WHY DO GOVERNMENT SERVICES SO OFTEN SUCK SO BADLY, Charlie Martin asks:

With the IRS, we can imagine lots of reasons that the number of calls answered is so low. (I personally like the theory that the IRS is pissed about being caught in the IRS scandals, but I don’t actually know.)

Look at the situation, however, and we can see this: the IRS doesn’t get any particular rewards from answering calls; after all, they’re just doing their job. But the IRS commissioner can go in front of Congress and insist that they can only answer more calls if they receive a massive budget increase — which has always worked before, after all.

So what I’ve done here is proposed a theory: people tend to do what they find rewarding, and what people are doing now is what’s been rewarding in the past. Readers can evaluate this for themselves — just think about where you get good service and bad service, government or private, and see if what you consider good service is being rewarded. (For an interesting thought experiment, ask yourself why McDonalds drive-through orders are wrong so much more often than orders at the counter.)

If you find this theory plausible, then ask yourself one more question: do we reward government, and government workers, for when they are giving us good service?

If you have a puppy that always wants to chew a sock, it probably means that chewing the sock got it attention in the past.

Read the whole thing.