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Comment by xibalba | Hacker News Reader

Issues like these are why many people conclude it’s best to reduce the size and power of government. The incompetence and apathy in this small, city level bureaucracy is akin to lighting taxpayer money on fire. Now scale that to huge society-wide government initiatives and departments and you have an awe inspiring level of waste.

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If you listen to the phone call he had with that organization - the level of apathy and incompetence is breathtaking. That whole conversation reeks of an organization that has never had to be accountable to anyone for anything. You'd think people would at least have some basic professional pride but here we are.

And the best part is - the citizens (who are impacted by this directly or indirectly) are paying for this.

Reducing the size of the government wouldn’t solve much, though, and it would rather make it even more disappointing. This kind of malfunction almost looks like some people in power are ok with leaving the impression the government is impossible to fix, and its size should be reduced.

Except for it's NYC which means I can assure you the people in power love government and would love more of it and think they're actually doing a good job.

I think what you get in places with limitless opportunity like NYC is the people attracted to government are either not able to cut it in a city like NYC (hence why government employees there are generally incompetent and indifferent) or see the immense wealth as something they can latch on to and exploit to satisfy their hunger for power over other people.

When people say reduce the size of the government they're not saying just get rid of the people who can issue the permits. They're saying to get rid of the permits altogether. You shouldn't need the government's permission to fix computers.

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