Learn How Government Works or Shoot Your Foot Off

You misunderstand government by default.

I often tell people that they should learn how the government works. One big reason: if you don’t, you simply won’t understand it. But worse: you won’t be aware just how much you don’t understand it, and you might very well broadcast that.

You will look at the governmental system, and you will: (1) not know what all you’re looking at, (2) think what you see is all there is.

Let me tell you a story to illustrate.

Taking students and friends to a NYC Council hearing

For all my Foundations classes, I require students to complete “Witnessing Government” homework—they have to attend multiple government proceedings. I encourage them to attend in person, and to attend a City Council hearing if they’re in the Foundations of New York City. I often schedule field trips where I go with a group.

On one such field trip, I took a group of people from class, Twitter, and their guests to the New York City Council Committee on Technology. The focus of the committee hearing was NYC’s 311 system.

Several members of the City Council had proposed bills that would require 311 (the city’s non-emergency help line) to add certain features to its website and app, like adding a complaint category for sirens. Since 311 is overseen by the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI)¹, these bills were legally directing OTI to take action.

The foot-shooting begins

Several members of the group I hosted got quite mad as council members described their bills. These attendees, knowing nothing about the government, immediately jumped to the conclusion that 311 could only be changed via legislation. If so, they reasoned, no wonder it’s expensive and buggy, and features roll out slowly. Some said as much in public places, and/or where they could easily be overheard by staff and committee members.

Of course, OTI does not require legislation to implement new features; that would be ridiculous. The attendees were incorrect, and they allowed their preexisting prejudices to blind them to how little they knew.

So: why were the council members introducing legislation to compel feature changes? What are the regular mechanisms for doing this?

In short: OTI can manage 311 itself, including feature changes; this is the regular mechanism. But the council members really wanted certain features that OTI was not providing,² so they took the step of legally compelling them via legislation. A bill, even if it doesn’t get passed, is a signal to legislative constituencies that council members care and are doing something (even if that something doesn’t end up in new features, at least not quickly).

This post isn’t defending OTI’s current 311 management, the quality of the Council’s bills, or really anything. I’m just explaining how it is easy, the default, to misunderstand government. If you haven’t taken the time to deliberately study and understand it, you will even be blind to things that are right in front of your face.

This scenario was pretty low-stakes. Some are not, and you don’t often get redos just because “you didn’t know.”³

A side note, just for fun

You might wonder: do council members often pass laws that require city agencies to do something? Absolutely. In some cases, they pass laws that require agencies to do things the agencies have already committed to doing, sometimes just for PR/messaging reasons.

The City Council passed a 2023 law allowing a city agency (the Human Resources Administration, or HRA) to send electronic payments to landlords. These landlords rent to New Yorkers who receive housing benefits from the city, and the city typically paid their rent directly to the landlords…via check. The HRA had already been working on an electronic payments system, but the City Council independently passed legislation to require them to do this.

In the legislative hearing about this bill, an HRA representative said the bill was unnecessary. The council member who introduced the bill said (emphasis added):

Uhm, I saw in the testimony that you said there may be perhaps the need to preclude the legislation I’m proposing today. Uhm, I’m here to say that I’m going to make sure that the Council is behind this in full force and that this is going to be done legislatively. And even if it is something that is underway, it is always something that could be codified, just for the record.⁴

Maybe you like this, maybe you don’t. But this kind of thing happens, and it’s an example of something that would flummox and outsider if they saw it without larger political context.

Imagine someone coming to your job and telling you what to do

I bet you work hard at your job; all of my readers are competent kings and queens of industry.

Imagine you’re having a staff meeting about a project that’s been in the works for a year, and someone walks into the conference room off the street. This person speaks for two solid minutes about what a terrible job you’re doing, and then leaves. Little did they know, nothing they said was correct. They had no appreciation of the advantages and constraints you and your internal team were operating under, and they were unaware that you had already delivered the project (the staff meeting was a retrospective).

This is kind of what happens in public hearings of all kinds, including the New York City Council’s. Being a council member is a job, and the open nature of our government⁵ means people can literally come in off the street to comment on their work. The street people often get things terribly wrong. But if you learn about the government, it’s very easy to get things right. You can even be right about fundamental issues, and the council members can be wrong! It happens in private industry all the time.

Don’t let this dampen your learning

Now you might feel more nervous writing online about the New York City government. Don’t be. Do your best to get things right, and don’t pretend to know more than you do. If someone has a correction, then correct your understanding!

The world is filled with people who will confidently say anything about government, and they will not accept correction. These people are in more positions of authority in social and legacy media than you might expect. As you learn more about government, you’ll realize how much of their slop was shielded by Gell-Mann Amnesia.⁶

The opposite kind of voices are greatly needed—they just need to make sure they deliberately learn about the government!

Keep both of your feet.

1. Formerly known as the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT), until it was consolidated into OTI in 2022 by mayoral executive order.

2. You might wonder “why weren’t they responsive?” That goes deeper into the “How does government work?” rabbit hole. But in at least some cases, it’s because OTI thought some of the features weren’t worth it, or weren’t currently possible.

3. You can get redos if you have political capital though. It just depends on how badly you messed up, and what you messed up.

4. Local Law 64 of 2023 allows the city to send rental assistance payments to landlords via electronic payment. Every time someone reads about this law they think “Wait, the city wouldn’t send electronic payments to landlords until now?” Correct. Although if you read the transcript of the hearing (pp.59-64) where this law was discussed, it doesn’t seem close to being fully rolled out, even after this law.

The quoted portion is from page 59 of the transcript, lines 10-17.

5. The Council “…shall sit with open doors.” NYC Charter §45.

6. From Why Speculate (2004): “Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”