While conservatives love to go on and on when government fails at governance, as we continue to deregulate and outsource, corporate governance–the ability of corporations to govern–by default, will become more important (boldface mine):

But a far bigger nuisance is dealing with major corporations that appear to decided that one of their major revenue sources should be a level of institutional stupidity that maintains a steady amount of revenue simply because no ordinary person can navigate what appears to be an intentional level of incompetence. To be specific what I’m talking about: a level of bureaucratic inefficiency combined with incompetent customer service that forces people to pay for services they didn’t purchase because the cost of paying ends up being a smaller hassle than navigating the Kafkaesque labyrinth of the company’s phone tree. This line item on the corporate P&L I call the ‘Delta of Derp’. And here’s an example today from one of my favorite companies: Verizon.

Today one of our employees on the business side of TPM got a bill from Verizon for $3,019.95. Now, TPM’s phone bill is bigger than your home phone bill because we two offices and about two dozen employees. But it’s not three thousand dollars a month. But there’s a bigger problem. We’re not a Verizon customer.

Right, we use a different company entirely.

“Hi, we’re from the government phone company and we’re here to help.” Unlike elected officials, these bastards can’t get voted out.