I actually feel sorry for this person. It sounds as of they’re getting properly fucked by bureaucracy
I don’t think its that so much as a lack of “adulting”. I’m seeing a number of “adulting” failures:
Drivers licenses very typically expire every 4 to 8 years and on a persons birthday in many states (looks like the case in Georgia and maybe in Colorado too). This person waited to renew 2 days before it expired after moving to a completely different state.
They don’t have a copy of their own birth certificate readily available.
They just bought a new car.
None of these by themselves is a huge problem, but part of adulting is recognizing that things regularly don’t go as they should and you need to have extra time to account for this. If the person didn’t have an immediate need for their birth certificate waiting 16 to 18 weeks is not a problem at all. If this person had gone to renew their drivers license (in their new state!) months before it expired this still wouldn’t have been a problem. If this person had done both of the above when they bought the new car, they’d already have hand their new driver’s license and this wouldn’t be a problem either.
This isn’t being fucked by bureaucracy, this is possibly a learning moment for young adult to learn about getting things done as an adult.
Yeah, they made a lot of mistakes. However, it’s possible that this will significantly impact their lives, leaving them with no ability to retain their job, shop, or otherwise function in our auto-centric city plans. It doesn’t sound like anyone in the bureaucracy is giving them an even temporary work around. Everyone makes mistakes; a good system provides options to help people fix their mistakes. Good systems don’t make people wait 4-5 months for essential documents; that’s crappy bureaucracy. And then requiring on the other end those documents, with no other recourse for other options, that’s shitty bureaucracy too. It’s stuff like this that makes people hate bureaucracy. Having experiences like this, where some small mistakes resulting from ignorance and harming no-one could cost you your job, is what radicalizes people.
But, my main point was that this sounds like someone who stumbled onto SovCit while trying to find a fix for their mess, rather than the usual SovCit causing their own problems through idiocy.
Yeah, they made a lot of mistakes. However, it’s possible that this will significantly impact their lives, leaving them with no ability to retain their job, shop, or otherwise function in our auto-centric city plans.
At worst, they’re going to go back to the place they bought the car to return it, and they will be handed a $5000 check (their deposit). That will buy enough Uber rides for them to keep their job for now until they sort this out.
It doesn’t sound like anyone in the bureaucracy is giving them an even temporary work around.
I agree it doesn’t. However, this is a situation of “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” The system isn’t broken, its just not being followed properly, not even close.
Everyone makes mistakes; a good system provides options to help people fix their mistakes.
This wasn’t one mistake. This was three back-to-back mistakes. There IS a way to fix every one of this person’s problems that they posts, and quickly, but again it takes more adulting.
Good systems don’t make people wait 4-5 months for essential documents; that’s crappy bureaucracy.
Its not a bad system you’re seeing. Its crappy adulting on the person’s part. It doesn’t take 4-5 months to get a birth certificate in the state of Colorado. It took me 30 seconds to find that in Colorado you can have your birth certificate in your hands in the same day of request.
“You can get your birth certificate the same day if you go to a Vital Records Office” source
And then requiring on the other end those documents, with no other recourse for other options, that’s shitty bureaucracy too. It’s stuff like this that makes people hate bureaucracy.
That person does have other recourse, they just aren’t adulting enough. They could renew their Colorado driver’s license which is all their lender is asking for to keep the financing. The lender isn’t asking for a Georgia driver’s license, they’re asking for any valid driver’s license. The person could give the newly renewed valid Colorado driver’s license to their lender and the car financing problem is gone. The person would also have their birth certificate in hand to convert to a Georgia driver’s license in the near future (not an emergency anymore). That is solvable literally tomorrow in less than about 7 hours.
How could they get their birth certificate and Colorado driver’s license renewed in one day? You do what you have to do as an adult. This person can fly to Denver tomorrow morning, head to Vital Records building and walk out with the birth certificate, and head over to the DMV and get their Colorado license renewed, then head to the airport in the evening to go back to Georgia in the same day. No hotel stay even required. I just Googled the cost of this plane ticket for tomorrow morning and it would be $549 round-trip on Frontier they don’t even need to take luggage. They’d land back in Georgia about 16 hours after they left with a valid drivers license, and the proper document to (in the near future) convert it to a Georgia driver’s license.
Yes this sucks to spend this money and this time, but thats what adulting is. Its doing what needs to be done to take care of your business even if it sucks. Hopefully its also the lesson to do these things ahead of time instead of neglecting them and trying to do them at the last minute.
Also understand, I don’t think the person is a bad person. I think they’re young and inexperience in life. That’s okay! I was young once too and made mistakes just like these if not worse! I had to pay big chunks of money (to me at the time) to undo or overcome some of my mistakes, and other times there was nothing I could do beside suffer the consequences. This is what growing up is. This is what grows into successful “adulting”. Its never a pleasant journey. I know it certainly wasn’t for me.
But, my main point was that this sounds like someone who stumbled onto SovCit while trying to find a fix for their mess, rather than the usual SovCit causing their own problems through idiocy.
I think you might be right on this one. I don’t think they started as a Sovcit, and the Sovcit actions they’re taking could indeed be simply be stumbling on the wrong path to get this solved the right way because of Sovcit pollution of the internet.
they will be handed a $5000 check (their deposit). That will buy enough Uber rides for them to keep their job for now until they sort this out.
… which they will no longer have to use a deposit once this gets sorted out. Isn’t this “let them eat cake” advice? Like saying, “they can just live on credit cards until they get a job”?
However, this is a situation of “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
True enough. I would hope, however, that we’re building a society of compassionate support systems, and not a libertarian hellscape where you have to insert a quarter to call emergency services. I mean, we’re already mostly in that hellscape, where a single ambulance ride can literally bankrupt families.
I think we aren’t disagreeing on the fundamentals: the subject made a series of poor decisions. Where we differ is that I believe that the system is letting them down, creating conditions that we’re are watching create a SovCit. However, I didn’t dig in a deeply as you did to see it the person is missing some easy fixes.
It’s entirely possible that this person just isn’t very smart. Or maybe they aren’t very experienced at being an adult - they could be 19 and lack experience; they could be poorly educated, or be on the spectrum. They could simply have poor problem solving when dealing with bureaucracy. Maybe their life skills are in a different area than dealing with a web of regulation requirements.
I believe we’re living in a time that favors people with certain skills, and also disadvantages people who lack those skills. What you call basic “adulting” is a bias in favor of people who can navigate bureaucracies; this tends to be a much more urban skill set, and it’s one of the things causing so much division between urban and rural America.
For me, it comes down to this: we, as a country, should be creating a society where people who aren’t and don’t want to have a higher education, and skill and experience with information systems, can still accomplish what they need to do. You should be able to navigate a relocation within the country with no more than a basic high-school education. A lot of what this person seems to be struggling with is being overwhelmed by paperwork and a lack of skill in researching information, and IMHO, this is as much a failure of the bureaucracy as it is the individual’s ability to efficiently concurrently navigate multiple regulatory systems.
As an aside, I appreciate your approach to this debate. We disagree about some points, but I think you’ve argued well, and politely, so thank you. It’s conversations like this that remind me of how different from Reddit the Lemmy vibe (usually) is - with the exception of a few Lemmy instances which seem to be magnets for trolls and caustic bad-faith actors.
they will be handed a $5000 check (their deposit). That will buy enough Uber rides for them to keep their job for now until they sort this out.
… which they will no longer have to use a deposit once this gets sorted out. Isn’t this “let them eat cake” advice? Like saying, “they can just live on credit cards until they get a job”?
I think you misunderstand me and the part at the end where I said “keep their job for now until they sort this out”. What I meant by that was: the person will have the resources of $5000 (which is a significant sum of money) to maintain their job in the short term. Were they do to nothing else, they could probably just wait the weeks for their birth certificate to arrive and follow the path they have now. Now, at the end of that they will not have $5000, but they will still have some money, and still have a job. The car they buy will have to be not as nice as their $5000 deposit car. I’m not saying this is the best outcome, I’m saying with the tools, resources, and knowledge the person has, they can solve this will little else.
However, this is a situation of “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”
True enough. I would hope, however, that we’re building a society of compassionate support systems, and not a libertarian hellscape where you have to insert a quarter to call emergency services. I mean, we’re already mostly in that hellscape, where a single ambulance ride can literally bankrupt families.
I think we aren’t disagreeing on the fundamentals: the subject made a series of poor decisions. Where we differ is that I believe that the system is letting them down, creating conditions that we’re are watching create a SovCit. However, I didn’t dig in a deeply as you did to see it the person is missing some easy fixes.
I think that is a laudable desire. I don’t think it is very likely to become reality, but it a great ideal. What you’re describing is unimaginably expensive or is a society with far fewer choices for its populace. The systems the person is trying to navigate are:
Colorado DMV
Colorado Bureau of Vital Records
Georgia DMV
An automotive financing company
An automotive dealer
One of the largest complications is the person is working within two different state’s systems. We don’t to Drivers Licenses at a federal level. Thats just not the country we are.
Each of these work under their own rules, and to imagine a system where all of these not only speak to one another, but do so with knowledge and integration of each other’s processes in a unified way if a huge huge endeavor. Additionally staff that work at each of these places would have to have upstream and downstream knowledge of each other’s processes. This would be monumentally expensive system to design, implement, and maintain. That money has to come from somewhere, and that means taxes. The result would deliver the exact same result, but just be easier for users to navigate. What other projects would go unfunded to make this a reality?
It’s entirely possible that this person just isn’t very smart. Or maybe they aren’t very experienced at being an adult - they could be 19 and lack experience;
This is my assumption too, and I spoke to that. None of what this person has done is sinful or anything. Its just inexperience we all have when entering the adult world.
I believe we’re living in a time that favors people with certain skills, and also disadvantages people who lack those skills.
While the set of skills changes between periods, that is true at any point in history.
What you call basic “adulting” is a bias in favor of people who can navigate bureaucracies;
I don’t think this is an issue of navigating bureaucracy so much a lack of problem solving, and jumping into something without gaining enough understanding of what the person is doing. How many questions did they ask before they went down this path or did they just jump in with both feet and hoped it all worked out? There just has to be a minimum level of personal responsibility. There can’t be an expectation that someone else is going to do everything for you. We live in a society with far too many choices to do that. The cost of that is having to do things for yourself to a certain basic level or abstain from using those more complicated choices, like moving to a different state.
this tends to be a much more urban skill set, and it’s one of the things causing so much division between urban and rural America.
Is this urban skill? I have some family that are very much rural and they have to deal with many more bureaucracies than I do as an urban dweller.
Here’s just one example:
I have city sewers, I’ve never seen the sewer pipe after it leaves my basement and the only interaction I have is when I pay my bill or vote for a tax to improve our sewage treatment plant.
My rural family member needed a new septic tank (no city sewer available). They had to contact the county to have an agent come out to take soil samples and then sign off on new engineer drawings my relative had to produce. There were issues with scheduling the agent to come out, then my relative had to follow up to get the results and pay fees to two different entities to gain the permit just to replace the existing unit. At this point not a single shovel of dirt had moved. There were many more steps and costs to finish the project.
This says nothing about the labyrinth of processes they have to navigate as part of their farming (corn and soy beans). I have none of that in my urban live.
For me, it comes down to this: we, as a country, should be creating a society where people who aren’t and don’t want to have a higher education, and skill and experience with information systems, can still accomplish what they need to do.
We have that. None of the person’s issues were college level problems and for their situation, there isn’t any uncommon IT skills required. In fact, if we’re taking the High School analogy, this person waited until 2 days to start working on the assignment for a massive multi-month project (renewing their drivers license). This should have been a lesson they learned in high school.
You should be able to navigate a relocation within the country with no more than a basic high-school education.
People absolutely can with even less than a high-school education. People do it all the time.
A lot of what this person seems to be struggling with is being overwhelmed by paperwork
Their main issue is they are working within several complicated systems all at once. If they had done them one at at time it would have been not difficult to navigate and resolve. This is a compounded problem because they let the problems stack up. Its not possible to design a system that can handle an infinite amount of problems.
and a lack of skill in researching information,
I complete agree with this. I’m honestly surprised that someone graduating high school can’t find basic information, and apply critical thinking to move forward.
and IMHO, this is as much a failure of the bureaucracy as it is the individual’s ability to efficiently concurrently navigate multiple regulatory systems.
I’ve spoken to this first point above. I just don’t think its realistic to create a single uniform bureaucracy that serves all the needs you’re proposing in an efficient and cost effective manor. I understand you hold a different position.
As an aside, I appreciate your approach to this debate. We disagree about some points, but I think you’ve argued well, and politely, so thank you. It’s conversations like this that remind me of how different from Reddit the Lemmy vibe (usually) is - with the exception of a few Lemmy instances which seem to be magnets for trolls and caustic bad-faith actors.
I agree and thank you too! We have different ideas, but neither one of us is objectively “right”. We’re not discussing matters of fact, but opinion. Yours is just as valid as mine.
I don’t think its that so much as a lack of “adulting”. I’m seeing a number of “adulting” failures:
None of these by themselves is a huge problem, but part of adulting is recognizing that things regularly don’t go as they should and you need to have extra time to account for this. If the person didn’t have an immediate need for their birth certificate waiting 16 to 18 weeks is not a problem at all. If this person had gone to renew their drivers license (in their new state!) months before it expired this still wouldn’t have been a problem. If this person had done both of the above when they bought the new car, they’d already have hand their new driver’s license and this wouldn’t be a problem either.
This isn’t being fucked by bureaucracy, this is possibly a learning moment for young adult to learn about getting things done as an adult.
Yeah, they made a lot of mistakes. However, it’s possible that this will significantly impact their lives, leaving them with no ability to retain their job, shop, or otherwise function in our auto-centric city plans. It doesn’t sound like anyone in the bureaucracy is giving them an even temporary work around. Everyone makes mistakes; a good system provides options to help people fix their mistakes. Good systems don’t make people wait 4-5 months for essential documents; that’s crappy bureaucracy. And then requiring on the other end those documents, with no other recourse for other options, that’s shitty bureaucracy too. It’s stuff like this that makes people hate bureaucracy. Having experiences like this, where some small mistakes resulting from ignorance and harming no-one could cost you your job, is what radicalizes people.
But, my main point was that this sounds like someone who stumbled onto SovCit while trying to find a fix for their mess, rather than the usual SovCit causing their own problems through idiocy.
At worst, they’re going to go back to the place they bought the car to return it, and they will be handed a $5000 check (their deposit). That will buy enough Uber rides for them to keep their job for now until they sort this out.
I agree it doesn’t. However, this is a situation of “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” The system isn’t broken, its just not being followed properly, not even close.
This wasn’t one mistake. This was three back-to-back mistakes. There IS a way to fix every one of this person’s problems that they posts, and quickly, but again it takes more adulting.
Its not a bad system you’re seeing. Its crappy adulting on the person’s part. It doesn’t take 4-5 months to get a birth certificate in the state of Colorado. It took me 30 seconds to find that in Colorado you can have your birth certificate in your hands in the same day of request.
“You can get your birth certificate the same day if you go to a Vital Records Office” source
That person does have other recourse, they just aren’t adulting enough. They could renew their Colorado driver’s license which is all their lender is asking for to keep the financing. The lender isn’t asking for a Georgia driver’s license, they’re asking for any valid driver’s license. The person could give the newly renewed valid Colorado driver’s license to their lender and the car financing problem is gone. The person would also have their birth certificate in hand to convert to a Georgia driver’s license in the near future (not an emergency anymore). That is solvable literally tomorrow in less than about 7 hours.
How could they get their birth certificate and Colorado driver’s license renewed in one day? You do what you have to do as an adult. This person can fly to Denver tomorrow morning, head to Vital Records building and walk out with the birth certificate, and head over to the DMV and get their Colorado license renewed, then head to the airport in the evening to go back to Georgia in the same day. No hotel stay even required. I just Googled the cost of this plane ticket for tomorrow morning and it would be $549 round-trip on Frontier they don’t even need to take luggage. They’d land back in Georgia about 16 hours after they left with a valid drivers license, and the proper document to (in the near future) convert it to a Georgia driver’s license.
Yes this sucks to spend this money and this time, but thats what adulting is. Its doing what needs to be done to take care of your business even if it sucks. Hopefully its also the lesson to do these things ahead of time instead of neglecting them and trying to do them at the last minute.
Also understand, I don’t think the person is a bad person. I think they’re young and inexperience in life. That’s okay! I was young once too and made mistakes just like these if not worse! I had to pay big chunks of money (to me at the time) to undo or overcome some of my mistakes, and other times there was nothing I could do beside suffer the consequences. This is what growing up is. This is what grows into successful “adulting”. Its never a pleasant journey. I know it certainly wasn’t for me.
I think you might be right on this one. I don’t think they started as a Sovcit, and the Sovcit actions they’re taking could indeed be simply be stumbling on the wrong path to get this solved the right way because of Sovcit pollution of the internet.
… which they will no longer have to use a deposit once this gets sorted out. Isn’t this “let them eat cake” advice? Like saying, “they can just live on credit cards until they get a job”?
True enough. I would hope, however, that we’re building a society of compassionate support systems, and not a libertarian hellscape where you have to insert a quarter to call emergency services. I mean, we’re already mostly in that hellscape, where a single ambulance ride can literally bankrupt families.
I think we aren’t disagreeing on the fundamentals: the subject made a series of poor decisions. Where we differ is that I believe that the system is letting them down, creating conditions that we’re are watching create a SovCit. However, I didn’t dig in a deeply as you did to see it the person is missing some easy fixes.
It’s entirely possible that this person just isn’t very smart. Or maybe they aren’t very experienced at being an adult - they could be 19 and lack experience; they could be poorly educated, or be on the spectrum. They could simply have poor problem solving when dealing with bureaucracy. Maybe their life skills are in a different area than dealing with a web of regulation requirements.
I believe we’re living in a time that favors people with certain skills, and also disadvantages people who lack those skills. What you call basic “adulting” is a bias in favor of people who can navigate bureaucracies; this tends to be a much more urban skill set, and it’s one of the things causing so much division between urban and rural America.
For me, it comes down to this: we, as a country, should be creating a society where people who aren’t and don’t want to have a higher education, and skill and experience with information systems, can still accomplish what they need to do. You should be able to navigate a relocation within the country with no more than a basic high-school education. A lot of what this person seems to be struggling with is being overwhelmed by paperwork and a lack of skill in researching information, and IMHO, this is as much a failure of the bureaucracy as it is the individual’s ability to efficiently concurrently navigate multiple regulatory systems.
As an aside, I appreciate your approach to this debate. We disagree about some points, but I think you’ve argued well, and politely, so thank you. It’s conversations like this that remind me of how different from Reddit the Lemmy vibe (usually) is - with the exception of a few Lemmy instances which seem to be magnets for trolls and caustic bad-faith actors.
I think you misunderstand me and the part at the end where I said “keep their job for now until they sort this out”. What I meant by that was: the person will have the resources of $5000 (which is a significant sum of money) to maintain their job in the short term. Were they do to nothing else, they could probably just wait the weeks for their birth certificate to arrive and follow the path they have now. Now, at the end of that they will not have $5000, but they will still have some money, and still have a job. The car they buy will have to be not as nice as their $5000 deposit car. I’m not saying this is the best outcome, I’m saying with the tools, resources, and knowledge the person has, they can solve this will little else.
I think that is a laudable desire. I don’t think it is very likely to become reality, but it a great ideal. What you’re describing is unimaginably expensive or is a society with far fewer choices for its populace. The systems the person is trying to navigate are:
One of the largest complications is the person is working within two different state’s systems. We don’t to Drivers Licenses at a federal level. Thats just not the country we are.
Each of these work under their own rules, and to imagine a system where all of these not only speak to one another, but do so with knowledge and integration of each other’s processes in a unified way if a huge huge endeavor. Additionally staff that work at each of these places would have to have upstream and downstream knowledge of each other’s processes. This would be monumentally expensive system to design, implement, and maintain. That money has to come from somewhere, and that means taxes. The result would deliver the exact same result, but just be easier for users to navigate. What other projects would go unfunded to make this a reality?
This is my assumption too, and I spoke to that. None of what this person has done is sinful or anything. Its just inexperience we all have when entering the adult world.
While the set of skills changes between periods, that is true at any point in history.
I don’t think this is an issue of navigating bureaucracy so much a lack of problem solving, and jumping into something without gaining enough understanding of what the person is doing. How many questions did they ask before they went down this path or did they just jump in with both feet and hoped it all worked out? There just has to be a minimum level of personal responsibility. There can’t be an expectation that someone else is going to do everything for you. We live in a society with far too many choices to do that. The cost of that is having to do things for yourself to a certain basic level or abstain from using those more complicated choices, like moving to a different state.
Is this urban skill? I have some family that are very much rural and they have to deal with many more bureaucracies than I do as an urban dweller.
Here’s just one example:
I have city sewers, I’ve never seen the sewer pipe after it leaves my basement and the only interaction I have is when I pay my bill or vote for a tax to improve our sewage treatment plant.
My rural family member needed a new septic tank (no city sewer available). They had to contact the county to have an agent come out to take soil samples and then sign off on new engineer drawings my relative had to produce. There were issues with scheduling the agent to come out, then my relative had to follow up to get the results and pay fees to two different entities to gain the permit just to replace the existing unit. At this point not a single shovel of dirt had moved. There were many more steps and costs to finish the project.
This says nothing about the labyrinth of processes they have to navigate as part of their farming (corn and soy beans). I have none of that in my urban live.
We have that. None of the person’s issues were college level problems and for their situation, there isn’t any uncommon IT skills required. In fact, if we’re taking the High School analogy, this person waited until 2 days to start working on the assignment for a massive multi-month project (renewing their drivers license). This should have been a lesson they learned in high school.
People absolutely can with even less than a high-school education. People do it all the time.
Their main issue is they are working within several complicated systems all at once. If they had done them one at at time it would have been not difficult to navigate and resolve. This is a compounded problem because they let the problems stack up. Its not possible to design a system that can handle an infinite amount of problems.
I complete agree with this. I’m honestly surprised that someone graduating high school can’t find basic information, and apply critical thinking to move forward.
I’ve spoken to this first point above. I just don’t think its realistic to create a single uniform bureaucracy that serves all the needs you’re proposing in an efficient and cost effective manor. I understand you hold a different position.
I agree and thank you too! We have different ideas, but neither one of us is objectively “right”. We’re not discussing matters of fact, but opinion. Yours is just as valid as mine.
The system is giving them a break. Refund the car purchase, use a bus or bicycle in the meantime, come back later.
I wonder if they’re aware of the required proof of residence or will that come as the next surprise?