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.

[eddyerrol.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear. At least (in theory) the government bureaucracies are in place to help us without needing a profit incentive to do so.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The corporatist view of the world claims that companies have to please their customers because of their need to make money. The laughable failure of this mode of justifying business should be obvious to everyone by now, but there are many who still live in worlds of hypothetical theory and not reality.

[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.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Hypothetical theory? What part of "I became unhappy with AT&T because of unsatisfactory service, so I went to Cox and I'm getting decent service" was not in English? I'm referring to my actual experience as a customer. Admittedly it's anecdote and not data, but this entire conversation, starting with your initial post, is anecdotes; I don't see any reason to think mine are any worse than yours.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If it weren't hypothetical theory, the good companies would have driven the bad ones out of business long ago. Yet bad companies thrive - AT&T has rebuilt itself into behemoth status after being broken apart 30 years ago.

I've had good experiences with large companies too. But they're very much the exception.

[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!

[eddyerrol.livejournal.com]

Often companies are profitable enough in some areas that they know that they can get away with providing substandard service in other areas (for example, with their phone customer service) without it significantly hurting them. I worked in a call center for a while when I was younger, and even though there was often lip service paid toward providing good customer service, the reality was quite different. If we could get through enough calls with out irritating people TOO much, then it was deemed sufficient. It was all about numbers, not about providing genuine satisfaction (again, unless it got so bad that the company HAD to pay attention; but the low grade irritation of numerous unhappy customers was often not enough to register with the powers-that-be).

[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]

I think you have an oversimplified view of economic processes; you seem to think of large businesses as purely market actors, without allowing for the role of government in shielding them from competitive forces. There is an extensive body of political economic thought that examines this subject; look up such terms as "rent-seeking" and "regulatory capture" if you want to know more.

I was not saying "any element of market competition will automatically cure all the ills of large organizations." My statement was much more limited; I said that the ability to stop dealing with an unsatisfactory provider and move to another one was an advantage, and that by the nature of government bureaucracies, that advantage could not be available with them. There is a conceptual difference between "an advantage" and "a panacea."

You began this discussion by a post in which you (a) offered your personal observation of the inefficiency of a government bureaucracy and the frustration of dealing with it and (b) affirmed that nonetheless you believe in the goodness of government bureaucracy. Now you are complaining that people who say there is some good in markets and competition, and point to actual good experiences with business firms, are devoted to purely hypothetical theory. I think perhaps your sense of irony isn't working. Why shouldn't agoraphiles like me be just as entitled to our faith as you are to yours?

[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.

[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.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Oh, come, sir. Did you read my post? Did you see the declaration at the end that government bureaucracy is the worst kind, except for corporate ones. My faith in government is that it is fundamentally a good thing, despite the problems with its bureaucracy, and should not be replaced with the private sector.

Now, switch to my feelings about the other end, corporations. Did I say anything to the reverse contention, about how corporations should be abolished and their work taken over by the public sector? I did not. If your defense of corporations is merely to lead to the conclusion, "They should exist," we are in agreement.

Since I'm not using corporate bureaucracy to advocate the elimination of corporations any more than I'm permitting using government bureaucracy to advocate the elimination of government, there is no hypocrisy or lack of awareness of irony here. The reason for me to emphasize the one point over the other is that there currently is nobody of significance advocating the elimination of corporations - even the Occupy Wall Street wasn't calling for that - while there are plenty of people eager to use government bureaucracy as an excuse to at least emasculate if not "drown in the bathtub" government.

Had your last paragraph, emphasizing your satisfaction with Cox, been on the comment when I replied to it, I might have taken up the point then about corporate bureaucracies not being uniformly evil, and of how little difference that fact makes to the point.

The problem with your declaration that one can leave a bureaucracy for another bureaucracy (which may not even be true for much longer) is that it's so futile as to express a deep disconnect with reality. I thought about comparing it with the 1930s polemicists who insisted that democracy was dead and the only choice was between fascism and communism, with "you can have any color you want as long as it's black", etc.

In the end I gave four specific examples of how this supposed choice is futile. I direct your attention particularly to #4, the airlines, because here's an entire industry consisting of nothing but horrible customer-service corporations. I don't know how good Cox is being to other customers than you, but I've had mostly good experiences with Southwest. I thought they were a good company until I read about their anti-fat policies. I thought Jet Blue was a sensible airline until I read about the time they kept their passengers locked up in a parked plane for 6 hours. Bad behavior trumps good.

You say that you intended to present choice of corporations as merely an advantage, not a panacea, but in these cases, it's not even an advantage. Any airline is easily capable of screwing you over. No other firm offers what Amazon or Facebook do; you're handicapping yourself if you don't use them. And cable service here is a duopoly of two terrible bureaucracies.

Whereas, when it does work, competition is a panacea. I offered a downtown full of restaurants as a contrary example, and that usually works well. Competition keeps them on their toes, and the bad ones usually get weeded out pretty quickly. The very fact that it can be a panacea highlights the ridiculousness of the claim when it's not even an advantage.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

It appears that we agree slightly more than I had grasped, which is a good thing. I'm not sure if you noticed that my comments on choice between corporations included the statement that I don't think there is as much competition between them as I would like, in many cases. Perhaps we would both like to see markets that are genuinely competitive, and government agencies that are doing jobs essential to government and are not expected to be competitively organized (I recall, for example, a passage by Ayn Rand that denounces the idea of competing police forces as demonstrating a failure to understand the essential nature of government), even if we differ drastically on the range of functions that are essentially governmental.

To go further than this we would have to talk about things like the economic history of the twentieth century and the political economy of large corporations, which would get lengthy. I feel that I have already intruded too much on your post, and will not impose on you further.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I posted because I see too many people who are outside of that range. There are many, too many, people who would use a tiring experience with government bureaucracy as an excuse to decry government entire; some of them even cite a bad past experience as what opened their eyes to the evils of government.

But they never say the equivalent about equally annoying experiences with corporate bureaucracies. Strange.

[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.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

'Factions' below will include: the press/media, government agencies, elected officials, customers, voters, muckrakers, etc.

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.