Complexity and Democracy
Its always seemed to me that complexity is one of the greatest impediments to good government. This might just be my bias as someone who's studied computer science but not law, but it seems that the two have a lot in common in that you're writing down instructions to be followed in a variety of situations, and the more rules you create the less well you'll be able to predict the consequences of any change, since there are so many possible interactions. That's a very general critique, though, and thankfully the fact that so many of the pages of law that Congress generates each year are special cases or exemptions means that any two pieces have less chance of interacting than you might suspect at first glance. But I'm not writing this post to talk about complexity and lawmaking in general, I'm here to talk about complexity and democracy, and the special challenges you get in a democratic system when the system of laws becomes more complex. On one hand you ha...