Distributed Production
From Zanecorpwiki
2010-02-15
Every year I spend between 1-4 hours shuttling back and forth[notes 1] in order to pick up forms for my tax filings. There are two reasons. First, as far as I know you can only get business forms at the tax office or by mail. Second, you cannot print the forms online.
Every IRS form (that I need) online has a cover page that tells you that this form is for informational purposes only and that I must get an official form printed by the IRS. The reason given is that otherwise, the IRS cannot scan it.
It is probably true that by standardizing on forms with known quality on known stock reduces the reject rate of scanned forms. However, it is equally certain that the global cost to society of forcing everyone to use "official forms" is greater than the cost of scan rejections. To-wit, the Texas state government scans xeroxed forms (lowest quality) all the time with no significant rejection rate.[notes 2]
The other problem with centralized production is that it's very inefficient. How many forms do you need? Where do you need them? It's certain that there's a built in over-production. I have no idea whether it's 3 or 30 percent, but it's there. And sometimes it fails (I see empty slots at the tax office all the time). With distributed production, you're production is near as it ever could be to perfectly efficient.
