Friday, June 10, 2022

Ken Feinberg

 Saw the movie "Worth", which is based on Kenneth Feinberg's work administering compensation for victims of 9/11, and his book.

They juiced the movie by focusing on people and incidents, as movies do, but both are good.

The book is interesting from a bureaucratic standpoint--though Feinberg doesn't say so, he goes through the classic steps of American bureaucracy (for a distribution program*), reading the law (very general), meeting management (Attorney General Ashcroft and DOJ), writing regulations, creating forms to gather data, then selling the program, accepting some as participants, disqualifying others, then dealing with the friction between the bureaucratic model and the real reality, and finally issuing checks.

Feinberg had some experience before 9/11 with mediating and doing compensation, but afterwards he handled many more such situations.  It's interesting, because he doesn't endorse the 9/11 process as an example, particularly the use of "economic value" of a life, an after-the-fact life insurance program.  

* My government professor, Theodore Lowi, had categorized government programs into: redistribution, regulation, and distribution.

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