in bureaucratic hell
Jul. 15th, 2014 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI'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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2014-07-17 07:43 pm (UTC)On a very quick skim, I think my 1950s civics class is showing. I remember learning that the 'mixed' system was pretty good -- a mixture of all the above factions -- because the mix (like the Constitution) was built of checks and balances. If each faction were full of selfish people (er, sorry) out for their own power/money, still they would cancel each other out.
That assumed a press where reporters made money from investigative reporting/muckraking because that sold newspapers to readers/voters, and newspaper sales were where newspaper owners and invnestors got their money. -- If media is now getting its money from advertising, and from backers pushing their own interests, the media is no longer balancing the big money interests.
Which means that muckrakers no longer get paid by independent newspapers, so government agencies that get co-opted/captured don't get found out and broken up, so they get stronger.
And reform politicians (Goldwater, Palin, Gore) don't get fair media coverage, so they don't get elected.
So the balance has got way off. The only hope I see, is the few reform politicins still getting elected (Warren etc, and maybe the Pauls) -- and, Ta-Da! practical pay per byte by the readers/voters.
That is -- when it becomes convenient to read some independent low budget website and have a few cents added to my phone bill, just like long distance used to be. Reader supported, just like newspapers used to be.
Wh, i respect your comments but i havent even tried to make my language here up to your standards and may not get back to this discussion at all.