{"id":21061,"date":"2013-07-12T08:39:16","date_gmt":"2013-07-12T13:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=21061"},"modified":"2013-07-12T08:41:54","modified_gmt":"2013-07-12T13:41:54","slug":"the-flaw-in-the-idea-of-smarter-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/07\/12\/the-flaw-in-the-idea-of-smarter-government\/","title":{"rendered":"The flaw in the idea of &#8220;smarter government&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/353238\/making-government-smarter-jonah-goldberg\" target=\"_blank\">Jonah Goldberg<\/a> finds a brief passing point of consensus before it disappears:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>President Obama wants to make government \u201csmarter.\u201d Who could disagree with that? After all, it\u2019s unlikely that even the biggest fans of big government believe the way government does what it does is the very best, very smartest way imaginable. Whether you\u2019re an anarchist, a Leninist, or somewhere in between, everyone can agree that Uncle Sam could afford a few more IQ points. <\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s put it another way. If government is going to do X, it should do X the smartest way possible. On that proposition both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party agree.<\/p>\n<p>Alas, this momentary flash of consensus disappears before our eyes like a shooting star the moment we ask a related but very different question: Is it smart for the government to do X in the first place? For instance: I think it\u2019s a dumb idea to tickle a grizzly-bear cub while it\u2019s napping on its mother\u2019s belly. But if I\u2019m given no choice but to do it, I\u2019ll eagerly inquire about what\u2019s the smartest way to do a very dumb thing. And if I\u2019m told there is no smart way to do such a dumb thing (which I assume is true), I\u2019ll at least ask for tips on the least dumb way to do it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jonah Goldberg finds a brief passing point of consensus before it disappears: President Obama wants to make government \u201csmarter.\u201d Who could disagree with that? After all, it\u2019s unlikely that even the biggest fans of big government believe the way government does what it does is the very best, very smartest way imaginable. Whether you\u2019re an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,84],"tags":[158,661],"class_list":["post-21061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-government","tag-barackobama","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5tH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21061"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21063,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21061\/revisions\/21063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}