7 ms·

I have luckily never been caught in one of these kakfa-esque bureaucratic traps before, but I don't know how people hold it together when they do get caught in

• loquor 7y ago
  Kafkaesque is indeed the right term. I wonder if Governments can be 'optimized' by combing out complexity the way an organization can. To other HN readers, what recourse do the people in the article have?
  • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Not much, he ran the business as a sole trader rather than limited company so its debts are his debts.
• dmreedy 7y ago
  Indeed so; and not just government, any bureaucracy of sufficient size. To take a bit of a pop-sci angle, then as soon as you pass Dunbar's Number. A video essayist I follow on youtube had a bit of a discussion about this, about being on the receiving end, after his car had been stolen, joy-ridden, and then set on fire. He was required to pay impound fees for the wreck, using proof of ownership that had been in the glove box. When he told this to the clerk at the impound lot, the response came, "Well, that's going to be a bit of a problem, isn't it?". And followed the red haze and the realization that these lots don't have bullet-proof glass in front of the counter to protect from robbery. But I'd argue that it's borderline impossible to genuinely account for even the second tier of possible edge cases, even in the best of faith; law is too complex, and world changes at different rates in different places in too many ways to make that kind of considered extrapolation anything but speculative in the best case, and hopeful, well-intentioned gambling in the worst. Incidentally, this is a typical argument against regulation, though I'm not sure I agree with that, either...
  • loquor 7y ago
    Your point regarding regulation is quite pertinent. How do you refute the idea that strict regulation will create a non-navigable mess?
    • dmreedy 7y ago
      I don't, except by the weak negative; I feel that lack of strict regulation creates a predatory, cruel, socially violent mess, which feels less desirable to me. Not to imply that the banal evil of a bureaucratic mess is not a bad thing.
  • notus 7y ago
    I agree that it is probably impossible to account for a lot of edge cases, but then that means there should be more generalized methods for recourse when people feel that the law hasn't accounted for their situation. It sounds like the courts in this situation were just deferring to existing law rather than realizing there is an issue with it and addressing it.
    • dmreedy 7y ago
      Just for the record, I didn't mean to sound like I was happy about that point :). A more generalized system of recourse is an interesting idea, but I'm having a hard time imagining (and likely the fault of my own imagination) something more general than a court system. Either way, I feel like it'll be an immensely difficult uphill battle no matter what, because it's always easier to take the conservative route and defer to precedence, even if there's an acknowledged issue. How does one rattle an institution out of its comfort zone? It's a pretty old question.
      • ta0987 7y ago
        IIUC Common law courts were supposed to be exactly that - that's where the concept of judicial precedent comes from. When a court hears a case and decides it's different enough from previous cases it makes a new ruling for that scenario which is now a precedent for other cases in that scenario. The collection of rulings built up over time is the law.
• dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >It seems like there isn't any thought being put into possible edge cases for policy and here seems to be little recourse for people to get out of it There's often someone who wants to fix the bug when it comes up but unless it's mission critical over time it drops in priority and fades into the nothingness of the backlog and in the rare instances when the bug comes up it still keeps getting dealt with manually. This isn't unique to government but the fact that government has a monopoly on many of the services it provides and the onus is often on the citizen to take action to avoid some sort of default action against them certainly does not help them find motivation to fix the edge cases quickly.
• pjc50 7y ago
  It's not specific to governments, any sufficiently large organisation behaves like this. Think of the people who've had Google accounts vanished without explanation. Or the RBS small business scandal: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/12/confidential-report-into-rbs-small-business-scandal-to-be-published https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/12/confidentia... At least with governments you get a representative.
  • blotter_paper 7y ago
    > At least with governments you get a representative ...if you live in a republic. Bonus points if it's a democratic republic; then your representative will actually listen to you... if you can outbid the competition and get said representative elected via advertising money. At least with a corporation, they can't impose arbitrary fines on you and lock you in a concrete box if you don't pay said fines... unless the government says they can.
    • anoncake 7y ago
      >> At least with governments you get a representative > ...if you live in a republic. The Parliament of the United Kingdom doesn't actually exist? That explains a lot about Brexit.
      • blotter_paper 7y ago
        The quote said governments, not "this one specific government."
      • yellowapple 7y ago
        The House of Lords kinda throws a wrench in calling the UK a republic, IMO. I know they're technically representatives (of... someone), but the Life Peers within the Lords Temporal are Crown-appointed ("on the advice of" the PM, which sounds like Her Majesty can tell the PM to bugger off and ignore that advice, but maybe there are specific restrictions there that I ain't aware of on account of not being British), which to me sounds like monarchy with extra steps.
• tomatotomato37 7y ago
  Sometimes they don't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer
• Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  A lot of these problems seem to stem from people unwilling (not unable, unwilling) to exercise judgement, and apply the rules in an ever-so-slightly flexible fashion. With the right attitude, a lot is possible, but as you said there is often this "wall of indifference". I think a big reason for this is that it can feel good to exercise power over other people by saying "no". This is doubly the case if you live in a society where everyone is always doing this to everyone else: you feel "small" and pushed around, so when you actually get the chance to push others around you'll instinctively grab it.
• downerending 7y ago
  This reminds me a lot of my most recent divorce negotiations, and indeed, I don't understand how so many people deal so well with these catastrophes. Take it from me: Don't get overly attached to money, things, or really even people. Think of it all more as a ride that you get to enjoy for a while, and then you get off. If you're killing yourself at your job with the thought that you'll someday retire happily or otherwise get to start a happier phase of life (or even just be thanked for your hard work), disabuse yourself of that notion. The money you're piling up can be taken from you in a flash, or become worthless to you due to more overwhelming developments. I saw a homeless man the other day with two dogs. The dogs were obviously happy, and had no concern that they were poor and might have had a much richer life. They had their health, weren't starving, and there were interesting things to do that day. I strive to live like those dogs.
  • taberiand 7y ago
    The Greek and Roman philosophers had these concerns solved ages ago with the Stoics and others. Happiness comes from within, whatever situation we might find ourselves in.
    • voxl 7y ago
      Ah stoicism, toxic masculinity lite
      • taberiand 7y ago
        That doesn't gel with my understanding and experience of Stoicism. What makes you think of it that way?
        • glouwbug 7y ago
          Hollywood popularized Han Solo, Clint Eastwood, and the likes as the Stoic Male archetype which recently became the poster boy for toxic masculinity. Shame though, because Stoic derives from Latin for porch. The Stoics sat and shared their ways of a happy life on porches. Stoicism does not subscribe itself to the male gender - it is a pursuit, much like Taoism or Buddism, to reach peace within the Logos, or rather the grand chaos that is the universe itself. Anyone of any descent or gender may become one with the Logos.
• ajross 7y ago
  > Everything about governments This is a private pension plan which ran out of money. The only "government" involved is that the law about who holds the bag is unfair.
  • buckminster 7y ago
    The fund has plenty of money. That's part of the absurdity.
    • ajross 7y ago
      Per the article, he's being "pursued for a shortfall" under Section 75. Obviously I don't know any more details of the case than that, and it's certainly possible that this is all shenanigans driven by a corrupt pension administration. But I don't see that that changes the point much: this is entirely private people arguing in court over 100% private money. There's literally no bureaucracy to be offended by. In theory this kind of dispute could happen with any 401k plan in the US too.
      • twic 7y ago
        Your assumptions are basically all wrong. The pension administrator is not corrupt. Their current assets are 101% of what they need to be to cover their liabilities, assuming they can use returns on the assets to pay for the liabilities, given some standard set of assumptions about investment returns [1]. The "shortfall" is about a "wind-up basis", or "buy-out basis", which means assuming that the scheme sells its assets and uses the proceeds to buy annuities. Buying annuities is a really expensive way to provide a pension, so their current assets aren't enough to cover their liabilities this way. But they're not going to do this! Neither the administrator nor the members want to do this! The private people are not arguing over the private money, they're all perfectly happy with each other. But the law requires that a pension fund has enough assets to do this! Why does the law require this? I have no idea. I'd have to dig out Hansard or white papers from the mid-'90s to find out, and that is a bridge too far. But it seems clear that the problem here is entirely derived from government regulations which don't align with what the private people involved want. [1] https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2018-01-11a.578.5 https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2018-01-11a.578.5
• tluyben2 7y ago
  What I find the most amazing, is that you do not get more desperate vengeance cases. I mean ; you worked your whole life, you tried to do the right thing, you basically have nothing to lose and yet you do not go out and hurt the people that screwed up your life out of nowhere. That always gives me new confidence in humanity as it feels like that could so easily happen, every time when someone (or a loved one) is screwed over by something they or you cannot, legally, get justice for. Not only governments; big companies that just 'do things' because, like you say, no-one seems to have given any consideration to the edge cases. When you put that to them (Google, MS etc), the answer is always (possibly with some rancid dress-up) 'we cannot account for every case; that would not be commercial'. Governments probably have the same reasons but they cannot say that out loud (usually) because re-election (of their political party). A friend changed her last name two months ago; she got a letter that it succeeded and it would take 3-6 months to take effect. So today, while she was traveling, she got a letter from the gov that it was finished and that all her papers are per direct expired. Passport, ID, driver's license etc. This was an edge case in that: 0) it rarely happens (first name happens more often, last name is rare here) 1) it usually takes much longer 2) they usually send a letter with enough room to request new papers 3) most people don't travel much. But the end result was; those docs expired and 'we are sorry not warning you on time, but sorry we cannot do anything, you have to come to NL to request new ones'. No valid documents to travel, so how does that work? Anyway; not quite the same thing as the article, but it happens weekly at least. No-one thinks things through, ever.