Following up from yesterday’s
Governing by excruciating detail, dictating every result in advance, might indeed suggest to you the pattern with which Mr. Havel has so much experience. Modern regulatory law resembles central planning. Instead of an economist in Moscow making complex flowcharts on how to harvest Siberia’s wheat, generally forgetting something like spare parts for the delivery trucks, we have highly detailed laws and rules, often written years earlier, that catalog the conditions for our action.
Government in both cases is blinded by its own predetermined rules, entranced by the Rationalist’s promise that all can be set out before we get there. As the philosopher, Michael Oakenschott, observed “The Rationalist…does not merely neglect the kind of knowledge which would save him, he begins by destroying it. First he turns out the light and then complains he cannot see.”
There are differences, of course. The Soviets tried to run their country like a puppeteer pulling millions of strings. In our country, the words of law are like millions of trip wires, preventing us from doing the sensible thing.
The Death of Common Sense – Philip K. Howard