By their innocence and goodness, by their boundless capacity for forgiveness, and by the sheer power of their faith and hope, children redeem their parents, bringing out their best selves.
Cass SunsteinRead
When government programs fail, it is often because public officials are clueless about how human beings think and act.
Interpretation
Government failures often stem from a lack of understanding of human behavior by officials.
The quote highlights a critical issue in governance where the disconnect between public officials and the realities of human behavior leads to ineffective programs. It suggests that without insight into how individuals think and act, initiatives designed to serve them may not address their actual needs or behaviors, resulting in failure. This reinforces the importance of understanding human psychology in policy-making.
In practice
In a discussion about the effectiveness of new government initiatives in a town hall meeting.
By their innocence and goodness, by their boundless capacity for forgiveness, and by the sheer power of their faith and hope, children redeem their parents, bringing out their best selves.
If a company has acted badly, people want to punish it - not in order to deter future misconduct, but simply because they're outraged. And the more outraged they are, the more punishment they want to inflict.
If you look at a great city, one of its amazing features is that you're going to find all sorts of things that you might not specifically have chosen in advance. And they will change your day. Maybe your month. Maybe your whole life.
It can be easy and tempting, especially during a presidential campaign, to listen only to opinions that mirror and fortify one's own. That's not ideal, because it eliminates learning and makes it impossible for people to understand what they dismiss as 'the other side.'
Research shows that if people are talking and listening to like-minded others, they become more dogmatic, more unified, and more extreme. Personalized Facebook experiences are a breeding ground for misunderstanding and miscommunication across political lines and, ultimately, for extremism.
If the air quality is terrible in Los Angeles, if a particular university is unusually expensive, if crime is on the rise in Dallas, or if a company has a lot of recalled toys, transparency can spur change. Whenever public or private institutions have to answer to the public, their performance is likely to improve.
Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
In five days, you can turn the page on policies that put greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street. In five days, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class, and create new jobs, and grow this economy, so that everyone has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO, but the secretary and janitor, not just the factory owner, but the men and women on the factory floor.
Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.
American government did not originate in any abstract theories about liberty and equality, but in the actual experience gained by generation after generation of English colonists in managing their own political affairs. The Revolution did not make a breach in the continuity of their institutional life.
Big corporations have money and power to make sure every rule breaks their way; people have voices and votes to push back.
With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries. What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural backround, my values are for a government which is honest, effective and efficient.
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