Broader meddling breeds more coverups
Renowned Chinese blogger Han Han (韩寒) recently wrote an excellent piece on how wrongly local governments in China respond to tragic incidents like the recent rash of school attacks. The post was quickly removed from his blog by censors, but I read a translation on Danwei.org.
The upshot of the post is that local officials try to cover up stories that may reflect badly on them, and the coverups, plus the stupid way the officials go about the coverups, makes the public even more upset with them.
I started to think, why doesn't this sort of thing happen as often in the US? For starters, the US Constitution has better protections and is better enforced against bad government actions, but another factor is that government at all levels in the US has a relatively narrow scope of responsibility for managing society and business. As a result, Americans have much more limited expectations of their government.
This brings me to my point: as the government takes responsibility for more and more aspects of our lives, it will also have more incentives to cover up its responsibility when things go wrong. I don't expect this will become as widespread or sinister a problem as it is in China, but it already happens to a certain extent. For example, you won't hear a lot of talk in Washington about how the federal government contributed to the subprime mortgage bubble by pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make foolish loans. On the contrary, the government is covering its tracks with show trials of Wall Street giants.
The upshot of the post is that local officials try to cover up stories that may reflect badly on them, and the coverups, plus the stupid way the officials go about the coverups, makes the public even more upset with them.
I started to think, why doesn't this sort of thing happen as often in the US? For starters, the US Constitution has better protections and is better enforced against bad government actions, but another factor is that government at all levels in the US has a relatively narrow scope of responsibility for managing society and business. As a result, Americans have much more limited expectations of their government.
This brings me to my point: as the government takes responsibility for more and more aspects of our lives, it will also have more incentives to cover up its responsibility when things go wrong. I don't expect this will become as widespread or sinister a problem as it is in China, but it already happens to a certain extent. For example, you won't hear a lot of talk in Washington about how the federal government contributed to the subprime mortgage bubble by pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make foolish loans. On the contrary, the government is covering its tracks with show trials of Wall Street giants.