Top down federal strategic plans tend not to go so well. People forget the atmosphere that spawned the war on drugs, the war on poverty, affordable housing leg

Top down federal strategic plans tend not to go so well. People forget the atmosphere that spawned the war on drugs, the war on poverty, affordable housing legislation/fannie and freddy, the native american reservation system, the democratization of the middle east, no child left behind, etc. This whole thing smells similar to me. Big federally organized ambitious projects that don’t make the problem they’re trying to solve worse don’t seem to have happened since the late 60s. Apollo, the Interstate Highway System, the creation of the US electric grid, the Manhattan Project, the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, the creation of NORAD, the creation of the US global trade network, etc… all the big US federally organized success projects seem to have happened before that. I’m hesitant trusting anything the federal bureaucracy does in it’s current state. That’s not particularly helpful, and I applaud genuine effort aimed at solving big problems, but I think there’s a severe age/bloat issue endemic to most of the kinds of organizations shoveling money to solve problems like this. Generally speaking there seems to have been a big increase in both complexity and disconnect from reality in post 60s big federal plans like this. I’m not sure what would help calibrate big plans like this to reality better, but I suspect there’s been an increase in procedure and meticulous planning rather than doing/experimenting and being willing to just throw money at talented capable people and say “figure it out”.