This Pandemic Is an Opportunity for Radical
Simplification
Andreas Kluth
“… Something similar was happening in the societies of
rich countries. We kept adding layers of complication: new bureaucracies,
legislation, divisions of labor, tax loopholes, and so forth. The European
Union is one example, but the U.S. is arguably worse. According to one
influential thesis proposed in 2013, America has become a “kludgeocracy.”
“Kludge” is a term from the software world for a
clumsy patch that doesn’t solve the bigger issue, thereby creating even more complexity
and future problems. This is easily observed in America’s contemporary
governance, or in its systems of health care, education and taxation. Ask, for
example, any new visitor to the U.S. what the following gibberish could be
about: 401(k), IRA, Roth IRA, Keogh? Nobody would guess it has something to do
with retirement saving”.
Why we can’t build
Why we can’t build
Ezra Klein notes:
“The result is a system biased toward inaction. The left can’t remake American health care. The right can’t voucherize American schools. The left can’t pass a climate bill. The right can’t privatize Social Security. Neither side can rewrite our immigration laws, hence the turn towards oscillating executive orders. Neither side can pass their infrastructure packages. Neither side can reform social insurance. …
You can see this if you attend a planning meeting in San Francisco and watch the line of people who assemble to oppose even the most modest development. You can see it in California’s inability to build high-speed rail, despite tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies, because the state got so trapped in its own vetocracy it couldn’t just build the damn thing in a straight line. You can see it in the inability of American cities to build public transit at cost and quality levels that simply rival that of poorer, older European cities, to say nothing of leapfrogging the new development in Asia.”