Another Fine Mess

Another Fine Mess - Matthew Continetti
“A much simpler, more charitable, and, dare one say, more reasonable explanation for private and public failure is mistaken assumptions grounded in human ignorance... The role of government in the early 21st century is to acknowledge and “solve” the problems identified by public opinion and mass media. But since the world is infinitely complex, the people and their representatives delegate authority to experts in the civil service, whose business at places like the Federal Reserve, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Environmental Protection Agency, and elsewhere is to simplify problems and implement rules. In the final analysis, however, the experts are just as ignorant of the future as the rest of us, and each new rule has unintended consequences that may interact with the other rules in dangerous and unknown ways.”

Comment: The author does a fine job of discussing the impact of complexity, misunderstanding, and unrealistic expectations as they pertain to “effectiveness” in government.