Wednesday, December 26, 2018

The Advantage of Two-Party Rule

This Govexec piece (originally in Propublica) describes an instance of how people can learn to game government rules, in this case the HUD rules for federally-subsidized housing. If it's worthwhile, people are ingenious enough and motivated enough to figure out games, whether it's the "Potemkin Villages" of the Czars or installing walls in a building to hide major defects.

With two-party rule you establish some incentives to find dirt on the other guys.  Even there is no dirt, there's the human incentive to make change, to throw out the bathwater because it was the pet project of the other party.

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