[DanielBMarkham]

It seems to me the actual policies themselves matter more.

Not at all.

Look at it this way: what do you want, to be able to get the answer exactly right the first time, or to have a bunch of iterations optimizing each time?

Societies are complex chaotic systems. There probably is no "right" answer. Instead, it's important for there to be a dance between policy and marketplace. The dance is much more important than the policy itself. [insert long economics discussion here]

[johnnybgoode]

To clarify, I don't mean the actual policies just at any one time.