Comment by sergiomattei
11 hours ago
What bothers me is the double standard.
When the public asks for fully publicly-owned railways, universal healthcare, or any basic social safety assurances—“socialism”.
When a megacorporation struggles, immediately to the rescue.
It’s not a double standard, you just don’t understand the standard.
It’s a triple standard you just can’t count.
Bailouts aren't following some rules of fairness, they're for specific reasons like preventing greater economic problems (2008) or national security (probably Intel). You might disagree that those are the best ways to address those risks but that's why we elect the government to make those decisions and act on them instead of letting the country collapse - which is arguably more important than social services which won't really matter if there's no money to fund them or the country has been taken over by some hostile enemy.
Is like the country is not already collapsing due to lack of social services compared to the supposed enemy which already has higher lifespan while having 10x lower gdp per capita.
The US is not “collapsing” and we have plenty of social services.
Our lifespan is lower because we’re fat.
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Not a serious problem in the same sense that a military conflict would be. Different categories and different concerns.
> Bailouts aren't following some rules of fairness
And people wonder why populism came back. Huge transfers of wealth aren't about 'fairness', its about preventing greater economic problems that the people who received the bailout say will happen if they don't get bailed out.
At the end of the day, this line of thought is going to fuck over the country far more than any depression would.
That’s fine. But when the gov is picking winners and losers, that not a free market. What it is, it is. But it’s not a free market based system.
One big difference is management control. People feel that government administered services tend to have poor management and citizen services more often than not. One big example is the DMV since almost every has experience dealing with it, long queue times are almost universal because no one gives a crap and it's very hard to fire a government employee. Or the passport issuance, or applying for permits. Or unemployment benefits, the list goes on and on.
Imagine if the DMV and passport services had even the possibility of competition like a private company has. You bet all of a sudden the service would get much faster and better and with fewer mistakes and red tape with the same or fewer number of employees. Or someone would set up a competitor and imagine how many people would even pay extra just to not waste several hours of their time.
It's tax payer money so there is a lot more waste than even at big private companies. For example, the costs to just administer and operate the social security administration(not including any money paid out to recipients) is $15 billion dollars with a big B. There is no incentive for anyone to save the tax payer any money and there would be a huge pushback from govt contractors, unions and employeees. See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies.
Any large IT project in the government in almost any country and at any goverment costs huge amounts while not returning much value if any. Look at the state and costs of local metro stations and trains in almost any city.
That's interesting example to choose, as I've actually heard often that the Social Security administration is an example of an efficient government administration.
For example, a quick Google search shows administrative overhead as around 0.5% of benefits: https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/top-ten-facts-...
Just one instance.
https://fedscoop.com/problem-project-threatens-progress-soci...
> The program, called the Disability Case Processing System, or DCPS, was designed to improve case processing and enhance customer service. But six years and $288 million later the program has “delivered limited functionality and faced schedule delays as well as increasing stakeholder concerns
For the main system they're still using COBOL, which has no Date data type, causing issues even in 2025.
> See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies.
I don't think many people believed DOGE was ever intended to improve government efficiency in any real sense.
> See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies
I think you should be aware that “proposing cuts” is not why people why DOGE got hate. I find it disappointing that serious people believe that.
Well, my local DMV is much more efficient and friendly than the private health insurance company I have to deal with.
But part of that is lack of competition. I can't really switch to a different insurance company, because the one I am with is heavily subsidized by my employer.
And BTW, I agree that Social Security overhead is unacceptable. It should be privatized and increased to at least $500 billion to be comparable with health insurance companies.
It's not acceptable at all to make private companies look bad.
If it was a company it'd have failed already.
> The program, called the Disability Case Processing System, or DCPS, was designed to improve case processing and enhance customer service. But six years and $288 million later the program has “delivered limited functionality and faced schedule delays as well as increasing stakeholder concerns
https://fedscoop.com/problem-project-threatens-progress-soci...
And that's just one instance.
Can you imagine raising $288 million from VCs for a software application while delivering so little?
But taxpayer money? Free and easy money to keep wasting coz no one cares. Tragedy of the commons.
For the main system they're also using COBOL, which has no Date data type, causing issues even in 2025.
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In my entire life, I spent much less time in DMV offices than on the line calling AT&T's customer support.
USPS has also been great overall.
I switched away from AT&T. You even keep your number. Switching govt services not an option unless you take more extreme measures.
> USPS has also been great overall
USPS is an independent agency which is funded by its own fees charged to users, not taxpayer money. It's not like the other agencies.
From Wiki:
> The USPS is often mistaken for a state-owned enterprise or government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak) because it operates much like a business
It's also far from a monopoly unlike most other govt agencies and has competition in the form of UPS, Fedex, DHL, Amazon etc.
So it's not surprising that it runs better, if it loses user fees, it directly affects the bottomline and thus would have to downsize, no blank check from the taxpayer like other agencies have.
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