my notes ( ? )
"the botched roll-out of Obamacare involved 55 uncoordinated IT vendors... barely 3 percent of the $800 billion stimulus plan went to rebuild transportation infrastructure... federal pensions are processed by hand in a deep cave in Pennsylvania....
over the last few decades, law has gotten ever more granular. But all that regulatory detail, like sediment in a harbor, makes it hard to get anywhere. The 1956 Interstate Highway Act was 29 pages and succeeded in getting 41,000 miles of roads built by 1970. The 2012 transportation bill was 584 pages, and years will pass before workers can start fixing many of those same roads... 140,000 reimbursement categories for Medicare including 12 categories for bee stings and 21 categories for “spacecraft accidents.” ... administration consumes 30 percent of health-care costs....
Put humans back in charge. Law should generally be an open framework, mainly principles and goals, leaving room for responsible people to make decisions and be held accountable for results. Law based on principles leaves room for the decision-maker always to act on this question: What’s the right thing to do here?"
Nice idea, but bureaucrats *like* being able to shirk responsibility and blame the system they find themselves part of. Still, it's nice to see the US has similar problems to Europe:
"Hiring and promotion is largely based on written tests, not demonstrated competence. Promoting an exemplary employee is often impossible..."
- When Humans Lose Control of Government - The Atlantic
Read the Full Post
The above notes were curated from the full post
www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/09/fixing-broken-government-put-humans-in-charge/380309/.