That said, you shouldn't have to call up a politician and beg in order to get government departments to perform functions that they are supposed to be performing.
If you have some ultra-edge case involving your deceased uncle's estate's something or other it can be understandable. But this should be a routine business transaction and the city is incapable of making it happen. He's trying to give them a large amount of money FFS, you'd think they'd accept it and then do the menial amount of work to make the records on their end reflect that.
That's all pretty much ass-backwards. It'd be wildly inappropriate and unethical if a city councilman could somehow sway the settlement of an estate, which is the province of the court.
Getting things moving in city hall's bureaucracy is in the councilman's remit, as is improving the state of the bureaucracy to prevent further problems in the future. They might not be the ideal person to handle anything in particular, but they should sure know who to talk to, and they should make time to do it.
This is why I think that if there has to be an unfixable Kafkaesque bureaucracy, I'd rather it be in the public sector rather than a monopoly in the private sector.
There is not much your local councilman / state rep / US Rep / US Senator / etc can do about a problem with Comcast. But I've seen appeals to elected officials fix lots of issues with government bureaucracy.
A private sector business isn't gonna send thugs with guns to forcibly shut down your business and put you in a cage after being too incompetent to take your money, they're just gonna terminate your service and/or sue you. Which is worse is a matter of preference.
You are of course entirely correct (well, outside of the mob, which is probably a realistic factor for quite a bit of business, but kind of out of scope for "rules").
However, the essence of the matter isn't just about putting you in a cage - it's about excessive and capricious penalties with no real recourse. And those exist aplenty in the private sector. Nor do all laws broken necessarily equate to imprisonment.
In practice, for perceived infractions against whatever rules the powerful organization has, private organizations are pretty ruthless up to but not quite reaching imprisonment. Pseudo-monopolists cutting service, or hefty financial penalties up to and including losing pretty much everything, holding your data hostage: that's all fair game.
These two things aren't the same; but I do think they're both bad and scary enough to warrant not just concern, but in an ideal world, rules. You know, for example, constraints for government, and licensing rules for business.
I think as a corollary it’s important to remember that “A private sector business isn't gonna send thugs with guns” wasn’t always true. Private police pushing people around was common enough in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was laws and government intervention that stopped that.
>A private sector business isn't gonna send thugs with guns to forcibly shut down your business and put you in a cage after being too incompetent to take your money, they're just gonna terminate your service and/or sue you.
Historically speaking this is completely false. Even now you can find individual examples of businesses doing things like this, especially in places with little rule of law.
There is nothing magical about businesses - they are made up of the same people that make up governments. Those people have the same power trips regardless of their positions.
> There is not much your local councilman / state rep / US Rep / US Senator / etc can do about a problem with Comcast
Because of its presence on public utility poles, there is a lot that they can do about Comcast. Many people prevail getting Comcast to do stuff by writing cities. The problem is the cushy job Comcast gives people after a long stint in government service in favor of Comcast. That shit isn’t a conspiracy.
I think GP meant to say "isn't a conspiracy theory" rather than "isn't a conspiracy" eg. that isn't some hare-brained idea that only the craziest kook would subscribe to. Conspiracies certainly happen all the time. The most successful ones are probably never theorized about!
I just had an issue where I couldn’t get an appointment for a city service because of COVID, got ahold of my councilman and was there in 2 weeks. This is definitely what he should do.
