Hacker News Reader

I don't agree with the Cato article either, but this just sounds hopelessly naive:

"There is an obvious and simple solution to [players with a special interest to try to game the system] - transparency and openness in decision making."

Couldn't your argument be applied anytime someone objected to the unnecessary intrusion of government regulation? "Oh, we'll just have the government make decisions in an transparent and open way. Problem solved."

View on HN

Better yet, let's have politics decide all economic questions. Then there'll be no gaming of anything.

Isn't there enough evidence that this is the status quo?

sadly

Why is that so hard?

Because "the government" is an abstraction. In reality the decisions have to be made by specific people with specific interests and biases.

People with regulatory decision-making power are, by definition, powerful. So they have the interests of powerful people, which are unlikely to match the interests of most of the rest of us.

More importantly, government is an organization.

The foremost motive for an organization (like any organiam) is self-preservation. Transparency is usually perceived as a vulnerability that might allow enemies to attack.

And when enemies == constituents, it might be time to fold the whole thing up and start over.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com