Will we ever return to a time when rather than committee after committee and study group after study group are formed to tackle the tough issues we can look and see a single person or two stand up and take responsibility for the decisions of our government? I am so tired of the whole 'spread the risk/blame around' approach to governance that has become SOP for Washington.

The problem is that the problems are so complex, they're not often up to a single person.

So even if you have someone saying, 'Okay, the buck stops here' ...and you do have that happen even today...the reality is quite different.

All too often when the public or any 'group' DEMANDS accountability, it means they want a head to roll. And again, all too often the head rolling isn't the one that should be. It's either someone high up enough that felt responsible and is falling on their sword, or it's a sacrificial goat to appease the mob.

Damn, I'm getting cynical.

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Good point Tarot.

Half the time those "heads rolling" and such don't mean shit anyway.

The people who are really behind a lot of nefarious deeds in the white collar/government sectors might get some censures or a fine or they might get a position "taken away" or some other bullshit, but in the end they still get their millions to bathe in and laugh at us all.

We could create a position and call it the US Czar, like a Drug Czar, but over the whole US. Maybe the position could be a lifetime appointment, and if he screws up the Senators can all stab him or something.

Here's the problem with accountability - it's the same in corporate America as it is in government.

Problem 1: Very few people are good at what they do.
You have project managers, committees, workers, etc, and nobody is particularly good or thorough. As a result, set deliverables and metrics are rarely established. So, when the project or whatever has problems, the finger pointing and blame shifting is easy because there were no set expectations.

Problem 2: Setting accountable metrics is considered 'mean'.
Ask a programmer "how long will that take?" Ask a business unit "how much money will that save?" You get a dance. When you follow up with questions about specifics, they consider that attacking them. In order to accomplish it, you have to have buy in from multiple levels of management (government). See Problem #1.

This is why some companies are very good - such as P&G, whereas other companies suck and spin their wheels.

Another problem Orme is too often committees are what caused the problem in the first place. while a committee may look good on paper too many times people try to inject their own personal agenda. So in the end the result is worse than if a single person developed the idea and pushed it through. All you have to do is look back in history for failures by committees. A good example is the French Chauchat machinegun from WWI. While it looked good on paper it had terrible field performance.
So until we stop using committees to make new laws we will have no one person we can hold accountable for a failure.

A more unilateral government surely would be more effective, but then you would bitch about how it doesn't do things the way you want. It's actually a concept rather fundamental to our government; we sacrifice a certain level of decisiveness for a greater level of participation and debate. It's a trade off. The idea that some hypothetical government, benevolent, wise, and quick all at the same time, could ever exist, is silly. Pick two and be happy with it.

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Knowledge without reason is useless.

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