America is bogged down in red tape. This is not a secret. Zoning and building codes double or triple the cost of housing, environmental permitting can multiply the cost of new infrastructure by five times, public union collective bargaining powers make schools and public agencies unmanageable. 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, who aptly described modern government as a “vetocracy”—any naysayer can throw a monkey wrench into almost any public decision.
 
What's missing is a discussion of the philosophical flaw underlying the modern state. The false premise is that law can validate public choices. Decisions sink into legal quicksand—thick rulebooks, multiple processes, and legal rights that are codified in 150 million words of federal law and regulation.
 
Governing requires human choices. Tradeoffs are unavoidable. Is the benefit of wind power worth the harms of disturbing the sea bed and altering the scenic vista? This is a value judgment, not a decision that is improved by years of legal hand-wringing.
 
Think of all the choices needed for government to work sensibly. Is this teacher effective, or not? Is this homeless person able to make choices for himself? Is this defense contractor reliable? All these choices require human judgment. None of these choices can be made today.
 
Modern government fails because it makes decisions by legal compliance, not human judgment. No amount of clipping red tape or “streamlining” will lead to effective government or a society of abundance. There will always be another rule or legal objection.
 
The only cure is a new governing framework defining a hierarchy of authority to make public choices, and to provide checks and balances. This is the operating philosophy of the Constitution. As James Madison put it: "It is one of the most prominent features of the constitution...that there should be the highest possible degree of responsibility in all the Executive officers thereof." (Instead of expanding the responsibility of public officials, DOGE seeks to replace centralized legal micromanagement with centralized autocracy.)
 
Philip Howard proposes a new framework for modernizing infrastructure in Escape from Quicksand, recently published by Manhattan Institute. In The Human Authority Needed for Good Schools, published by Hoover Institution, he argues that K-12 education cannot be fixed without breaking the stranglehold of red tape and teachers union controls.
 
Together with Columbia University’s Richman Center, we are organizing a morning forum at Columbia Law School on April 11 to debate how to remake the administrative state: “Governing for Results: Rethinking the Framework of American Government.” Please let us know if you would like to attend.

• Philip's recent appearance on PBS's "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover," where he discusses DOGE with Progressive Policy Institute's Will Marshall, is available here.

• The Ripon Forum published Philip's essay—"Good Government Begins with Accountability"—for their issue looking at the history of government reform.

• Manhattan Institute's John Ketcham in Governing and The Boston Globe's Alan Wirzbicki wrote about Philip's Escape from Quicksand report.