Cultural sclerosis may "simply" be a mix of unintended consequence and deliberately intended consequence (sabotage). The impetus for much of our legal system mi

Cultural sclerosis may "simply" be a mix of unintended consequence and deliberately intended consequence (sabotage). The impetus for much of our legal system might be fine but not paying attention to unintended consequences then results in sclerosis. This is easy to achieve in an accreting system of rules and laws: "Let's just add one more rule - that will sort it out right up". There are fields of (american) activity that clearly understand the strength in building things fast - and that are designed for that. The startup world is still one of these - both for starting a new venture and for deploying fast and sorting out the details later. This is about the "rules of the game" and the infrastructure (funding, legal entity formation, getting people to join, hosting, software tools...) All around, the infrastructure and culture support the principle. Other institutions seem built as-if for endlessly delaying projects. In most cases this was not the goal. And in some cases, that IS the goal: it works so well that some don't let it go to waste. Still other institutions DO exist so as to allow moving legislation at a decent pace but have fallen out of favor - with the executive prefering endless ad-hoc informal processes in the vague hope of achieving unity, consensus, peace well in advance of actual change. With not much change possible as a result. That is not to say that "emergency committees" don't make plenty of harm. Brings to mind the ruling against fat and in favor of carbs: [Senator: I do not have the luxury. My constituents are dying. I can't wait for your scientific data.] But this should be a deliberate area of effort: improving institutions for time effectiveness and correctness. Even from a basic economics point of view, there is quite a bit of economic growth potential that comes merely from responsiveness. Same from a quality of life point of view. When need is recognized, pouring money in study (scientific, engineering, legal...) including study of unintended effects, then moving on with a ruling. Which does not mean in the sense of "environmental impact study" which seems to have become a weapon: a financial barrier against doing anything. In other cases, strength should be in recognizing that headline cause X is not actually an emergency and tabling it until it naturally accretes more data or is simply forgotten.