Bipartisan
Democracy dies with bureaucratic bloat.
Everyone Wants a Better Government
Bipartisan agreement is not impossible in the United States. 90% believe that efficient federal government is vital for democracy, even as they show widespread disappointment for its actual performance.
‘An overwhelming majority of people say they think a federal bureaucracy that functions well is important for democracy.’
Stratechery argues that the EU internet is stuck in 2009 because of its onerous data regulations. They solved a problem at the time that the US with its lighter touch moved on from commercially. EU sites are a kluge of data obsession.
Regulation freezes time.
‘The third takeaway, though, is the most profound: the Internet experience in America is better because the market was allowed to work. Instead of a regulator mandating sites show pop-ups to provide some sort of false assurance about excess data collection, the vast majority of sites have long since figured out that (1) most of the data they might collect isn’t really that usable, particularly in light of the security risks in holding it, and (2) using third-party services is better both for the customer and themselves. Do you want a reservation? Just click a button or two, using the same service you use everywhere else; want to buy tickets? Just have a credit card, or even better, Apple Pay or Google Wallet.
‘Moreover, this realization extends to the data obsessives’ bugaboo, advertising. Yes, Internet advertising was a data disaster 15 years ago (i.e. the era where the European Internet seems stuck); the entities that did more than anyone to clean the situation up were in fact Meta and Google: sites and apps realized they could get better business results and reduce risk by essentially outsourcing all data collection and targeting to Meta and Google and completely cut out the ecosystem of data brokers and unaccountable middlemen that defined the first 15 years of the Internet.’
The Unseen Fallout: Chernobyl’s Deadly Air Pollution Legacy
Fossil fuel companies exploited the Chernobyl disaster to lobby successfully against the construction of new nuclear power plants, leading to worsening air quality and reduced nuclear safety at the existing facilities. Because reasons.
‘A fascinating new paper The Political Economic Determinants of Nuclear Power: Evidence from Chernobyl by Makarin, Qian, and Wang was recently presented at the NBER Pol. Economy conference. The paper is nominally about how fossil fuel companies and coal miners in the US and UK used the Chernobyl disaster to successfully lobby against building more nuclear power plants. The data collection here is impressive but that is just how democracy works. I found the political economy section less interesting than some of the background material.’
Thank You, Paul Krugman, for Making the Case for Light-touch Crypto Regulation
Subtle point here: one way to kill an industry is to refuse to provide well-delineated rules. Keep ‘em dancing. Impose a tax of uncertainty.
‘But even if one charitably assumes that what Krugman meant is that crypto should be regulated in a comparable way to comparable financial instruments, that still does not describe the status quo. The problem with the current state of crypto regulation, for example, is not so much that an agency like the Securities and Exchange Commission is trying to regulate crypto but that it is refusing to do so by failing to provide clear rules for how token issuers and exchanges register even when the agency asserts they’re under its jurisdiction.
‘In addition to the poor grasp of regulatory dynamics, there are reasons to think Krugman’s crypto skepticism is off the mark. Core to his argument is the assertion that crypto serves “no useful purpose.” Yet he goes on to provide something of an elegant description of a core crypto function: “What Bitcoin and its emulators try to do is sidestep the need for a legal framework with a technological fix that doesn’t depend on banks’ centralized record-keeping.” That’s well said.’
EPA: From environmental champion to bureaucratic goliath?
Does anyone believe that the EPA’s effectiveness at responding to climate change and pollution has increased in a manner commensurate with the growth in its resources?
‘The EPA has seen substantial growth in resources, but this has not yielded proportional environmental improvements or policy innovations. Critics have long argued that the agency has an unwieldy bureaucracy, a problem evident since the 1990s. A glance at the EPA’s organizational chart reveals a complex, multi-layered structure that underscores this bureaucratic expansion. The agency now comprises more than 35 offices, including the 10 regional offices, with multiple divisions and sub-departments, each with its own administrative overhead.
‘The EPA’s budget has grown from $1 billion in 1970 to $10.1 billion in 2023, with a proposed budget of $9.1 billion for 2024. This growth outpaces inflation by about 20%, while the agency’s workforce has expanded from 5,800 to 15,115 employees. These numbers suggest the EPA should be visible in every aspect of American life, yet it rarely enters public conversation.
‘The agency’s organizational complexity raises questions about its ability to respond resourcefully to emerging environmental challenges and efficiently allocate resources to affecting environmental programs. ‘