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Jared Smith
Jared Smith
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There are technical reasons for this detailed well in Kevin's answer, but there's an undergirding philosophical position that provides an essential context to questions like this:

We're talking about the United States of America.

Back in ye olden times 13 relatively autonomous polities decided to form a union to promote their collective interests and they remained largely autonomous until almost the 20th century. Although we've centralized a lot of our governmental functions (especially with the advent of information technology) the idea that the states matter and that they should to the extent that's practical decide how to conduct their own affairs is baked in to a lot of how America deals with these things. This position is more explicitly associated with the Right in the US but even on the Left you can hear some echos of the principle.

I realize that from outside the US seems to be a homogenous McDonald's-and-Walmart kind of place but the United States is massive and far more diverse than it looks from merely e.g. consuming American media.

So part of the answer to your question is simply that things are inefficient simply because no one is in charge of forcing them to be, so the Second LawSecond Law applies. And just like increasing entropy is the default for a closed system, in America in many ways the default is still to defer to local and state authorities instead of dictating them from Washington no matter how badly some of them do at managing them.

There are technical reasons for this detailed well in Kevin's answer, but there's an undergirding philosophical position that provides an essential context to questions like this:

We're talking about the United States of America.

Back in ye olden times 13 relatively autonomous polities decided to form a union to promote their collective interests and they remained largely autonomous until almost the 20th century. Although we've centralized a lot of our governmental functions (especially with the advent of information technology) the idea that the states matter and that they should to the extent that's practical decide how to conduct their own affairs is baked in to a lot of how America deals with these things. This position is more explicitly associated with the Right in the US but even on the Left you can hear some echos of the principle.

I realize that from outside the US seems to be a homogenous McDonald's-and-Walmart kind of place but the United States is massive and far more diverse than it looks from merely e.g. consuming American media.

So part of the answer to your question is simply that things are inefficient simply because no one is in charge of forcing them to be, so the Second Law applies. And just like increasing entropy is the default for a closed system, in America in many ways the default is still to defer to local and state authorities instead of dictating them from Washington no matter how badly some of them do at managing them.

There are technical reasons for this detailed well in Kevin's answer, but there's an undergirding philosophical position that provides an essential context to questions like this:

We're talking about the United States of America.

Back in ye olden times 13 relatively autonomous polities decided to form a union to promote their collective interests and they remained largely autonomous until almost the 20th century. Although we've centralized a lot of our governmental functions (especially with the advent of information technology) the idea that the states matter and that they should to the extent that's practical decide how to conduct their own affairs is baked in to a lot of how America deals with these things. This position is more explicitly associated with the Right in the US but even on the Left you can hear some echos of the principle.

I realize that from outside the US seems to be a homogenous McDonald's-and-Walmart kind of place but the United States is massive and far more diverse than it looks from merely e.g. consuming American media.

So part of the answer to your question is simply that things are inefficient simply because no one is in charge of forcing them to be, so the Second Law applies. And just like increasing entropy is the default for a closed system, in America in many ways the default is still to defer to local and state authorities instead of dictating them from Washington no matter how badly some of them do at managing them.

Source Link
Jared Smith
Jared Smith
  • 8.7k
  • 4
  • 27
  • 45

There are technical reasons for this detailed well in Kevin's answer, but there's an undergirding philosophical position that provides an essential context to questions like this:

We're talking about the United States of America.

Back in ye olden times 13 relatively autonomous polities decided to form a union to promote their collective interests and they remained largely autonomous until almost the 20th century. Although we've centralized a lot of our governmental functions (especially with the advent of information technology) the idea that the states matter and that they should to the extent that's practical decide how to conduct their own affairs is baked in to a lot of how America deals with these things. This position is more explicitly associated with the Right in the US but even on the Left you can hear some echos of the principle.

I realize that from outside the US seems to be a homogenous McDonald's-and-Walmart kind of place but the United States is massive and far more diverse than it looks from merely e.g. consuming American media.

So part of the answer to your question is simply that things are inefficient simply because no one is in charge of forcing them to be, so the Second Law applies. And just like increasing entropy is the default for a closed system, in America in many ways the default is still to defer to local and state authorities instead of dictating them from Washington no matter how badly some of them do at managing them.