Governing in Quicksand

An uncomfortable truth underlies the frustration with democracy that drives people to extremism. That truth is this: Governing sensibly is basically impossible in a bureaucratic and legal jungle. Common sense disappears into the quicksand of thick rulebooks, lengthy processes, and claimed rights. Teachers can’t maintain order, officials can’t approve new transmission lines, and mayors can’t fire rogue cops.

Legacy bureaucracies have grown ever-denser in the past 70 years, not only in the US but in most western countries. British columnist Sebastian Mallaby this week observed that the only tool for economic growth available to new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is “smarter regulation”—to clean out paralytic red tape so that things can get built again. New York Times columnist Ezra Klein describes how homeless housing in Los Angeles costs $600,000 per unit—“more than the median sale price for a home in Denver.” Here’s a chart comparing the timeline for building bike lanes in Seattle with the program to put men on the moon.

These failures are not caused by inept officials but by an inept operating structure. The accumulated rules and rights are designed to prevent human choice. Did you comply with all the rules? Might someone object? There’s no solution until we acknowledge that this experiment with automatic governing has failed. It is impossible, as a kind of microeconomic truism, to create a government better than people.

Government can’t deliver without a simpler framework that re-empowers people to take responsibility, and that re-empowers other people to hold them accountable.

The natural instinct is to reach for incremental changes—better leaders, and tweaks here and there. But every hope disappears into the quicksand. Frustration and anger will only intensify until people are allowed to take responsibility again.

The current operating machinery of government must be replaced, not fixed. The new framework must be built on the philosophical premise of our constitutional republic—where public decisions are activated by the choices of responsible officials. Here’s a summary of our vision.