What I find interesting, was the starting assumption that serious societal problems need to be solved centrally, at the top, by a govermental-type body like a "

What I find interesting, was the starting assumption that serious societal problems need to be solved centrally, at the top, by a govermental-type body like a "town council". This article shows why "rule by committee" is such a unresponsive way to solve real world problems. The bigger the committee, the higher the ratio of useless distractions to merit-worthy ideas. Big committees surface many more, and broader, considerations. But doesn't do much in terms of vetting for quality. The more collective (and thus diffuse) responsibility becomes when you scale up to large committees with many members, the worse it gets at filtering for quality. Good ideas routinely get thrown out along with bad ideas at these committees, in fact the few good ideas often get drowned out by the bad ones. Sometimes you really just need someone in the committee to say "screw this" and pick up their crossbow and show that it works, by actually DOING it. It's often times the disaffected splinter factions on the edges of these large committees that provide the pivotal breakthroughs - in my experience.