Why do we get bad laws?

Bruce MacEwen over at Adam Smith, Esq. has a great post on bad laws, linking this NYT article. It’s about why laws have unfortunate unintended and unanticipated consequences:

Because, really, people, it's so simple. The intellectual failure of analysis that condemns the authors of the Endangered Species Act, of the ADA, and of, say, an inheritable origination-based compensation scheme, is to indulge in lazy static analysis rather than rigorous dynamic analysis. Please, do not pretend you cannot foresee how people will alter their behavior in response to altered incentives. They are not so stupid and you cannot excuse your intellectual shallowness by pretending that you expected them to be stupid and not to respond to the altered landscape

Actually, I’m not sure it’s about stupidity. It’s more about the inherent limitations of the political process. Interest groups use salient news stories as tools to get the laws they want (think Sarbanes-Oxley) – which may not be the laws society needs. Think about this (among others) failure of the political process the next time you hear somebody talking about a market failure that needs a government fix. 

Comments

[Fat Man]

I have always operated on the maxim that men intend the natural and probable consequences of their actions.

Applying this to legislation is not hard. The undesirable "bug" is often the feature that some lobbyist or industry group fought hard to include.

On the other hand we need to deal with these maxims as well:

In his WaPo column (2007-Nov-18) the estimable Dr. Krauthammer offered: "Krauthammer's razor (with apologies to Occam): In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit."

Count Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna, 1583–1654, Chancellor of Sweden, from 1612, and after the death of Gustavus II Adolphus at the battle of Lutzen in 1632, chairman of the council of regency and ruler of Sweden wrote his son, who was later his delegate at the negotiation of the Treaty of Westphalia:

Nescis, mi fili, quantilla sapientia regitur mundus.
(Learn, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.)