I know a guy who keeps getting hassled by his Human Resources Department. Why? Because he hasn’t submitted his official vacation paperwork.
What’s the big deal? It’s paperwork, and like most people, he hates paperwork.
If the paperwork is so hateful, why does it exist? Because the firm is located in a city where regulators require such paperwork, to ensure that every employee gets all the vacation they’re entitled to.
Upshot: Due to regulation, this guy has to fill out piles of paperwork in order to receive… exactly what his employer was going to give him anyway.
If you’re tempted to quip, “Thanks for nothing!,” you underestimate how Kafkaesque this situation really is. This is not a “Thanks for nothing” situation. It is a “Thanks for less than nothing situation.” A situation where government “protection of your rights” makes you wish you didn’t have the rights in the first place.
Nor is this an isolated case. Consider HIPAA, the law that protects your “health privacy.” Due to HIPAA regulations, I’ve been hassled dozens of times. To fill out extra paperwork for myself. To fill out extra paperwork for my kids. To stand behind the red line at the pharmacy. Most annoyingly, these regulations occasionally prevent me from handling my wife’s medical issues, or prevent her from handling mine. You go through a serpentine phone tree, and at the end discover that – due to HIPAA – they’re not legally allowed to even discuss the patient with you.
But don’t I get something in exchange? Sure: Extra “health privacy” that I never wanted in the first place. Even if I were dying of cancer – indeed, especially if I were dying of cancer – protecting my health privacy would be virtually the last thing on my mind. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about my health privacy. And I doubt more than a few percent of people care enough to personally do anything about it.
Ergo: Thanks for less than nothing, HIPAA.
The same goes for the confidentiality of letters of recommendation. The law gives students the right to see their letters of recommendation unless they explicitly waive this right. As a result, every request for a recommendation comes bundled with another piece of paperwork waiving confidentiality. That’s how government “stands up for your rights.”
Again, thanks for less than nothing.
Or to take one last example: Suppose a law firm gives new law school graduates a cash advance the summer before they start working to help them focus on the bar exam. At least back in the 90s, New York State made it illegal for firms to deduct the repayment for this cash advance from your paycheck once you started work. Instead, beneficiaries of the cash advance had to write dozens of separate personal checks to their employer to repay the debt. The same funds flowed. But thanks to regulators, they flowed with serial aggravation.
Thanks for less than nothing, New York.
Why do these crazy laws exist? First and foremost: Social Desirability Bias. Protecting workers from “vacation theft” sounds good. “Health privacy” sounds good. The right to see your letters of recommendation sounds good. Protecting workers from “wage theft” sounds good.
Under laissez-faire, market forces handle these problems well enough that almost no one wants to personally take action to handle them better. Unfortunately, in politics, words speak louder than actions. If leaders can loudly “do something” about trivial problems by forcing everyone to fill out yet another stupid form, they probably will.
READER COMMENTS
Philo
Feb 7 2022 at 10:34am
Social Desirability Bias does suggest new laws (and new regulatory apparatuses) to guarantee the existence any good situation, or the avoidance of any bad situation, that one can imagine. (At what cost? Social Desirability Bias is not very sensitive to the cost issue.) But this suggestion is normally too weak to be effective, absent a background assumption of *very powerful government*–the assumption that government can and should be harnessed to do almost anything “we” want done. The contrary idea, that government should be limited to a few functions, with other beneficial activities being carried out non-governmentally, used to be standard, but that is no longer the case.
In short, Social Desirability Bias is not the sole culprit here: taking Omnipotent (or, at least, Big) Government for granted is an essential factor.
David Seltzer
Feb 7 2022 at 10:43am
Bravo Bryan. Let’s not forget occupational licensure.
Christophe Biocca
Feb 7 2022 at 12:19pm
I’m experiencing this currently. I’m renting the top-floor in a converted victorian house. Every floor has a separate entrance except the top two, which share one stairwell. Because of this a recent inspection has forced the new landlord to put in thousands of dollars of additional work, to give us:
Glow-in-the-dark exit signs, in case I forget where the ground-floor door is and try entering my neighbor’s apartment instead during a fire.
New smoke alarms that on top of triggering for the entire building whenever any single one kicks in (the old ones already did that), automatically summon the fire department (hitting the landlord with a fee each time), and will not fully stop until they send one of their people to turn it off.
A prohibition on using the half-floor at the bottom of the stairs (below the exit) for any storage, forcing me to carry my bicycle up and down 3 floors each time I use it.
And that’s on top of the costs ultimately having to cash out in higher rents or worse maintenance of the building. Thanks for less than nothing, indeed.
Matthias
Feb 10 2022 at 7:34am
The extra costs are unlikely to result in higher rents. At least not directly.
Your landlord is likely to have to absorb them in this case.
This is assuming that you are paying a market rate of rent. And the rent of comparable properties hasn’t changed here.
astew
Feb 7 2022 at 12:59pm
Let us not forget the hassle that GDPR created.
astew
Feb 7 2022 at 1:01pm
Also, I want to stress the fact that GDPR, an EU Regulation, managed to make it a hassle globally.
Matthias
Feb 10 2022 at 7:35am
Just like many US regulations are global hassles. Especially in finance.
The big boys like to bully.
Michael Stack
Feb 7 2022 at 4:25pm
Even worse than all this, the paperwork shuffle permits the government to take credit for things employers were going to do anyway.
Make more than the minimum wage? That’s because the government is there to ensure the rapacious capitalists can’t screw you over.
You don’t work more than 40 hours, or on the weekends? That’s thanks to government regulation on time-and-a-half!
BK
Feb 8 2022 at 12:19am
I don’t know of any salary paying jobs in the private sector that don’t require paperwork to take vacation, so whatever the problem is there it’s not something that can you can solely pin on government. Keeping on top of your liabilities is just good accounting, and good business.
Gene
Feb 8 2022 at 8:06am
See the phrase about paperwork being required by the city. My guess is that it’s not just a simple internal form, it’s also a city form that has to be submitted.
robc
Feb 8 2022 at 10:52am
None of my last 6 (going back to 1997) jobs required paperwork, at least by me. The last 2 have used a web form, which some might technically consider paperwork, but it literally avoids paper so doesn’t count to me. Two of the others required telling my boss, he might have done paperwork to keep track, but I didnt have to do anything official.
The other two I was owner or co-owner, so no paperwork required.
Alabamian
Feb 8 2022 at 8:07am
Wouldn’t it be more useful and informative to think about such issues using a public choice framework, or at least a framework that emphasizes the structural and institutional incentives? “Social desirability bias” focuses on an individual’s people-pleasing impulse. But that’s not what does the work here.
Henri Hein
Feb 8 2022 at 1:51pm
Paperwork is my least favorite chore. I will happily do the dishes or scrub the floors, but I shudder at the sight of the smallest form.
I thought I had seen my share of paperwork dealing with immigration, but even that did not prepare me for the gallons of forms needed to close on my first house. I’m not going to be surprised when they introduce the disclosure-confirmation-confirmation forms, to confirm I have confirmed I have seen the disclosure.
I am grateful to our wise guardians in Washington DC, who gave us the Paperwork Reduction Act:
I am sure it will kick in any time.
Kris Tuberty
Feb 9 2022 at 7:52pm
Seems to me that HIPAA is less a privacy tool than a proprietary collecting of your health information by hospitals. You don’t get the privacy. They do.
Along with HIPAA docs, admissions staff now ask you to fill out additional forms indicating if you are willing to share your health information with other doctors, affiliated clinics or hospitals, and so on. You don’t have to share…. But would you like to share? With X, Y, or Z? So now X, Y, and Z have access, but your spouse does not.
Then there’s your SSN, which they have no reason to collect and do not need in order to treat or bill you. When their systems are hacked, as they inevitably will be, you will often be assured that your medical information has not been compromised. But those other details that could make you a target of ID theft, like that SSN? Those are now swimming briskly toward the dark web. This has happened to me twice.
Now add this: for most procedures involving general anaesthesia, even brief outpatient ones, you must have a ride home that is not a cab, Uber, bus, etc. You are expected to ask a family member or friend. (I circumvent this by using Medicar, which they grudgingly accept but do not like; some states and cities have medical concierge services for this very purpose.) If you don’t have a ride they approve of, you will likely be denied the procedure. Denied. So you are having a medical procedure that is no one’s business but yours and the first thing the hospital wants you to do is tell someone you know.
A bit like Lifelock protecting your social security number. In order to keep it secret you have to share it with them. Orwellian. Perhaps there is an econ term for this state of affairs. I just hope it isn’t “Life.”
vince
Feb 9 2022 at 8:42pm
Omitted is probably the biggest force behind excess paperwork: jobs. More specifically, worthless, fraudulent jobs. Jobs of specialists, contributing to our GDP and employment. Creating nothing but piles of paper.
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