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Fixing Broken Government

2 points by MaysonL 16y ago

MaysonL 16y ago
This is the first proposal I've heard that points a way out of the current horrible mess of brokenness in US government. With luck and effort, the next crisis will bring a teachable moment, and government will pivot to a better model.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  One of the proposals is a sensible enough reform -- the budget sunsets. But societies do not pivot. At best, they evolve. Law is complex because politicians and voters want it to scale with the complexity of society and economy; and the complexity of society and economy grows as a non-linear, exponential function of economic & technological progress and population growth. Another reason is simple game theory. Lawmakers bear very little of the cost of passing new laws, but accrue most of the political benefits (being seen to be "doing something"). It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Additionally, part of the job of common law lawyers is to convince judges that they have found a unique situation, never before encountered in the last thousand years or so. They succeed often enough because it genuinely happens. Ironically, while decrying rules-based law, the Howard proposes instead goal-based law. This pushes policy assessment onto judges. One of the reasons law becomes rule-based in the first place is to remove policy judgement from the judicial sphere, back to the executive and legislative spheres where it belongs. His solution would make matters worse by completing the undermining of US jurisprudence by the doctrine of "realism". Public accountability is a good idea, but needs to be balanced with the need for free and frank advice. Personally I would make a distinction between operational public servants, who could be easily sacked, and advisory public servants, who would be difficult to sack.
jacques_chester 16y ago
There's no transcript, but this summary is posted on a linked page: Americans have made major adjustments to our government before, Howard declared. At the beginning of the 20th century a Progressive era ended strict laissez-faire. The New Deal in the 1930s provided social safety nets. In the 1960s Civil Rights came to the fore. Now we need a fourth big change, because our government has managed to paralyze itself with the accretion of decades of excessively detailed laws. In the Eisenhower era the entire Interstate Highway system was installed in about 15 years. That couldn't happen now. Getting permission to build one offshore wind farm near Cape Cod took a decade while 17 agencies studied it, and 18 lawsuits now pending will delay the project another decade. The Interstate Highway Act was 29 pages long. Our new Health Care bill is 2,700 pages. The news laws obsess over methods instead of focusing primarily on goals and responsible institutions. They disable the power of office holders to decide and act because they try to prevent bad choices, and thus they disable the power to make good choices. Liberals want to head off game-playing corporations, and conservatives want to keep government officials from having too much power. The result is broken government and a citizenry maddened by a system that defies common sense. Only real people make things happen, Howard said, not laws alone. We need a framework that enables real people to take responsibility, to have the authority to say "Do it," to say "You're fired," to be accountable and to require accountability. To get there, Howard proposes three modifications of our government's operating system. One, a spring cleaning of all budgetary law. Three-quarters of most budgets are now locked in, so present decision makers have no flexibility and they wind up taking money from schools and parks. We need to create an omnibus sunset law, so all budgetary laws have a requirement to be discarded or revised every ten or fifteen years. Two, laws have to be radically simplified. They must be understandable and revisable. They have to enable the people executing the laws to use their judgement. That means focusing primarily on goals. Three, public employees have to be accountable. Which means: if they fail to perform, they can lose their job. Under the present system government worker unions have captured the apparatus that employs them and made much of it work primarily for them rather than primarily for the public. The system will not fix itself. It is up to the public---us---to mobilize and demand this kind of overhaul, to find leaders who will demand it, and support them.

2 points by MaysonL 16y ago

This is the first proposal I've heard that points a way out of the current horrible mess of brokenness in US government. With luck and effort, the next crisis will bring a teachable moment, and government will pivot to a better model.

jacques_chester 16y ago
One of the proposals is a sensible enough reform -- the budget sunsets. But societies do not pivot. At best, they evolve. Law is complex because politicians and voters want it to scale with the complexity of society and economy; and the complexity of society and economy grows as a non-linear, exponential function of economic & technological progress and population growth. Another reason is simple game theory. Lawmakers bear very little of the cost of passing new laws, but accrue most of the political benefits (being seen to be "doing something"). It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Additionally, part of the job of common law lawyers is to convince judges that they have found a unique situation, never before encountered in the last thousand years or so. They succeed often enough because it genuinely happens. Ironically, while decrying rules-based law, the Howard proposes instead goal-based law. This pushes policy assessment onto judges. One of the reasons law becomes rule-based in the first place is to remove policy judgement from the judicial sphere, back to the executive and legislative spheres where it belongs. His solution would make matters worse by completing the undermining of US jurisprudence by the doctrine of "realism". Public accountability is a good idea, but needs to be balanced with the need for free and frank advice. Personally I would make a distinction between operational public servants, who could be easily sacked, and advisory public servants, who would be difficult to sack.

jacques_chester 16y ago

There's no transcript, but this summary is posted on a linked page: Americans have made major adjustments to our government before, Howard declared. At the beginning of the 20th century a Progressive era ended strict laissez-faire. The New Deal in the 1930s provided social safety nets. In the 1960s Civil Rights came to the fore. Now we need a fourth big change, because our government has managed to paralyze itself with the accretion of decades of excessively detailed laws. In the Eisenhower era the entire Interstate Highway system was installed in about 15 years. That couldn't happen now. Getting permission to build one offshore wind farm near Cape Cod took a decade while 17 agencies studied it, and 18 lawsuits now pending will delay the project another decade. The Interstate Highway Act was 29 pages long. Our new Health Care bill is 2,700 pages. The news laws obsess over methods instead of focusing primarily on goals and responsible institutions. They disable the power of office holders to decide and act because they try to prevent bad choices, and thus they disable the power to make good choices. Liberals want to head off game-playing corporations, and conservatives want to keep government officials from having too much power. The result is broken government and a citizenry maddened by a system that defies common sense. Only real people make things happen, Howard said, not laws alone. We need a framework that enables real people to take responsibility, to have the authority to say "Do it," to say "You're fired," to be accountable and to require accountability. To get there, Howard proposes three modifications of our government's operating system. One, a spring cleaning of all budgetary law. Three-quarters of most budgets are now locked in, so present decision makers have no flexibility and they wind up taking money from schools and parks. We need to create an omnibus sunset law, so all budgetary laws have a requirement to be discarded or revised every ten or fifteen years. Two, laws have to be radically simplified. They must be understandable and revisable. They have to enable the people executing the laws to use their judgement. That means focusing primarily on goals. Three, public employees have to be accountable. Which means: if they fail to perform, they can lose their job. Under the present system government worker unions have captured the apparatus that employs them and made much of it work primarily for them rather than primarily for the public. The system will not fix itself. It is up to the public---us---to mobilize and demand this kind of overhaul, to find leaders who will demand it, and support them.