Hacker News Reader

Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

I am amazed how often people blame this on the tax prep industry and not the government itself. Of course the tax prep industry would lobby against legislation that would absolutely obliterate their industry. Every other industry would do or is currently doing the exact same thing. Pushing against a change that would put hundreds of thousands out of work seems like one of the few good uses of lobbying. However it is the government officials who should see past the one group who is hugely invested in the status quo to decide what is best for the future of the people of this country.

EDIT: This has received multiple downvotes and I'm surprised this was a controversial opinion. Do people genuinely think that industries in a capitalist society won't act in their own self interest regardless of the negative repercussions to society as a whole?

View on HN

Acting in your self-interest does not excuse you from the consequences of your actions. That is not a justification one would accept from individuals and neither should it be acceptable for companies. It may technically be legal (which I would argue is something that should be changed) but that does not mean that it is automatically good.

Yes, TurboTax will make more money thanks to their incredibly effective lobbying efforts, but the price is that all Americans have a somewhat worse experience filing their taxes each year. This compounds over hundreds of millions of taxpayers and most importantly, is completely unnecessary.

If I managed to somehow convince the government to pass a law that everyone has to pay me 1$ every year, that would clearly be in my economic interest, but nobody would argue that that would be a good thing.

Lastly I highly doubt that TurboTax is employing hundreds of thousands of people.

>Acting in your self-interest does not excuse you from the consequences of your actions. That is not a justification one would accept from individuals and neither should it be acceptable for companies. It may technically be legal (which I would argue is something that should be changed) but that does not mean that it is automatically good.

The point of my post isn't to excuse the lobbying. It is to blame the lobbying on the people who could actually curtail it as well as recognizing that almost everyone would do the exact same thing that the tax prep industry is doing given their situation.

>Yes, TurboTax will make more money thanks to their incredibly effective lobbying efforts, but the price is that all Americans have a somewhat worse experience filing their taxes each year. This compounds over hundreds of millions of taxpayers and most importantly, is completely unnecessary.

Almost every law is going to make someone worse off in some way. I don't think it is reasonable to expect that every lobbying organization needs to weigh every possible outcome. Even if they did, they are inherently biased. Judging the ultimate outcomes is the job of the politicians being lobbied.

>Lastly I highly doubt that TurboTax is employing hundreds of thousands of people.

I was speaking about the industry as a whole and not specifically TurboTax. H&R Block itself balloons up to over 90k employees during tax prep season. [1] You can maybe nitpick depending on what exact definition you use for "job", but there is little double that hundreds of thousands of people are employed in the tax prep industry over the course of the year.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%26R_Block#Corporate_affairs

If the government had a free filing system that showed you what you owed, that would probably be less costly for everyone. Then they could hire everyone at turbotax to go after people dodging taxes. The fact that we've continually shrunk the IRS, you know, the one part of the government that explicitly is meant to fund the government, is deeply problematic, and has led to less audits for wealthy people, and more for poor people.

One wonders if one solution to the problem of unemployment caused by an improved tax system would be for the federal government to figure out a plan in which the existing industry converts into government contractors. Might be easier for the IRS to get Intuit to create their free public tax reporting software rather than try to build it themselves.

> I am amazed how often people blame this on the tax prep industry

Should I not blame clothing companies for contracting out to sweat shops? We should absolutely blame companies that are acting against the country's interests. Not all unethical behavior is illegal.

> Should I not blame clothing companies for contracting out to sweat shops

No, but you should also not expect a large company to run itself out of business for ethical reasons. If Nike uses sweatshops Reebok's only options are to follow suit or go under. Making unethical behavior illegal or at least unprofitable is the only option in a free market society.

That starts with making their behavior socially unacceptable. It was customer boycotts that drove ethics in clothing manufacturing. We should not let Intuit off the hook because capitalism means pursuit of profits. Our society has to have higher principles than that.

What ethics? We didn't get rid of sweatshops we just moved them overseas.

Are you really going to pretend that no progress has been made here? A lot of brands monitor their supply chains because they're worried about consumer reaction to unethical behavior.

You are ignoring part of my post by selecting that quote out of context. I also said this:

>Every other industry would do or is currently doing the exact same thing

You are of course free to blame whoever you want, but if you call out the clothing industry for these behaviors while also working in the tech industry which is notoriously guilty of nearly identical problems with its international workforce, I would certainly call you hypocritical.

Either way, I think a more appropriate path to actually fixing the problem isn't to shame the people with the bad behavior. It is to work to make that behavior illegal. This specific example is more difficult than the tax prep issue due to it involving other nations. However there are certainly trade regulations that could be put in place to disincentivize poor labor conditions for companies who wish to access the American market.

I specifically cited an industry that was forced to change by customer behavior (boycotts). Regardless of the change required here, it starts by driving awareness and making this behavior socially unacceptable. There won't be any political will to counter their lobbyists without it.

>I specifically cited an industry that was forced to change by customer behavior

Did they really change? [1] When you rely on public outrage as a motivator, the changes are only as permanent as the public is attentive and motivated.

[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/siminamistreanu/2020/03/02/stud...

Do you think politicians will legislate permanent change without that outrage? If people saw sweatshops on TV and said, “well, they’re just trying to maximize profit” it will guarantee nothing changes.

> Some brands including Adidas, Bosch and Panasonic told ASPI they had no direct contractual relationships with the suppliers indicated in the report, but no one could rule out a link further down their supply chain.

Our society has come a long way on this issue. Of course more progress is needed and all of these companies know this connection is a liability.

If I stole a car and tried to use "I was just following my incentives" as a defense, how far would it get me?

Stealing a car is illegal. Lobbying the government is legal.

If you think lobbying the government should be illegal, maybe you should lobby the government to get that changed.

If stealing a car was legal, would it be a good thing? Would it be wrong to blame me for doing it?

It would obviously also be reasonable to blame the government for allowing it and lobby to have the laws changed, but it is entirely appropriate to blame someone for doing something that's legal but wrong. "It's technically not illegal" might fly in the courtroom (and I stress might), but it doesn't and shouldn't fly in the court of public and private opinion.

If we are creating a hypothetical world in which stealing cars was legal and a large percentage of the population did it, just like a large percentage of the population participates in lobbying directly or indirectly, then I would say that this society doesn't appear to actually consider stealing car to be wrong.

So in the hypothetical world, stealing cars is acceptable because it's legal and legal because it's acceptable? Do you see the problem with that?

The first step in breaking the cycle is forming public opinions that differ from the law. I chose "stealing cars" as an example because it's easy to judge independently from the law and therefore illustrate why the "it's OK because it's legal" line of thinking creates a problematic loop that makes it difficult to fix bad policy.

No, I am not saying it is acceptable because it is legal. It is acceptable because everyone does it. It would be hypocritical to freely allow other people to steal cars, but then start singling out a specific group of people for stealing cars as if they are more immoral than the rest. If your problem is the act of stealing cars, you should be against all stealing of cars.

> If your problem is the act of stealing cars, you should be against all stealing of cars.

So we should blame all of the car thieves for stealing cars? That's what I've been advocating for all along!

This analogy is a mess at this point. The stealing of a car is an action that can be done with a single perpetrator. Lobbying requires both the lobbyist and a politician. I'm not sure what role each different group plays in this stolen car analogy.

Much of society participates in the lobbying side at some level. I don't think it is appropriate to single out specific instances of lobbying as immoral or to shame all of society for participating. We should instead be focusing on the one side of the equation that is easiest to change, the politicians.

Totally agree with the sentiment, but why wouldn't you also expect politicians to act in _their_ self-interest? Favorable legislation in exchange for contributions and future employment opportunities has been par for the course for decades now.

It has nothing to do with expectations of how they would react. It is related to the duties of their job. Acting in the best interest of the people of this country is not something required in a lot of jobs. Politicians are the notable exception.

yep I don't disagree with you. I can see how my comment reads like I'm casting blame solely on corporate lobbying, but it's obviously more complicated than that--money in politics, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com