Regulation is a chess mid-game

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Regulation is a chess mid-game, Arnold Kling says, not a math problem:

With a math problem, once you solve the problem, it stays solved. In a chess mid-game, new opportunities and threats arise constantly. You try to plan ahead, but your plans inevitably degrade over time.

Another insight:

We tend to think of the task of regulation as one of making systems hard to break. An alternative to consider is making systems easy to fix.

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