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realitygrill comments on Open Thread: June 2010 - Less Wrong
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When it comes to government policy I tend to grade on a curve. I actually agree with you that the quality of government policy is generally quite poor. But it's not equally poor everywhere, and improving government's function (which will in some cases meaning having it do less) can do a lot of good for a lot of people.
I should also point out that choosing to take no action is still a policy decision. To give you an example, a few years a go some crazy woman pulled a knife on a plane, leading to a bit of an incident. There was a review of airline security regulation for domestic flights (which usually have no searches or metal detectors in my country). Cabinet decided, on the basis of advice from officials, that existing regulation was sufficient, and the only thing that needed to be done was put a lockable door on the cabin, which was being phased in already. Would you regard this as a good policy decision?
I guess I would say I don't know.
Have you read Taleb's The Black Swan? He has a counterfactual story that is extremely similar (though it uses 9/11); basically there aren't any (even negative) incentives for politicians to push such policies through until after some huge disaster happens.
I haven't read Taleb, but I have heard a few interviews of him where he got the opportunity to outline his ideas.
I think politicians in general have a tendency to overreact to adverse events, and often by doing things that involve signals of reassurance (such as security theatre) rather than steps to fix the problem. I'm open to the possibility that they don't do enough to prevent problems, but as a rule governments are very risk averse entities, usually preoccupied with things that might go wrong.