In a vicious circle, a lack of social trust leads to the apotheosis of metrics, and faith in metrics contributes to a declining reliance upon judgment. In a series of books, Philip K. Howard has argued that the decline of trust leads to a new mindset in which “[a]voiding human choice in public decisions is not just a theory … but a kind of theology…. Human choice is considered too dangerous.” As a consequence, “Officials no longer are allowed to act on their best judgment”4 or to exercise discretion, which is judgment about what the particular situation requires.5 The result is overregulation:
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