Parts of your article hint at this, but I’d like to see reforming the incentives of the system be the focus more so than electing better politicians. There’s only so much you can achieve by what Thomas Sowell calls "substituting the good guys for the bad guys" or "throwing the rascals out".
"Morally, it is possible to deplore individual weakness or selfishness, but rationally there is little reason to expect a different outcome from a normal sample of people facing the same structure of incentives. Reform by “throwing the rascals out” seems less promising than reform by changing the structure of incentives facing whoever occupies decision-making positions."
Yes, but changing the incentives requires leadership that recognizes the need for that change. And often times that will only come by "throwing out the rascals."
I said to focus on incentives, not to ignore personnel entirely.
The key thing to come to terms with is that politicians are motivated primarily by the desire to get elected. So whatever a politician does in office is closely connected to what the voters want and whoever you put in that politician’s place is going to face the same pressures from the same voters.
Given this, one approach to making lasting change is to take advantage of favorable shifts in voter opinion to put in place reforms to incentives that will be operable long term and hard to reverse when voters shift back or simply lose interest later.
I’m always leery of this stuff because of the Boomer obsession with “accountability” politics that ultimately created our NIMBY nightmare, and with moronically populist ideas like term limits.
First we need smarter voters. Good for that mayor, and boo for the county, but it's easy to forget why we have regulation. Biden actually did succeed in getting a lot of concrete positive things done before voters decided to trash the country. In particular, there were two rural high speed connectivity programs, one of which got a lot of connectivity installed, and the other was still doing comprehensive coverage maps, which are needed for more serious coverage and opposed bitterly by communication companies who don't want a spotlight on how monopolistic the coverage is. And there was a FAA effort to extend internet connectivity during the first Trump administration that had no regulation and basically wasted billions of dollars.
Re: the opening anecdote about the planning in San Jose:
I happen to be close to someone who works for the county of Santa Clara (the county that San Jose is in), who works not in planning, but in a related department. I checked with my contact about this. They said:
1. The county map recording department is implementing state law/regulations about things like the margins of subdivision maps.
2. They also felt some sympathy for the idea that the maps should be very tightly formatted, saying that these end up being the document of record for things like exactly where property lines are, and that this was a case where having everything be very carefully professionally made is important.
My takeaway is:
I understand why YIMBYs/Abundance people are frustrated with local control and why they see state or federal preemption as the weapon of choice to cut through lots of permitting issues. That said, I've definitely noticed that bureaucracies are less flexible when the source of the rules they are implementing is far from them. I think it's a lot easier to say, "We're going to be flexible about a 1/8" variance in margins" when the size of the margin is your own office's rule (and you can go to your boss' door and say, "Do we actually care about 1" vs 1 1/8" margins?"), as opposed to when you are tasked to implement a rule created by a distant, superior form of government.
I think if you do that, people who are clients of the office will want a rule. "We don't want to guess whether you think the margins are acceptable or not, just give us a number, that's way easier."
And, to be clear, I agree that the people at the office should have some discretion, it's clearly pretty dumb to obsess over 1" vs 1 1/8", but it's fine to have "some discretion around an agreed upon standard," like "It should be 1" but we aren't going to sweat minor deviations."
I don't think that having a rule of 1" margins is unreasonable. What happened is that the rule became some kind of ultra-precise iron law. And I think instead of worrying about exactly whether the 1" margin rule was reasonable or not, we should think about how rules become ultra-precise iron laws.
And I think that distance from the source of the rule is a big part of that. What I understand in this case is:
1. The state mandates a 1" margin.
2. The county then enforces that 1" margin.
3. Then the city as a "convenience" tells you that they're going to also enforce that 1" margin.
Like... is the city of San Jose actually correct that the county would've rejected that map due to its margins? Maybe! But also... I mean... maybe not, too, right? Maybe what happened is that in the past someone submitted a map with 1/2" margins and the city let it through and then the county rejected it and the city took that to mean "the county wants very precisely 1" margins," but the county would've actually been totally fine with a 1/8" variance. Who knows for this particular case, but when you have a game of telephone like this, I feel like in at least some cases you'll have miscommunications.
Pahlka writes about this in her book, it’s not that bureaucrats are bad people, they have to follow regulations and they’re incentivized to adhere to them strictly lest they get “held accountable” for deviating. And there may be some good reason for the original regulation, it just didn’t allow for much accommodation for common sense.
I understand that, but what I'm saying is something a little different. I'm talking about specifically how the effect of being "held accountable" to rigid rules are at least perceived to be greater if you're far from the person who ultimately is the source of the rule.
Ah yes, you're totally right. The California Legislature enacts a law, then asks an agency to implement it, and they outsource it to a county to try to carry it out, and it turns into a convoluted game of telephone where a county bureaucrat is tasked with interpreting something with very little guidance, so they stick to the most narrow, conservative interpretation even if it doesn't make much sense on the user side.
Ideally, for matters of state law, individual citizens and bureaucrats could submit public comments requesting clarification on existing law, which the legislature could actually respond to and use to update existing law. Ditto for procedure and policy; if an office creates a policy it should be responsible for publishing that policy and making it possible for feedback to be received and responded to. This is basically a solved problem in software, there's no reason we can't support create feedback mechanisms.
A feedback loop would be great in theory, but adding more public comments I think only adds to the delays and bureaucracy.
I think a lot of governments could use an appointed position of "Director of Constituent Experience" where they just make sure stuff works and can cut through a lot of the red tape!
For your book, I'd take a look at Federico Sturzenegger of Argentina. He's a former Harvard professor and central bank president who is currently acting as "Minister of deregulation and State transformation". His Twitter feed is filled with examples where he talks about removing needless red tape. Some snapshots from just this month:
(the posts are in Spanish but the X translate feature works pretty well).
His account is well worth following and would make anyone passionate about making govt more efficient proud. He claims to have removed or simplified over 8,000 regulations.
Great article. As a litigator, dealing with minutiae of rules is my everyday experience. I also know that getting rules changed, no matter how small, is extremely difficult, at least for ordinary people. Just about every rule has somebody who will defend it. Getting any change requires committee after committee. The smallest and least significant rules are the slowest to change because few people care. Gerrymandering California = immediate vote, but just about everything else is on the backburner. Love that Mahan jumped in and cared here; that is indeed real leadership. Thanks!
I would buy this book.
Me too! I would preorder today!
Ditto!
Parts of your article hint at this, but I’d like to see reforming the incentives of the system be the focus more so than electing better politicians. There’s only so much you can achieve by what Thomas Sowell calls "substituting the good guys for the bad guys" or "throwing the rascals out".
"Morally, it is possible to deplore individual weakness or selfishness, but rationally there is little reason to expect a different outcome from a normal sample of people facing the same structure of incentives. Reform by “throwing the rascals out” seems less promising than reform by changing the structure of incentives facing whoever occupies decision-making positions."
Thomas Sowell in Knowledge and Decisions
Yes, but changing the incentives requires leadership that recognizes the need for that change. And often times that will only come by "throwing out the rascals."
I said to focus on incentives, not to ignore personnel entirely.
The key thing to come to terms with is that politicians are motivated primarily by the desire to get elected. So whatever a politician does in office is closely connected to what the voters want and whoever you put in that politician’s place is going to face the same pressures from the same voters.
Given this, one approach to making lasting change is to take advantage of favorable shifts in voter opinion to put in place reforms to incentives that will be operable long term and hard to reverse when voters shift back or simply lose interest later.
I want to shout out Scranton, PA’s excellent mayor Paige Cognetti, who embodies this spirit as well. She may run for Congress in ‘26.
I’m always leery of this stuff because of the Boomer obsession with “accountability” politics that ultimately created our NIMBY nightmare, and with moronically populist ideas like term limits.
Oh please, please, please write that book!
This reminds me of Ron Swanson fixing the pothole himself. Also, this article by Richard Ben Cramer: https://classic.esquire.com/article/1984/10/1/can-the-best-mayor-win
❤️❤️❤️🔥🔥❤️❤️🔥🔥
Colere: the root of culture and *cult* 😇
First we need smarter voters. Good for that mayor, and boo for the county, but it's easy to forget why we have regulation. Biden actually did succeed in getting a lot of concrete positive things done before voters decided to trash the country. In particular, there were two rural high speed connectivity programs, one of which got a lot of connectivity installed, and the other was still doing comprehensive coverage maps, which are needed for more serious coverage and opposed bitterly by communication companies who don't want a spotlight on how monopolistic the coverage is. And there was a FAA effort to extend internet connectivity during the first Trump administration that had no regulation and basically wasted billions of dollars.
FTC, not FAA. Sorry.
Re: the opening anecdote about the planning in San Jose:
I happen to be close to someone who works for the county of Santa Clara (the county that San Jose is in), who works not in planning, but in a related department. I checked with my contact about this. They said:
1. The county map recording department is implementing state law/regulations about things like the margins of subdivision maps.
2. They also felt some sympathy for the idea that the maps should be very tightly formatted, saying that these end up being the document of record for things like exactly where property lines are, and that this was a case where having everything be very carefully professionally made is important.
My takeaway is:
I understand why YIMBYs/Abundance people are frustrated with local control and why they see state or federal preemption as the weapon of choice to cut through lots of permitting issues. That said, I've definitely noticed that bureaucracies are less flexible when the source of the rules they are implementing is far from them. I think it's a lot easier to say, "We're going to be flexible about a 1/8" variance in margins" when the size of the margin is your own office's rule (and you can go to your boss' door and say, "Do we actually care about 1" vs 1 1/8" margins?"), as opposed to when you are tasked to implement a rule created by a distant, superior form of government.
I don't see why we need a law or regulation about the size of margins in the first place
I mean, not having any margins at all seems like it's a recipe for losing information at the edge of the map.
For sure, but that doesn't mean you need a law about it.
Give the people at the office some discretion. Hey we can't read this map, do it over. Seems reasonable.
I think if you do that, people who are clients of the office will want a rule. "We don't want to guess whether you think the margins are acceptable or not, just give us a number, that's way easier."
And, to be clear, I agree that the people at the office should have some discretion, it's clearly pretty dumb to obsess over 1" vs 1 1/8", but it's fine to have "some discretion around an agreed upon standard," like "It should be 1" but we aren't going to sweat minor deviations."
I don't think that having a rule of 1" margins is unreasonable. What happened is that the rule became some kind of ultra-precise iron law. And I think instead of worrying about exactly whether the 1" margin rule was reasonable or not, we should think about how rules become ultra-precise iron laws.
And I think that distance from the source of the rule is a big part of that. What I understand in this case is:
1. The state mandates a 1" margin.
2. The county then enforces that 1" margin.
3. Then the city as a "convenience" tells you that they're going to also enforce that 1" margin.
Like... is the city of San Jose actually correct that the county would've rejected that map due to its margins? Maybe! But also... I mean... maybe not, too, right? Maybe what happened is that in the past someone submitted a map with 1/2" margins and the city let it through and then the county rejected it and the city took that to mean "the county wants very precisely 1" margins," but the county would've actually been totally fine with a 1/8" variance. Who knows for this particular case, but when you have a game of telephone like this, I feel like in at least some cases you'll have miscommunications.
Pahlka writes about this in her book, it’s not that bureaucrats are bad people, they have to follow regulations and they’re incentivized to adhere to them strictly lest they get “held accountable” for deviating. And there may be some good reason for the original regulation, it just didn’t allow for much accommodation for common sense.
I understand that, but what I'm saying is something a little different. I'm talking about specifically how the effect of being "held accountable" to rigid rules are at least perceived to be greater if you're far from the person who ultimately is the source of the rule.
Ah yes, you're totally right. The California Legislature enacts a law, then asks an agency to implement it, and they outsource it to a county to try to carry it out, and it turns into a convoluted game of telephone where a county bureaucrat is tasked with interpreting something with very little guidance, so they stick to the most narrow, conservative interpretation even if it doesn't make much sense on the user side.
Ideally, for matters of state law, individual citizens and bureaucrats could submit public comments requesting clarification on existing law, which the legislature could actually respond to and use to update existing law. Ditto for procedure and policy; if an office creates a policy it should be responsible for publishing that policy and making it possible for feedback to be received and responded to. This is basically a solved problem in software, there's no reason we can't support create feedback mechanisms.
A feedback loop would be great in theory, but adding more public comments I think only adds to the delays and bureaucracy.
I think a lot of governments could use an appointed position of "Director of Constituent Experience" where they just make sure stuff works and can cut through a lot of the red tape!
For your book, I'd take a look at Federico Sturzenegger of Argentina. He's a former Harvard professor and central bank president who is currently acting as "Minister of deregulation and State transformation". His Twitter feed is filled with examples where he talks about removing needless red tape. Some snapshots from just this month:
Removed restrictions on truck travel: https://x.com/fedesturze/status/1957773145043050808
Standardized and updated product specification requirements on imports: https://x.com/fedesturze/status/1955616518827356669
Deregulated drone usage https://x.com/fedesturze/status/1953801253697335490
(the posts are in Spanish but the X translate feature works pretty well).
His account is well worth following and would make anyone passionate about making govt more efficient proud. He claims to have removed or simplified over 8,000 regulations.
Great article. As a litigator, dealing with minutiae of rules is my everyday experience. I also know that getting rules changed, no matter how small, is extremely difficult, at least for ordinary people. Just about every rule has somebody who will defend it. Getting any change requires committee after committee. The smallest and least significant rules are the slowest to change because few people care. Gerrymandering California = immediate vote, but just about everything else is on the backburner. Love that Mahan jumped in and cared here; that is indeed real leadership. Thanks!