<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>robocat</author><text>In some countries, the modern systems are byzantine.&lt;p&gt;In New Zealand, which is similar population to say Oregon, the modern systems absolutely spank the old systems.&lt;p&gt;Tax: the majority of people don’t need to file a tax return, instead it is all automatic. You only file if you have income from uncommon sources, such as foreign investments. Any questions, and I can call my tax department, and I get a person who answers the phone call, and answers the difficult questions correctly. They don’t treat you like a criminal: 10 years ago I personally did five years of unfiled tax returns simultaneously . . . I rang and asked questions of the tax department, and got my refunds without any trouble. I believe you can trust the tax department (YMMV).&lt;p&gt;Local government: I can walk in to their help desk and ask questions for free about the council rules and processes. I admit the help desk does not provide legally binding opinions, instead you need to go through formal processes. The local council may be slow and difficult for some things, but the process is fairly transparent and you can get closure on questions if you persist. The local council has restrictions on what it can do. There are automatic rights to house development, so if you follow the planning rules (setbacks, recession planes, etcetera), then it is unlikely for neighbours or local government to be able to chuck a spanner into your plans to build on your own property.&lt;p&gt;Passport renewal: last time I did it over the internet.&lt;p&gt;Mostly the government interactions New Zealand at least functional, and sometimes they are even pleasant.&lt;p&gt;The exception is our legal system, which is still mostly paper based, and archaic. Although anecdotally it works better than the US system.</text><parent_chain><item><author>jfk13</author><text>My (96 year old) father is quite sure that &lt;i&gt;every&lt;/i&gt; such system worked far better before computers got involved.&lt;p&gt;In some cases, perhaps he&amp;#x27;s right.</text></item><item><author>hotpotamus</author><text>It was pointed out to me, a millenial, that Social Security was created and administered in the Depression era before computers even existed. To think that they somehow created a working system without the tech that we throw at it today is interesting.</text></item><item><author>thr0wawayf00</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s fashionable to talk about how dystopian social media is, but in my experience, it pales in comparison with the pure hell that is trying to use ID.me and realizing that such a poorly engineered system sits between a loved one of mine and their social security payments.&lt;p&gt;I tried to help set a relative up a while back to receive his payments, which required authenticating with ID.me. Over and over again, the facial recognition feature would fail and prompt to take a new video. It took reaching out to a support line to assist, but they weren&amp;#x27;t particularly fast or helpful. I couldn&amp;#x27;t imagine being his age and trying to set this stuff up alone.&lt;p&gt;For every beautiful, artisinal website experience out there that takes UX seriously, there&amp;#x27;s an equally horrible one that stands between you and something you need and it&amp;#x27;s pretty clear that the people behind that system don&amp;#x27;t give a damn about you the user.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Senators Urge FTC to Probe ID.me over Selfie Data</title><url>https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/05/senators-urge-ftc-to-probe-id-me-over-selfie-data/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>est31</author><text>I wonder if it&amp;#x27;s survivorship bias. Same as not every old building has survived the times, only the amazing ones did, maybe just the &amp;quot;amazing&amp;quot; government systems have survived, while the others have long since become forgotten. I put amazing into quotes because SSNs have plenty of problems, but at least they are successful in that they are used everywhere. This in turn creates the impression that government systems used to be better than they are now.</text><parent_chain><item><author>jfk13</author><text>My (96 year old) father is quite sure that &lt;i&gt;every&lt;/i&gt; such system worked far better before computers got involved.&lt;p&gt;In some cases, perhaps he&amp;#x27;s right.</text></item><item><author>hotpotamus</author><text>It was pointed out to me, a millenial, that Social Security was created and administered in the Depression era before computers even existed. To think that they somehow created a working system without the tech that we throw at it today is interesting.</text></item><item><author>thr0wawayf00</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s fashionable to talk about how dystopian social media is, but in my experience, it pales in comparison with the pure hell that is trying to use ID.me and realizing that such a poorly engineered system sits between a loved one of mine and their social security payments.&lt;p&gt;I tried to help set a relative up a while back to receive his payments, which required authenticating with ID.me. Over and over again, the facial recognition feature would fail and prompt to take a new video. It took reaching out to a support line to assist, but they weren&amp;#x27;t particularly fast or helpful. I couldn&amp;#x27;t imagine being his age and trying to set this stuff up alone.&lt;p&gt;For every beautiful, artisinal website experience out there that takes UX seriously, there&amp;#x27;s an equally horrible one that stands between you and something you need and it&amp;#x27;s pretty clear that the people behind that system don&amp;#x27;t give a damn about you the user.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Senators Urge FTC to Probe ID.me over Selfie Data</title><url>https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/05/senators-urge-ftc-to-probe-id-me-over-selfie-data/</url></story>