I’m not convinced about tractability, relative to other interventions.
You write:
“Government is just by its nature slow, efficient, bureaucratic, complex, convoluted, <insert additional adjectives> and working to change that is just the nature of the game.”
But my actual objection is something you addressed earlier, namely that
“The complexity and incoherence of our government often make it difficult for us to understand just what that government is doing, and among the practices it most frequently hides from view is the growing tendency of public policy to redistribute resources upward to the wealthy and the organized at the expense of the poorer and less organized.”
and
What then is actually the point, besides providing lucrative consulting contracts?
I think increasing state capacity in California is hard because the types of state capacity that I think you (and I) would want involve defeating groups of people in law and in bureaucracy who are motivated by both values and economics. They stand to lose a lot of money and the kind of life that they want to live if certain reforms are passed, and would be very motivated to stop what in your view is increased state capacity.
I think you could convince me that the problem is tractable if you showed how you could actually win legislative or bureaucratic victories here, and right now I don’t think you could do that.
I’m not convinced about tractability, relative to other interventions.
You write:
“Government is just by its nature slow, efficient, bureaucratic, complex, convoluted, <insert additional adjectives> and working to change that is just the nature of the game.”
But my actual objection is something you addressed earlier, namely that
“The complexity and incoherence of our government often make it difficult for us to understand just what that government is doing, and among the practices it most frequently hides from view is the growing tendency of public policy to redistribute resources upward to the wealthy and the organized at the expense of the poorer and less organized.”
and
What then is actually the point, besides providing lucrative consulting contracts?
I think increasing state capacity in California is hard because the types of state capacity that I think you (and I) would want involve defeating groups of people in law and in bureaucracy who are motivated by both values and economics. They stand to lose a lot of money and the kind of life that they want to live if certain reforms are passed, and would be very motivated to stop what in your view is increased state capacity.
I think you could convince me that the problem is tractable if you showed how you could actually win legislative or bureaucratic victories here, and right now I don’t think you could do that.
Here’s a sac bee article from a few years back about the water data wars. I’m happy to share some documents from theCaDC.org showing the growth and progress of the initiative: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article182279056.html