I understand why you get the impression you do. The issues mentioned are all over the map. Zoning is not even a Federal government issue. Some of those issues are already the subject of significant reform efforts. In other cases, such as “fixing student loans” it’s unclear what Balsa’s goal even is.
But, many of the problems identified are real.
And, it doesn’t seem that much progress is being made on many of them.
So, Balsa’s goal is worthy.
And, it may well be that Balsa turns out to be unsuccessful, but doing nothing is guaranteed to be unsuccessful.
So, I for one applaud this effort and am excited to see what comes of it.
I agree the goals are good, and many of the problems are real (I work in one of these areas of government myself, so I can personally attest to some of it). But I think that the attitude (“Elites have lost all credibility”) and the broad adversarial mandate (find problems that other people should have fixed already but haven’t) will plausibly lead not just to wasted money but also to unnecessary politicization and backlash.
Those are fair concerns, but my impression in general is that those kinds of attitudes will tend to moderate in practice as Balsa becomes larger, develops and focuses on particular issues. To the extent they don’t and are harmful, Balsa is likely to be ineffective but is unlikely to be able to be significant enough to cause negative outcomes.
I understand why you get the impression you do. The issues mentioned are all over the map. Zoning is not even a Federal government issue. Some of those issues are already the subject of significant reform efforts. In other cases, such as “fixing student loans” it’s unclear what Balsa’s goal even is.
But, many of the problems identified are real.
And, it doesn’t seem that much progress is being made on many of them.
So, Balsa’s goal is worthy.
And, it may well be that Balsa turns out to be unsuccessful, but doing nothing is guaranteed to be unsuccessful.
So, I for one applaud this effort and am excited to see what comes of it.
I agree the goals are good, and many of the problems are real (I work in one of these areas of government myself, so I can personally attest to some of it). But I think that the attitude (“Elites have lost all credibility”) and the broad adversarial mandate (find problems that other people should have fixed already but haven’t) will plausibly lead not just to wasted money but also to unnecessary politicization and backlash.
Those are fair concerns, but my impression in general is that those kinds of attitudes will tend to moderate in practice as Balsa becomes larger, develops and focuses on particular issues. To the extent they don’t and are harmful, Balsa is likely to be ineffective but is unlikely to be able to be significant enough to cause negative outcomes.