Javier A. Tabush

Chapter 1

 

"Today technocrats retain enormous power, but they lack intellectual or cultural vigor. "Got a problem, get a program" is still a deeply ingrained habit, but enthusiasm for technocratic schemes died in a gas line sometime during the Carter administration. From urban renewal in the 1950s to the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, technocracy has not made good on its promises. In many cases, it has made things worse. Rather than the smooth-running engine promised by turn-of-the-century progressives, technocratic governance has been a Rube Goldberg device at best and, more often, a misfitting hodgepodge that grinds gears, shoots out sparks, and periodically breaks down entirely."

 

Chapter 2

 

"Instead of rushing to address every new development with a grand plan or an ad hoc solution, dynamists have the patience to let trial and error—and well-established, well-understood rules—work. 'It's easier to learn from history than it is to learn from the future,' writes [Mike] Godwin, counseling legal forbearance in the face of new communications technologies. Rather than try to address worst-case scenarios with technocratic schemes that will create legacies of their own, he urges an evolutionary, common-law approach. 'Almost always,' he says, 'the time-tested laws and legal principles we already have in place are more than adequate to address the new medium.'

 

Chapter 3

 

• The future is very important but the most important thing of all is taking risks. 

• Hayek says that simply the strive to achieve goals and a better world is “a worthwhile exercise of the highest human qualities”

• dynamism vs. stasism

• Dynamist will improve the quality of life in the future and keep improving

• I found really interesting how she reforest to the term utopian as something not perfect, different from what I’ve been thinking my whole life. A utopia is static, she refers to it as an “unchanging state of perfection”

• Trial and error

 

• What is an infinite series? Adaptions, trial and error, constant change. 

• Disadvantages of restricting competition

• Be a better entrepreneur, willingness to adapt.

• Reactionaries vs. Technocrats. 

• Would we be consider stasis because of the fact that we have a schedule we need to follow? NO, because our schedule can change. 

• Technocrats: CONTROL 

• As producers we need to focus on achieving INNOVATION!

• Resilient: The capacity of having a dynamic respones, having the willingness to test new ideas (MAJO) 

• “Dynamism generates progress through trial and error, experiment and feedback.”

• Postrel’s message is that we need rules for innovation. 

 

 

Chapter 4

 

• Freedom does not mean absence of rules

• the challenge is to create the right set of rules.

• How can we develop this set of rules?

• Experiences is needed. 

 

 

Chapter 5

 

 

• Clear difference between the dynamics and the stasistsss

• In one part of the book she mentions that rules must respect the knowledge problem, what does she mean by that?

• “Nested rules that evolve to thoroughly incorporate local knowledge can sometimes solve very tricky governance problems. 

• “a dynamic vision calls for general rules on which actors can depend, a reliable foundation

• means don’t have a subjective value on a socialist system

• the pioneer reshapes their own rules.