It's about a year, now, since I wrote a newsletter which compared the US and UK approaches to scrutinising their officials. It turns out that concerns about the American approach to such scrutiny underlie much of Elon Musk's and Vivek Ramaswamy's attitude to
Interesting analysis. In the UK, don't most regulations stem from acts and statutory instruments approved by Parliament? I accept that many or most SIs are probably not carefully scrutinised, but they could be.
Yes. Our parliamentary and judicial scrutiny of regulation and regulators has certainly been much better than the equivalent in the US. And I think we get the balance about right between the two. The US equivalent of our SIs have not, since Chevron, been subject to adequate political review.
There is a wider problem -we are shifting to a complex world. Everybody knows what a mobile phone does but no individual knows how it does it.
Its in 100 languages and 100 jurisdictions and has 5 or 6 major technical stacks.
Although we can't know how an iPhone works, we can understand the organisational structure of Apple, their divisions and the interfaces each one exposes.
Applying that thinking to government, we need encapsulation of complexity and appropriate oversight. The problem is that this requires high levels of trust and we are in a new media environment that creates distrust - this is a major political problem - and I think the Americans are going to hit it hard.
More generally, on your complexity point, I grew up in a world where you didn't have to be super bright to have a reasonable understanding of how most things worked (cars, radios, for instance), in which most products were straightforward (there was only one gas or electricity supplier, a couple of radio/tv channels and very little financial 'innovation') and in which most communication happened slowly via the postal system, landlines and the mainstream media.
There were also no obvious threats (real or perceived) such as climate change, millions of refugees and economic migrants, and climate change.
I think that today's world is tremendously vibrant and exciting for most of us - and also terrifying at quite a deep level.
Interesting analysis. In the UK, don't most regulations stem from acts and statutory instruments approved by Parliament? I accept that many or most SIs are probably not carefully scrutinised, but they could be.
Yes. Our parliamentary and judicial scrutiny of regulation and regulators has certainly been much better than the equivalent in the US. And I think we get the balance about right between the two. The US equivalent of our SIs have not, since Chevron, been subject to adequate political review.
There is a wider problem -we are shifting to a complex world. Everybody knows what a mobile phone does but no individual knows how it does it.
Its in 100 languages and 100 jurisdictions and has 5 or 6 major technical stacks.
Although we can't know how an iPhone works, we can understand the organisational structure of Apple, their divisions and the interfaces each one exposes.
Applying that thinking to government, we need encapsulation of complexity and appropriate oversight. The problem is that this requires high levels of trust and we are in a new media environment that creates distrust - this is a major political problem - and I think the Americans are going to hit it hard.
Very good point!
More generally, on your complexity point, I grew up in a world where you didn't have to be super bright to have a reasonable understanding of how most things worked (cars, radios, for instance), in which most products were straightforward (there was only one gas or electricity supplier, a couple of radio/tv channels and very little financial 'innovation') and in which most communication happened slowly via the postal system, landlines and the mainstream media.
There were also no obvious threats (real or perceived) such as climate change, millions of refugees and economic migrants, and climate change.
I think that today's world is tremendously vibrant and exciting for most of us - and also terrifying at quite a deep level.