Government's End
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Government's End
| Full title | Government's End: Why Washington Stopped Working |
|---|---|
| Author | Jonathan Rauch |
| Published | 1999 |
| Pages | 295 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Rauch’s diagnosis, and his coinage: demosclerosis. As a democracy matures, organised interests accumulate, each entrenching a benefit too small to notice and too valuable to give up — until government loses the capacity to reform itself, including the capacity to undo its own failed programs. |
Where I heard about it
- Brendan McCord — on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, under Public Choice Theory, next to Olson’s Logic of Collective Action and Higgs’s Crisis and Leviathan — the section’s most journalistic entry, and the one that takes the theory to why a specific government stopped working. Full transcription: The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.
About this edition
An expanded and gloomier version of Rauch’s 1994 Demosclerosis: The Silent Killer of American Government.
Connections
- Government — the institution whose sclerosis is the subject.
- Incentives — the asymmetry that drives it.
- Regulation — the accumulated layer the book describes.
- The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.