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Comment by mactrey | Hacker News Reader

It's not really lying if the buttons used to work, now they don't, but they're expensive to remove so the government just leaves them there. It's at worst a lie of omission. The moral question is more like, is it the government's responsibility to spend money removing a nonfunctioning button to save people the negligible amount of time/effort it takes to press it? The answer is probably not considering that there are lots of ways the government could save people time/effort by spending more money but doesn't.

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if that's actually the case, how about put a small sign by the button? but is it really that hard to remove or disable the button?

do people really need another data point that interactions with government services are filled with pointless exercises and things that may or may not matter?

and it isn't negligible. what about people in wheel chairs or other handicapped situations? and how many times are people wasting time, energy, and conversation discussing traffic light buttons? it's wasteful and disrespectful.

1. Is is better to, say, spend $2mm to remove nonfunctioning buttons, or instead to reduce wait times at the DMV? I think you could make the argument either way; personally, I don't experience much mental anguish about the existence of buttons that might or might not work -- I would rather save the time/money at the DMV, DEQ, filing state taxes, etc. Note that adding signage still costs money and is also only a temporary solution - signs need to be replaced every few years, depending on the initial implementation.

2. If it's overly difficult for handicapped people to press the buttons then they should never have been implemented in the first place. But considering that they exist, if they are difficult to press and pressing is required to cross, isn't that just altogether worse for disabled people than if they are difficult to press but entirely nonfunctioning/nonrequired?

> if that's actually the case, how about put a small sign by the button? but is it really that hard to remove or disable the button?

These days, I think it would suffice for the local/national (depending on the scope) government to announce that pedestrian lights buttons are no longer working because $reasons. Rebroadcasted by media, it would reach many people, and anyone else would know where to look for answer, if they become interested in the question.

There's no real need to lie. It could be as simple as a tweet.

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