I think that I am one of the few federal bureaucrats who openly engage in the comment section here. I have worked in two different federal agencies.
(…) Removing regulations requires just as much time and clearance [as developing regulations]. In order to massively deregulate, the agencies would require an increase in the state capacity for rule writing and the clearance process
Good share. That symmetry of cost structure between creating and destroying policy is, I would guess, both true and overlooked. The tendency of protocols to accumulate is pretty remarkable. Especially when they’re written down and updated on a regular basis
There’s a strong principal-agent problem here, too, where the people hired to conduct the clearance process would essentially be putting themselves out of work
I reckon we’ll end up relying on tools like AI to solve this problem, rather than addressing the structural root cause. Kinda like how public health has failed to solve the issues of heart disease and diabetes – pharmacological interventions rely a lot less free will
AI seems like a good match for this problem. The accumulation of protocols increases the supply of unknown knowns, which can be rediscovered or summarized with AI… Like in The Foundation trilogy where all knowledge has been created, but it needs to be mined out of the archives. See also A Camera, Not an Engine
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”,
I reckon we’ll end up relying on tools like AI to solve this problem,
I like that way of phrasing it, rather than “AI will solve this problem”.
Tools do not solve problems; the wrench do not fix your car, the mechanic does.