Hard disagree. My dad worked for the federal government and he was railroaded for pointing out where money just disappeared down some corners. In his case it was untracked doctor reimbursements.
This happens everywhere in government because the taxpayer just doesn't care and spending money itself is largely considered to be the metric of effectiveness -- goodhart's law. The public generally thinks that if we allocate funding to X or Y bleeding heart cause it's magically done and we don't have to think about it anymore; conversely if we delete funds nominally allocated to X or Y it means we don't care about X or Y. By the year 2025 the system of consuming funds without voter accountability has optimized itself to do as little as possible with as high a price as possible, as evidenced by 45 billion dollars for broadband.
1. Make the taxpayer care and properly have them vote in not corrupt people. This can be from awareness campaigns, stronger community identity, or more frequent town halls as a start
2. Establish an ombudsman who can care and root this out of blatant corruption happens. So you don't feel like talking to a wall when trying to expose corrupt.
3. Blame the government as an entirely and shut it down.
So which seems more logical in your eyes?
Here's an optimistic story. Organizations managing 20 billion dollars in funding in Los Angeles had no audit records of how they used the funds. It "disappeared". A judge noticed this and came down extremely hard. Watching their future funding like a hawk
Surprise, they used the money in a proper matter and the homeless situation in LA started to improve for the first time in who knows how long. Enforcement does indeed work if someone takes the time to notify the right authorities on it. But instead we fell for decades of trying to erode authority. This one didn't even involve the voters needing to oust someone.
Some mix of all the solutions depending on how bad it is. At some point the net social benefit becomes negative. When that happens incremental reform is not preferable to tearing it down, exploring alternatives (e.g. 501c(3)s), and rebuilding as government if and only if a reasonable mechanism for accountability can be created without the meddling of the people who messed it up before.
But can we afford to tear it down? The decision sounds just as radical in the private sector as the public sector. You don't just shut down your core product without there being a very swift handover process.
The example here was doctor reimbursement. So, can we afford to just not reimburse doctors as we architect a new solution to solve corruption? That strategy seems to be what people whope to achieve with Social Security. Put it "on maintenance" for a few years to "weed out corruption".
> conversely if we delete funds nominally allocated to X or Y it means we don't care about X or Y
I am saying you can't assume that because money was allocated for something it went to the critical thing you wanted. Like 45 billion for rural broadband.
> The example here was doctor reimbursement.
Yes. If the doctor reimbursement is improper you don't pay it out. It is the hospital's job to get things right when asking for money. If the hospital sent an invoice for a procedure the patient did not actually get (this was a large amount of the waste), you REALLY DO NOT PAY, if you pay then you are signaling to the hospital that it's OK to keep overcharging the VA.
Hard disagree. My dad worked for the federal government and he was railroaded for pointing out where money just disappeared down some corners. In his case it was untracked doctor reimbursements.
This happens everywhere in government because the taxpayer just doesn't care and spending money itself is largely considered to be the metric of effectiveness -- goodhart's law. The public generally thinks that if we allocate funding to X or Y bleeding heart cause it's magically done and we don't have to think about it anymore; conversely if we delete funds nominally allocated to X or Y it means we don't care about X or Y. By the year 2025 the system of consuming funds without voter accountability has optimized itself to do as little as possible with as high a price as possible, as evidenced by 45 billion dollars for broadband.