this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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This demonstrates why no government agency should be self-funding. If fees are collected they should be refunded to taxpayers. If a budget is needed it should go through the normal budget process and be given a budget directly from incoming taxes. So everything's aboveboard and transparent.
As soon as an organization is self-funding it's open to both regulatory capture and corruption. We need to remove the incentives for bad actors, not just trying to catch bad actors after the fact.
This would have a huge impact on small police departments who self-fund through tickets in the community exploitation. Police should not be tax farmers. Police should be for the people and buy the people, tax farmers are exploitive by their very nature. They should not be the same person.
I've never really understood how a "public" institution is expected to be funded by anything other than tax dollars
At the very least no fine or enforcement mechanism. I'm ok with for example a postal service charging for some service. But involuntary charges going towards funding the institution charging it is just rife with perverse incentives.
I see your point. But I still think the perverse incentives exist. Once you have customers, you deviate from your mission. Right now the US postal service is largest customer is bulk mail, spam. They're basically stuck in regulatory capture now. They can't do things to reduce unwanted spam, they can't offer services to people to not deliver bulk mail. Because their largest customer is bulk mailers. The people receiving the mail aren't their customers anymore. They're the product.
I forget the name of the company exactly I think it was inbox, they were working in San Francisco, they would go to the post office and receive the mail for individuals then scan the mail and send it to people digitally. Basically it was the postal service but no physical delivery. They had a pilot program going, but then the bulk mailers got wind of it, and used pressure to shut it down. So innovation that's available I think in Finland or Sweden is not a possible in the US due to regulatory capture.
That's an known issue with any customer driven org too. Prioritizing existing markets and customers vs up and coming ones.
The postal service almost was set up to do small time banking and email services but got cut down by Congress. So they had tried to push for providing more services to meet existing demand, but we're hamstrung on their efforts.
The push towards privitazation at all cost has really hurt the effectiveness and efficiency of government ran orgs in the United States.