Comment by MauranKilom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MauranKilom | Hacker News Reader

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> the idea you're pushing, something like "this doesn't really matter, the important thing is the government giving people money, the more the better, who even cares if they're American,"

I'm almost unsure how to reply because you seem to ignore the central point of the comment you're replying to. Your characterization omits the most salient point: That it had to be done fast. I don't see how the tradeoffs in emergency distribution of funds are in any way indicative of whether you can trust welfare states to be administered properly or not. The comment was precisely about "lack of administrative rigor" being warranted in favor of preventing greater harm.

> Does Sweden send welfare checks to Americans who aren't Swedish citizens? If not, perhaps that partly explains why the Swedes are more comfortable with an expansive welfare state than Americans.

I don't understand how this point relates to the general value of welfare systems that you are discussing. Are you saying an American welfare system has to be inherently less reliable? Or that there are more Americans than Swedes so statistically Sweden will receive more accidental checks from America than the reverse? Could you elaborate?

> I'm almost unsure how to reply because you seem to ignore the central point of the comment you're replying to. Your characterization omits the most salient point: That it had to be done fast.

It had to be done fast, and it had to be handled by a department that's chronically underfunded due to decades of underfunding fueled by all the political hand-wringing for which terms like "welfare state" have become watchwords.

One could mount an argument that that's irrelevant, the real problem is that the IRS is being asked to do something like this in the first place, and there would otherwise be no need to have an organization that's well-funded and competent enough to handle things like this quickly and accurately. I personally find those sorts of arguments specious, though, by virtue of being anti-democratic. This is not Plato's Republic, and we do not get to rely on infallible philosopher kings to make our decisions. As long as there is a plurality of opinions, and as long as opinions change over time, there will always be this sort of tug-of-war and sloppiness as the policy decisions being made now interact poorly with the policy decisions that were being made at other times.

Or perhaps I should say ademocratic? It's arguably sensical to think, "Everything would work great if it just went my way," but it's best to relegate that sentiment to the world of political thought experiments. Taking it as an unstated major premise in an actual political discussion about current policy decisions in a functioning democracy is painfully impractical. It's just like code: If you try to deal with a messy legacy system by closing your eyes and blithely steamrollering along with your own clean, modern code, the end result will not be more clean and modern. It will just be an even bigger mess.

Yes, the parent comment was about "lack of administrative rigor". The cheerful acceptance of that situation was the topic of my post.

There is no reason why someone can't support the welfare state and also demand efficiency. That demand represents an ideal; there will always be errors, but the insistence that all errors are unavoidable and that (as the parent suggested) we shouldn't even talk about them is extremely irritating. It provides the enemies of the welfare state with the best possible arguments ("you don't even care if the money is going to people who need it").

It's more that such a focus on 'efficiency' actually in practice comes from people who either place an extremely high moral cost on cheats or mistakes (far greater than the actual monetary cost of such issues), or from (more cynically) those opposed to the goals of such institutions in the first place (i.e. they believe the welfare itself is wrong and even those allowed under the rules do not deserve it). This is born out in the reactions that such critics tend to impose on the system, i.e. imposing draconian and expensive checks on those who seek it, both rejecting or impeding legitimate claiments while also not demonstably reducing costs (any savings due to catching fraud or even just rejecting those who need it being swallowed up by the cost of the checks).

See the UK government's current (over the last 10 years) approach to welfare. Lots of money spent on checks which are run almost seemingly malicously incompetently, the vast majority of rejections not being upheld when they go to court (even more expensive), assuming the claiment hasn't died by then (as many have due to extreme poverty).

It's the kind of argument which carries a lot of emotional weight (everyone hates a cheater) but it's really hard to believe is being taken in good faith from a rational, cost-reduction perspective.

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