Perhaps Munroe Robotics is a startup. That would be one explanation for why we haven't heard of them yet.
In terms of the XKCD coincidence, Femto is Beret Guy.
Yeah, bureaucracy sucks. I just applied for citizenship (in New Zealand), and they'll get back to me in 3 months or so. Honestly, what are they doing in the meantime? Shredding my application and then putting it back together as a team building exercise or something?
I take exception to that attitude. Bureaucracy is serious business. How would you feel if you got wrongfully denied? In order to ensure all applications are properly processed, every task must be requested---signed in triplicate---sent in, sent back, queried (lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, finally buried in soft peat and recycled as firelighters.) Without our forefathers practicing such proper processing, where would our society stand today?
The specifics of how they go about modifying your behavior depends on how dystopian the story is. More utopian stories have mostly-painless solutions, nastier ones have serious mind control solutions like brain implants.
In my experience as an avid reader of sciencey fantasies, overt utopias are the most dystopic, compounded by the fact that their characters, readers, don't recognize to what they're complicit.
Incarceration is like democracy. It’s a pretty bad solution to the problem, but better than all the other solutions we’ve tried.
Aren't you glad we haven't looked at what others do?