fewer but better laws
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Eric, I think this is brilliant. I would love to see 10 years of law removal. I'm afraid Obamacare lost me the second I heard about its size. It is disenfranchising, not only for the voters, but for the congressman who couldn't digest it. We pass laws, and if they don't work we add complications. If the courts nullify parts, we add workarounds, until we have something incomprehensible, ineffective for its intended purpose, but very good at gumming up the works. Consider the pointless mess campaign finance reform laws have become. I love creativity and am always open to trying something new -- but real creativity includes a willingness to see if it worked, undo the damage, and try something different if it doesn't. The governments (federal, state) are weak on step 2. The useful distinction here is may be complexity vs. complication, and a bias towards control. Huge bodies of laws and rulings may give the illusion of control and certainty, but they deaden the vast network of interactions which make us up. The Federal Reserve, managing one to two key variables (the discount rate and the reserve requirement) is more effective than the huge bodies of regulation which are so ripe with unintended consequences (e.g. the Mark to Market rule).
-Mike Oliker
"Message: 10 Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2012 10:24:06 -0400 From: "ERIC P. CHARLES" <[hidden email]> To: Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Is my government too big? Message-ID: <[hidden email]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Roger, Two points: 1) Being a third party kind of guy, with no particular loyalty for or against Obama (though keeping a healthy fear of Romney), I share Owen's frustration at Obama's inability/unwillingness to clearly articulate his successes. His overall record includes a surprising number of major successes that few seem to know about. 2) I don't think anyone has a problem with the government scaling in needed ways to the population. Yes, as cities get bigger, they need more police officers, firemen, etc. When people complain about "the growth in government", I think what they are really complaining about is the proliferation of new laws, especially when they involve "mission creep", in which the government starts to regulate newer and less necessary parts of their lives. When there are too many rules for people (i.e., legislators) to keep track of, you start to get schizophrenic sounding contradictions, which are necessarily enforced arbitrarily. Much of our problems could be solved if, at least for a short period, we convinced legislators to brag about how many laws they repealed, rather than them feeling they had to justify their existence by proposing and passing new laws. To make matters worse, when the per capita size of government remains the same, and the number of new laws continues to grow at staggering rates, it must be the case that enforcement of the old laws and regulations starts slipping. This means even more arbitrary enforcement and uncertainty. Eric P.S. Not a Federal issue, but: I have a friend who does some fun looking pistol competitions, and have been considering getting the licenses to participate. The PA gun law is 126 pages thick. When getting the quick summary from my friend, I was surprised to learn, for example: 1) There is no license required to own and carry a non-concealed, loaded firearm. 2) The license to carry a concealed weapon is easy to get, and will even let you drive with a concealed loaded pistol on your person! 3) If you are hunting with have a rifle (or any long-barrel gun), and accidentally lay it in plain sight in the passenger seat of your car, that is a big crime, even if you have said permit. If anyone could explain how that combination of laws makes sense....."
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On 9/15/2012 8:37 PM, Mike Oliker
wrote:
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43472 What Is the Net Budgetary Impact of the Coverage Provisions Taking Into Account the Supreme Court’s Decision?CBO and JCT now estimate that the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of $1,168 billion over the 2012–2022 period—compared with $1,252 billion projected in March 2012 for that 11-year period—for a net reduction of $84 billion.============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org |
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Small is beautiful, but sometimes big and complex are necessary. There are some computer programs that are essential to keep society running that are necessarily big and complex. Or for a natural example, virtually everything in biology is big (in terms of the number of things interacting) and complex. Yet it works better than anything we have been able to build.
-- Russ Abbott _____________________________________________ Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
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