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]

Just because you don't see a line on a balance sheet that says "Net Income" doesn't mean no one is profiting. Here are some ways that decision makers in government bureaucracies profit from their decisions:

° They can set things up in a way that's convenient for them at the expense of actually providing service to their clients
° They can arrange things so they can't, or can't easily, lose their jobs for unsatisfactory performance
° They can insulate themselves from actual criminal penalties for wrongful acts, and have their employers pay civil damages they incur (this is a big problem with a lot of police forces)
° At the higher levels, particularly those that are still above career civil service, they can leave their government jobs and get well paid corporate jobs

There are also the routine payoffs of civil service positions, such as general job security and defined benefit retirement plans when the rest of the economy has gone over to defined contribution plans (for the people who have pension plans of any kind, of course). But those don't depend on what choices a given civil servant makes and thus don't count as "profit" in the same way. I think, though, they still count as rent-seeking.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

And they actually take home money, which they're actually permitted to spend on rent, or on anything else they might want to buy. Shocking!

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I didn't mention those, of course, because they are not a point of difference between government employees and private sector employees.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

And do you not realize that your four examples (slightly modified, mutatis mutandis) also apply equally as well to corporations, as well? (In the case of the last one, for "leave their government jobs and get well paid corporate jobs," read "leave their corporate jobs and get better-paid jobs at another corporation," and doesn't that often happen, probably more often than the other)

I mention the pay because there are a lot of people who get curiously upset at their tax dollars going to finance government employees' private lives, but they don't seem to get upset about the overinflated prices they pay for private goods going to finance the far vaster private finances of CEOs). It can't just be because buying private goods is voluntary, because in practice it often isn't.

[eddyerrol.livejournal.com]

Well, that's why I said "in theory." Even if it's not perfect, I think it's still a better model (at least for some services, like healthcare) than those where profit motive is central.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

My preferences for healthcare are quite the opposite, but that would be a different discussion and a very long one. Let's just say that I favor reforms that are as radical as single payer would be, but in the opposite direction.