Policymakers often make decisions on a day-to-day, case-by-case basis, simply hoping to survive the next election cycle. I don’t mean that as a cynical criticism of human nature; rather, it is an implication of political competition within relatively short electoral cycles relative to the time horizons over which policy matters. (The U.S. House of Representatives has a two-year voting cycle for policies which may have effects over twenty or thirty years, or, in the case of environmental policies, longer still.) That is one reason why
