After 'coding error' triggers firings, top NIH scientists called back to work

> Isn't this a problem? Government workers are supposed to be working for the people, involvement in a union is a conflict of interest

I don't think so. Government workers have faced the same problems as workers in the private sector (excessive overtime, unpaid wages, pay not keeping up with inflation, workplace safety issues, etc.) and unions are the best way we have to combat those kinds of issues to ensure that workers are treated fairly.

> The legitimacy of government is predicated on the ability of the voter to yank the money from the government if it's ineffective -- otherwise the government can just vote itself more and more funds for whatever without accountability.

We can certainly vote out people who commit fraud and decide democratically what we want the government to spend money on, but we can also decide that some things are worth having even when they don't make money. Governments can even run programs at a loss if we feel that those services are worth having. That doesn't mean printing money.

It's worth noting that most of what is said about the federal budget in layman circles (and some Congressional circles) is basically lies. Well, no, that's uncharitable. "Grossly mischaracterizes the mechanisms and consequences of the operation of a fiat currency that is used by the world as the IMF denomination for sovereign loans" is more accurate.

The only thing that stops the federal government from printing money is its own laws. In that sense, when Congress argues about "the budget," what they're really arguing about is "We'd like to do this via honoring the current laws instead of changing them." In practice, we change them constantly; every vote to increase the debt ceiling is a vote to print more money with no (immediate (1)) consequence. In that sense, the pockets are "infinitely deep" in that they're only constrained by Congress via rules that Congress made up and can change. And firing individual bureaucrats, or even closing entire departments, is rarely worth the cost savings because bureaucrat labor is just so, so much cheaper than most things the government is spending on (like the military budget, which in the modern era is basically "A big storehouse of extremely expensive fireworks that are brutally powerful one-shot policy-changers;" maintaining that storehouse is pouring money into an arbitrarily deep hole because there's always room for one more missile in the old arsenal of freedom).

(1) This, of course, grossly oversimplifies. There are definitely consequences for putting more liquid currency into the ecosystem than taxes take out (2). The relative value of dollars in-circulation falls; it can be thought of as a "stealth tax on hoarding assets." This is, it is worth noting, a tax the government can choose to levy to encourage not hoarding assets because moving money tends to make everything better for everyone much of the time, with some extremely notable exceptions.

(2) That's, incidentally, a much better way to think of how the system actually works than "we tax people to pay for government services." Imagine the government took all the federal tax money, put it in a big pile on the Washington Mall, set it on fire, and then told the Mint to print, 1-for-1, one dollar for every dollar destroyed. Beyond the ridiculous carbon cost, this would have no impact on the US economy because, functionally, that's how the loop works: the government taxes to make money go away and prints money to make money exist. And, most importantly, the outputs and inputs are in different places to satisfy federal economic policy; broadly speaking, we take money from people who have a lot of it (to discourage resource hoarding a bit, which slows down the economy) and give it to people who have use for it and not enough of it to act on their intent (because the economy tends to be healthier when there are more, and more diverse, participants in it). The US, in particular, has special leverage to do this in the global marketplace because of its ties to the IMF, but that's a much bigger can of worms than one HN post.

> This is a horrible authoritarian justification. People shouldn't be made to starve so they can appreciate the gruel they are given versus having nothing. We should have a functional, efficient, and pleasant government that isn't adversarial to the general population.

We absolutely should. Do you think elon musk is on his way to accomplishing that? I sure don't.

Like, yes, there are things and situations that absolutely suck dealing with the government. They also suck dealing with corporations and neighbors and anything else involving humans.

The answer is to fix the problems.

Filing taxes is an easy and obvious pain point. It's annoying and tedious and wastes a ton of money that could be automated away by a more efficient and pleasant government.

Here's the actual history of how that's gone:

Democrats: the IRS has started to create electronic versions of the forms people can use to file their taxes without involving a tax prepaper.

Republicans: “We don’t want the tax system to be simple. We want it to be hard so that people realize how much they’re paying.”

> In December 2024, Representative Adrian Smith (R-NE), along with 27 House Republicans, urged President-elect Donald Trump to terminate the IRS's free tax filing service, known as Direct File, on his first day in office. They expressed concerns that the program could lead to government overreach into tax preparation services

> In June 2024, House Republicans introduced a policy rider in the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill aiming to eliminate funding for the IRS's Direct File program. This move was part of a broader effort to prevent the IRS from developing its own tax preparation software, reflecting concerns about government competition with private tax preparation companies.

Are the democrats amazing angels who will solve everything if given power? Obviously not. Are they at least making some small amounts of progress? YES. The republicans are out here actively trying to go BACKWARDS.

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, the answer to problems with government is to fix them. It's possible that the fix in some situations is for the agency/rule/etc to stop existing, but that decision should probably be made by someone with at least an average level IQ and possibly empathy.

Okay, so we have 3 options.

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.

>prison guards unions advocating for harsher laws so that prisons stay full.

People in America always vote in attorneys who are "hard on crime though". I simply see that as unchecked reflection of the people's will. To double down on it, my state had a recent proposition rejected that would have addressed some prisoners rights regarding treatment and compensation. The bluest state you can imagine and we still can't properly say that prisoners aren't slaves.

The only people America trusts less than authority is their own people, apparently. If they vote in people who want to lock more people up instead of focusing on rehabilitating: well, that's they get what they vote for, huh?