Sludge Hammer

“When I started talking with people about their sludge stories, I noticed that almost all ended the same way—with a weary, bedraggled F-ck it. Beholding the sheer unaccountability of the system, they’d pay that erroneous medical bill or give up on contesting that ticket. And this isn’t happening just here and there. Instead, I came to see this as a permanent condition. We are living in the state of F-ck it.” Chris Colin in The Atlantic (Gift Article): That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose. “Endless wait times and excessive procedural fuss—it’s all part of a tactic called ‘sludge.'”

+ And sludge isn’t just for corporations anymore. The government is getting in on the action. NYT (Gift Article): How the G.O.P. Bill Saves Money: Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork. “Instead of explicitly reducing benefits, Republicans would make them harder to get and to keep. The effect, analysts say, is the same, with millions fewer Americans receiving assistance. By including dozens of changes to dates, deadlines, document requirements and rules, Republicans have turned paperwork into one of the bill’s crucial policy-making tools, yielding hundreds of billions of dollars in savings to help offset their signature tax cuts.”