I think part of the problem is that we've gotten stingy with forgiveness and second chances. Consequently lots of people who might otherwise have good intention

I think part of the problem is that we've gotten stingy with forgiveness and second chances. Consequently lots of people who might otherwise have good intentions have, rationally, designed systems to avoid making anyone responsible for any decision, because even a good choice (given the information at hand) that happens to turn out poorly can end careers, see people demonized in the media, generate lawsuits, and ruin lives. That's why people were reluctant to try to fix the problems the rules (algorithms, in this case) caused, I think. Sure, it could just be that a banal everyday sort of cowardice is on a multi-decade upswing, but I suspect instead that mistakes hit people harder and stay with them longer than they used to. Or, maybe harsh punishment isn't more common but it's more visible and it's perceived as more common. The result is the same, though the solution—whatever that might be—could be different in that case. More intense career specialization probably doesn't help. Can't cut it in (your educational focus here)? Have fun spending another half a decade in school and going $XX,000 into debt again, and going back to the bottom of the pay scale, or else delivering pizza for the rest of your working life. Either way, hope you didn't expect to retire, ever, or pay for your kids' college, or.... An article that I see as closely related to this, regarding changes in US military leadership between WWII and the present: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general-failure/309148/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/11/general-... TL;DR (of the relevant points): Removing an US military officer from a post is now rare and typically career-ending, while before it was common and often simply resulted in doing a different (not necessarily lesser) job somewhere else. Perhaps as a consequence, no-one wants to fire an officer from a job they're not very good at since doing so punishes them more severely than may be warranted. Officers don't want to take appropriate risks because they fear being fired more than they should have to and acting timid is (these days) far less risky than making a bold call that goes poorly. Certain classes of people seem immune to being punished for any mistakes, however egregious, of course, but for a huge percentage of the workforce and the bulk of the political class I think this holds. I'd guess our poor social safety net in the US serves to aggravate the problem. Losing a job here can be a hell of a lot worse than losing a job in most other states with advanced economies. I don't think that CYA is a new thing, of course, but I do think that in the recent past this degree of ass-covering wasn't rule #1 of public life for so many people. It's become a part of the background—a law of nature. I see it as a major, if not the dominant, factor enabling or encouraging bad police behavior, bad domestic and foreign policy, bad school administration, bad customer service, and bad employer-employee relationships. Apologies for any disorder in this post, it's not something I've written about before. [edit] grammar