America Is Getting Bogged Down in Hassles and
Kludge
Noah Smith notes:
“Transaction costs fall hardest on the poor and most
vulnerable in society. When you don’t have much money, any small hassle -- a
traffic stop, a late fee, a parking ticket — looms large compared with your scant
resources. Economist Sendhil Mullainathan has done research suggesting that
these aggravations and risks force poor people into a mindset of short-term
desperation that makes it very difficult to escape poverty.
There’s no simple solution to transaction costs.
Shifting away from capitalism offers no guarantee that life will be
streamlined; governments are notorious for creating mountains of red tape, as
anyone who has been to the Department of Motor Vehicles knows all too well, and
any socialist system would involve large amounts of regulation. Nor does
technology offer a silver bullet; the computerization of everything makes each
individual hoop easier to jump through, but that encourages companies and
governments to create new ones.”