So we create a law to mitigate a possible threat, implement a complex bureaucratic process, fail to inform or train the people responsible for implementing it, waste the resources of everyone involved, create the opportunity for abuse, and presumably completely fail to achieve the original goal.
These kind of scenarios are aplenty and can turn people from all ideologies into a libertarian for at least a few seconds... but I'm left wondering what good options are for actually assessing policies and laws before and after they are implemented.
After living under a few different legal systems in different countries, I find the US pretty lacking in the "so did that work?" component. Laws which are contentious, directly expensive, cause loud groups harm, or show up in the press are given attention, but this is a small slice of the whole legal/policy universe.
A law or policy which nobody knows about or enforces is 'operationally' cost/effective, but a system which implements these policies continuously is going to run into unintended consequences eventually (abuse, or sheer costs of a large legal apparatus).
Shouldn't there be good built-in mechanisms to actively give feedback to government about policy effectiveness? What would that look like?
These kind of scenarios are aplenty and can turn people from all ideologies into a libertarian for at least a few seconds... but I'm left wondering what good options are for actually assessing policies and laws before and after they are implemented.
After living under a few different legal systems in different countries, I find the US pretty lacking in the "so did that work?" component. Laws which are contentious, directly expensive, cause loud groups harm, or show up in the press are given attention, but this is a small slice of the whole legal/policy universe.
A law or policy which nobody knows about or enforces is 'operationally' cost/effective, but a system which implements these policies continuously is going to run into unintended consequences eventually (abuse, or sheer costs of a large legal apparatus).
Shouldn't there be good built-in mechanisms to actively give feedback to government about policy effectiveness? What would that look like?