We need more goat sacrifices

Re:We need more goat sacrifices by stetrain on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @09:22AM (#50453779)

The thing that is missing from most of these government initiatives (in the US at least) is a mechanism and willingness to revisit and iterate. That's how we do software these days, but social programs are developed and shipped in a full waterfall cycle, then politicians just spend decades arguing about whether it should be cancelled due to some flaws or kept exactly as-is. What's missing are real data-driven attempts to close the feedback loop and fix the issues to achieve the stated objective.

Measuring success is good, but we also need to exercise the ability to make small updates and continue measuring, instead of just using that data to argue on the side of "throw it all out!" or "we can't touch it, it's essential!"

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We need more goat sacrifices by nullc on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @10:33AM (#50454630)

whomever is profiting will just rig the metric.

Not having a metric set out in advance may, in fact, be more rigging resistant! unfortunately.

But the real deal is that none of it matters because the program itself is the goat sacrifice. It's not there to work, it's there to signal the proponents values and ingratiate themselves with the goat suppliers. It's actually better for theses purposes if it DOESNT work, because then you can perpetually campaign on solving the same problem.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We need more goat sacrifices by wduquette on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @02:16PM (#50457278)

Every government initiative of this sort either creates a new bureaucracy or bolsters an older one, which brings the Iron Law of Bureaucracy into play: whatever its original goal, every bureaucracy ultimately exists to perpetuate itself.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We need more goat sacrifices by stetrain on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @02:41PM (#50457559)

Also the more qualifications and requirements you add to your social programs, the more bureaucracy is required to process, document, and enforce those qualifications.

For example, if you implement a free lunch program for all public school students in a state, you actually get to subtract out the amount of money that each school district spends dealing with reduced and free lunch program qualifications for a subset of students, all of the paperwork involved in maintaining that list, and the system that manages their account balances at the cafeteria register.

[ Parent | on HN ]