A Clean Slate

Timothy Lee applies the pitfalls of urban planning more generally:

The problem with trying to make society conform with reason is thatsociety is a lot more complicated than most planners realize. So whatlooks on paper like a perfectly rational social order—8-lane freeways,US-imposed democracy in Iraq, the dictatorship of the proletariat—turnsout to have fatal flaws when put into practice. This is why wisepolicymakers recognize that their knowledge is limited, and take apragmatic, incremental...