[eru]

There's actually plenty of examples out in the real world with competent administration to learn from. Especially if you generalise enough to look at how pockets of competence work even in an otherwise abysmal system, instead of demanding overall competence.

[alephnerd]

What you end up seeing is those cases of "competence" only worked in cases where administration and legislation was aligned. But even in those societies you'd still see problems which are distinct, but problems nonetheless.

[gsf_emergency_6]

GP might be saying that analyzing _differences_ in how perf targets are met in say, VN&CL (or SG&CH IE&HK TW&SI KR&DK) might be most productive. As you mention, in particular, how are their sad paths ("problems") different? Or the same?

Now there are subdepartments of study devoted to this very question (empirical study of the legislative-administrative divide) , but in the US I'm hard-pressed to list the corresponding think-tanks :) I suppose some MBA level depts in the US will have to suffice

[eru]

Going on a tangent:

I wish in the US more areas of policy would be decided at the state level, and I wish more state government would flip coins to decide on their policy. (Even better, if we can push it down to county level.)

The first part is about subsidiarity, which is a good idea anyway. But together this is just a tongue-in-cheek plea for doing more randomised, controlled experiments. (Alas, we can't blind them.)

[alephnerd]

> I wish in the US more areas of policy would be decided at the state level, and I wish more state government would flip coins to decide on their policy. (Even better, if we can push it down to county level.)

The overwhelming majority of policy is decided at the state and local level in the US so long as it's not foreign policy or monetary policy related.

Whatever is decided on the Hill has no bearing once administration and implementation comes to play - which is overwhelmingly done by state and local government.

This is why the US has become increasingly dysfunctional over the past few years - state and local elections which were previously staid affairs became polarized partisan affairs because turnout is low and the overwhelming majority of decision making roles are elected.

[gsf_emergency_6]

Flipping GP's tangent on its head (after all states in the US are akin to countries in the EU/EA:)

If you can't blind them find them

I suggest that, absolutely, state governance has _already_ generated lots of excellent data >> federal level :) probably much more accessible than corporate governance data )

Of course YC's Seibel might have something to say here, it's probably not a new perspective

[eru]

I wish you were right. NYC can't even charge people for their using their roads (whether that's driving or parking) without the state and federal governments getting involved.

[alephnerd]

NYC is an outlier because it was in receivership in the 1970s-80s and near bankruptcy [0]

[0] - https://rockinst.org/blog/behind-the-fiscal-curtain-forgotte...