices are not the kind of cost-free, "well, if you don't like this restaurant, try one of the half dozen others on the same block" kind of free-choice decision that libertarians dream of, and nothing shows their complete disconnect from reality more than this pretending that it's universally available.

You know one thing that government comes with that corporations don't? A staff of 535 ombudsmen willing and eager to help with your intractable problems. And they are indeed often useful.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

If you think of the current crop of 435 congresscritters as "ombudsmen" or "useful"... Well, just if.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Of course they can be. Your member of Congress is Barbara Lee. Don't tell me you think she's in the pocket of the government agencies and refuses to help constituents. My congressman is the one who called on the UN to oversee US elections after the 2000 debacle. His proposal didn't get very far, but was it ever in the right place. Even conservative representatives like to help their constituents with the federal bureaucracy, especially when they can use it to show how much they dislike the federal bureaucracy.

Naturally it doesn't always work, but it's certainly more reliable than the satisfaction one would get by thinking that if you don't like AT&T, you can just switch to Comcast. Now that's self-evidently stupid.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

I agree that AT&T vs. Comcast is a game of two-card monte, and that most such choices are. But not trusting corporations (which, in general, I don't) doesn't make the government trustworthy. That's a false dichotomy - you can trust both, or neither. What I trust is laws (and a Constitution) that rein in the power of both, and policing organizations (especially the press ... which has become something of a joke, alas) to tend to those laws (and Constitution).

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

doesn't make the government trustworthy

Did you read my last paragraph? Did you read my post at all? Did you think I enjoyed 3.5 hours dealing with bureaucracy? All I said was ... it could be worse, and with corporations it probably would be.

You say you trust the laws ... it's the government which makes and enforces those laws. As we are now sometimes seeing, the value of the laws lies in the trust the government deserves to abide by them, because if it chooses not to, it's trouble.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Why is there so little competition in some fields?

I usually disagree with but always greatly admire Sarah Palin, who is the only one I've seen speaking to one key of this: crony capitalism.

Regulators get co-opted, but it may take a while. Warren's agency will probably stay clean and useful for at least a few years.