Comment by citizenpaul
6 days ago
There is a rather famous book written on this subject.
Catch-22.
In order to be given disability you must jump through so many hoops that no one whom is actually sick could complete them. Or how in unemployment you must prove you must spend your time proving you are looking for a job so you cannot spend you time actually looking for a job. My personal fav because its almost universal is sick-day policies that codify 100% abuse of sick days because people are punished for not using them because some people were "abusing" their sick days.
In the case of the book to be discharged from military service they must prove they are insane which no insane person could complete.
Minor correction, but in the book the act of asking to be discharged on account of insanity is taken as proof that one is sane, because no sane person would want to keep flying bombing missions day after day with low odds of survival.
That honestly doesn't make much sense when presented like that. It doesn't seem obvious that every single insane person would pick the insane choice in every scenario. It sounds more like a case of "necessary but not sufficient" in terms of sanity. (I imagine the book probably had plenty more nuance than the oversimplified strawman that I'm criticizing).