
Fixing Broken Government - MaysonL
http://blog.longnow.org/2011/02/01/long-now-media-update-75/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+longnow+%28The+Long+Now+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
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MaysonL
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
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
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._

