[hansvm]

The government is just people. Even before the current fiasco, the government had varying degrees of incompetence and malice, and if you're poor you can't do anything about it since the government is presumed to have been operating in good faith and you can't afford a lawyer or the time off work to try to fix it pro se.

[vkou]

There is no such presumption in court. If you've been wronged you can get recompense regardless of their intent.

[hansvm]

I'd invite you to ask a few poor people what happened the last time the government "definitely sent" some important document or another in the mail.

If a governmental employee gets the address wrong, gets the name wrong, accidentally knocks the mail in the trash, lazily marks the job as complete without sending anything, etc, the burden shifts to the poor person to prove not just that they didn't receive the mail but that the sending office didn't behave correctly.

Other cases behave similarly. In a he-said/she-said, the government wins.

[vkou]

Nothing you described is unique to the government. If you miss paying your power bill or a medical bill for similar reasons, you're going to have problems. And you receive a lot more demands for money from people who aren't the government than you do from it.

You can sue both in small claims court. You don't need money or a lawyer for that.

[cucumber3732842]

>Nothing you described is unique to the government. If you miss paying your power bill or a medical bill for similar reasons, you're going to have problems

You're right it's not unique to the government. But you have uniquely little recourse and the stakes are uniquely high when the government does it.

I've had an old ISP threatening to send me to collections for years over a "you didn't cancel" vs "but I have the confirmation" type dispute from an old apartment. The government would've escalated the fine to thousands and applied violence by now.

>And you receive a lot more demands for money from people who aren't the government than you do from it.

If you do much beyond live in the pod and eat the bugs the government reaches parity real quick. My buddy needed four agencies to sign off on a mail order shed (would've been 3 but he was within 200ft of a stream). Next time he's not asking.

>You can sue both in small claims court. You don't need money or a lawyer for that.

You cannot "just sue" the government for petty cock ups in small claims. Well you can but it'll be dismissed instantly. You have to go through rounds of "administrative" appeals processes that are tilted against you and invariably make traffic court (also administrative BTW) look like a shining beacon of due process. Furthermore, these processes are usually allowed to impose expense on you. Stuff like "well if you want to contest X you have to hire a third party Y for four figures" type stuff. Only after several rounds of that does it go to court. And this takes years, can you say opportunity cost.

I would rather be wrongfully harassed by actual gun toting crime investigating law enforcement any day because at least you have well established and protected rights when those guys come after you.