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We’ve been taught that America’s regulatory system is organized in legal codes, like traffic signals and road signs. In reality, the codes are more like an overgrown jungle, incoherent to any real person and often contradictory.
Setting artificial intelligence loose into the red-tape thicket, experts think, will untangle the knots and make government work better. This is simplistic and largely misguided. While AI can certainly identify duplication and contradictions, it cannot replace the rigidities of red-tape operating structures that preempt common sense as a matter of law.
In a review of New York City school law during the Mike Bloomberg administration, for example, I found that disciplining a student could require 66 different legal steps and considerations. AI can identify idiocies like these, but actually restoring teacher control of the classroom requires a new framework that empowers teachers and administrators to use their judgment.
It’s hard to find balance in the current storm. Global perils are getting hotter while America is getting weaker. Is our only choice MAGA or socialism? AI could disrupt everything. Trump’s daily impulsiveness underscores the sense that America has lost its keel.
The missing keel, I think, is human responsibility. Americans at all levels of society feel powerless to do what they think is right. Just follow the rules. Don’t be judgmental. Americans can’t fix what they know is broken, so they point fingers and reach for extremist solutions.
Taking responsibility requires authority to act on your best judgment—to always ask, “What’s the right thing to do here?” Trust is not required—just accountability, which requires empowering other people to act on their best judgment.
There’s a consensus among U.S. policymakers and public officials—an increasingly rare sight—that America is being suffocated by red tape.
“Abundance” advocates want to cut through zoning and permitting laws to build housing and infrastructure more quickly. Researchers such as Stanford professor Daniel Ho are using artificial intelligence to identify obsolete rules in the more than 3 billion words of legal code in the United States. And President Donald Trump, of course, brought in Elon Musk to wield the DOGE chainsaw.
But why does America have so much red tape? Society might work better if people understood what was expected of them and had room to use their judgment. The U.S. Constitution has 7,591 words. The difference between the modern red-tape state and the Constitution is operational philosophy.
In Saving Can-Do, Common Good Chair Philip K. Howard unlocks the quandary of populist resentment and also of broken government.
America is flailing in legal quicksand. The solution is a new governing framework that allows Americans to roll up their sleeves and take responsibility. We must scrap the red tape state. What’s required is a multi-year effort to replace these massive failed bureaucracies with simpler codes that are activated by people using their judgment. As America approaches the 250th anniversary of the revolution, it’s time to reclaim the magic of America’s unique can-do culture.
Saving Can-Do was published by Rodin Books on September 23, 2025.