9/11

9/11 commission: So the problem was group think and the solution is to put everyone into one big group.  This is one of the things which occurs with depressing regularity in American politics.  There is some great catastrophy, a blue ribbon commission is created to get to the bottom of it and the solution is to simplify the organizational chart.  Take all the lines that connect separate agencies in the big organizational chart and make them into one nice big box.  Of course all the lines that used to connect separate agencies will now connect departements and the people in those departments will have the same reasons for talking or not talking to each other as before.  Solution by 'flight' is the useful phrase of James March.  He means by it making a decision which allows us to feel that we have confronted  a problem without really having to face the trade-offs involved.  There are reasons these people didn't talk to each other--we wouldn't let them first among those reasons.  Drawing a big departmental box around the same people with the same incentives will solve nothing.