unfortunately “Tiebout competition” doesn’t work so well, there’s a lot of lock-in implicit in ones home and community; when supply of residences is inelastic “success” shows up as price rather than quantity; etc. 1/

because success / failure criteria are muted and blurry, we don’t see a lot of innovation chasing success. 2/

as an electoral-reform enthusiast i find it infuriating municipalities aren’t laboratories of voting systems, but what’s the incentive? doing something unusual paints a target on leaders’ backs, any good effects will seem marginal and be contestable, while plain malfunctions kill careers. /fin

yes. i very much agree it’s best to actually design these things rather than have weird rivalries emerge along unintended dimensions. 1/

it’s just that when we think about how to arrange the public sector, we should be thinking about competition as a potentially useful tool. it’s not the special province of the private sector! 2/

(and we want to think of hybrid designs where public and private sector entities are placed intentionally in competition. this is much of the virtue of “public options”.) /fin

How do you prevent competition in the private sector from leading to innovations vendor lock-in and tricky pricing models (Warren’s “tricks and traps”)? 1/

Every competitive system, whether a sports league, a private industry, or a public rivalry requires rules and regulations that strive to insist the dimensions of competition are pro-social rather than counterproductive or Tonya-Harding-esque. 2/

WRT something like NASA, the question becomes something like which is harder, addressing the risk-aversion, sclerosis, and tolerance of waste common to monopolies (public or private) or regulating rivalry so the race it spurs serves (inevitably imperfectly) the public interest? 3/

I guess the past few of decades experience with NASA suggests to me that poison #2 might be worth a try. /fin

I believe in deterrence as much as the next guy, but I don’t think non-execution 160 years ago had much to do with contemporary MAGA. 1/

We absolutely should have prevented ex-confederates for regaining positions of wealth and power in the South, allowing reconstruction to give way to “redemption” absolutely helped pave the way for contemporary MAGA. 2/

But execution would never have been the way to ensure that. Executing many thousands (as you’d have to) so you are not tempted to make a corrupt trade to get your guy declared President would be quite its own sin. 3/

The resolution of the election of 1876 was the catastrophe, not insufficient bloodletting. /fin

Not precisely what you are asking, but if there were analogous trials today, I would oppose the death penalty even if the Hitler analog himself were in the dock. 1/

(I hesitate to answer more plainly only because I do think mores change with times and it’s not quite right to judge past actions by contemporary mores.) /fin