—American policing. There’s tons of obvious problems with this, and the proposed solutions range from obvious and nearly universally agreed upon (reduce SWAT-style raids by >90%, end/drastically reform qualified immunity, abolish civil asset forfeiture, etc) to speculative and contentious. Such reforms generally don’t match the incentives of the police themselves, and civil oversight is currently too diffuse and ineffective to impose reform. National authorities are incapable of any reform, and while a few state and cities have made small changes in the past year, the core issues will not be addressed anywhere in the near future.
—COVID vaccine distribution. Our society can reach better equilibria, as shown by the normal flu vaccine distribution and by the occasional stories where a freezer breaks down and all the shots are administered before they expire. Nevertheless our current system is a mess, no one feels they have responsibility for the mess, and there is no sign it will be fixed before the pandemic ends.
—Whatever made development of the F-35 fighter plane so much worse than the development of previous fighter planes.
—There are several cases in America (and presumably elsewhere, although I’m less familiar) where a relatively small, coordinated group successfully lobbies for laws which benefit themselves by imposing small costs on the country as a whole. Because the costs are so widely distributed, no one has a strong incentive to overturn these, and lawmakers have a moderate incentive to cooperate with the special interest group. The canonical examples include the artificial complexity of the tax code held in place by tax-preparation firms; ethanol subsidies supported by corn growers; and comically long copyright for artistic works, supported by media conglomerates (IIRC these expire 70 years after the death of the author!).
—Make More Land.
—American policing. There’s tons of obvious problems with this, and the proposed solutions range from obvious and nearly universally agreed upon (reduce SWAT-style raids by >90%, end/drastically reform qualified immunity, abolish civil asset forfeiture, etc) to speculative and contentious. Such reforms generally don’t match the incentives of the police themselves, and civil oversight is currently too diffuse and ineffective to impose reform. National authorities are incapable of any reform, and while a few state and cities have made small changes in the past year, the core issues will not be addressed anywhere in the near future.
—COVID vaccine distribution. Our society can reach better equilibria, as shown by the normal flu vaccine distribution and by the occasional stories where a freezer breaks down and all the shots are administered before they expire. Nevertheless our current system is a mess, no one feels they have responsibility for the mess, and there is no sign it will be fixed before the pandemic ends.
—Whatever made development of the F-35 fighter plane so much worse than the development of previous fighter planes.
—There are several cases in America (and presumably elsewhere, although I’m less familiar) where a relatively small, coordinated group successfully lobbies for laws which benefit themselves by imposing small costs on the country as a whole. Because the costs are so widely distributed, no one has a strong incentive to overturn these, and lawmakers have a moderate incentive to cooperate with the special interest group. The canonical examples include the artificial complexity of the tax code held in place by tax-preparation firms; ethanol subsidies supported by corn growers; and comically long copyright for artistic works, supported by media conglomerates (IIRC these expire 70 years after the death of the author!).