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At the start of Infrastructure Week, Common Good Chair Philip K. Howard called today for the United States to end its infrastructure paralysis by adopting a new framework to modernize U.S. infrastructure. This framework would replace balkanized approvals by multiple agencies and multiple levels of government with one decision-making hierarchy.
So far Elon Musk's DOGE initiative has focused on cutting programs and terminating civil servants, not reforms to improve public performance. But there's broad public and expert opinion that government operating systems are overdue for overhaul.
This morning forum will focus on the operational failures of the current state, and will include proposals to empower common sense solutions, make government more manageable, and clarify the role of oversight by courts.
America is bogged down in red tape. This is not a secret. Common sense is nowhere, because common sense is illegal.
A brigade of worthy new books is sounding the alarm, and are summarized by David Brooks in his column this week: “We Can Achieve Great Things.” Other public intellectuals calling for a better way of governing are IT expert Jennifer Pahlka, law professor Nicholas Bagley, and political scientist Francis Fukuyama.
What's missing is a discussion of the philosophical flaw underlying the modern state.
In a report published by Manhattan Institute, Philip Howard argues that Washington needs to abandon the bureaucratic compliance model, and replace it with a simpler framework that empowers designated officials to make tradeoff judgments to modernize infrastructure and achieve public results.
Governing structures created after the 1960s are designed to fail because they presume legal rules and processes can validate correct choices. But law can't think. The proper role of law is to provide a framework that delineates the authority to make that decision, and provides public transparency and oversight.