Black Swan

I just finished the "Black Swan" by Nassim Taleb. The central premise is that uncertainty and unpredictability dominate our world much more than people like to admit.

The title comes from the idea that if your theory is that "all swans are white," you could see literally millions of white swans and have a lot of proof that your theory is right. But it would take only a single black swan to prove your theory wrong. In other words, we really can't know something is 100% right but we can prove that something is 100% wrong.

Applying this to government and public policy, we can find a very simple method to make our government better and more effective. If we pass a law that is supposed to do x, let's measure to see if it is actually doing x. If it is not, then we know that law is ineffective and should be repealed.

Two quick examples:

Premise: installing red-light cameras will increase driver safety and reduce accidents.
Reality: several studies have shown that these cameras actually increase accidents because of people who should have ran the red-light but instead slam on their brakes causing others to rear-end them.
If government made sense: those cameras would be uninstalled.

Premise: Outlawing marijuana will reduce people's usage of it.
Reality: Nope.
If government made sense: decriminalize it and look at other alternative to reduce usage.