The Congress made a project that it couldn't describe well, had a President who was in cahoots with the cronies in business that helped the bill through, and then made sure everyone got paid off.

That is not a contracting problem on the complexity of the law side.

That is an inability to describe what is wanted in a project, put into an ill-defined program all intended for political graft and corruption purposes. It succeeded on the graft and corruption side, which was its intent.

Luckily the contracting side can also be killed with a Termination For Convenience of the Government: T4C as it is known. Now you just have to elect people with the guts to do that.

How about "1. It was intended to 'go wrong' all along."? I guess she'll be telling us next that Emperor Putt had the best interests of America at heart all along; he was just a teensy bit misguided. Please stop linking to nonsense from McArdle, Professor. I know you like to be open-minded, but links to stuff like this reflect badly on you and your web site.

Naive? Incompetent and corrupt, maybe.
What a maroon.

> But isn't there usefulness in "even if we give benefit of the doubt, the thing doesn't work" arguments?

Not really. Giving people credit for "good intentions" is a mug's game because the folks who supposedly have good intentions are never punished when things go wrong, as they usually do.

The only argument for giving folks a pass based on good intentions is that they're unlikely to do it again, and that's simply not true. They will keep doing evil until they're forcibly stopped.

Next time when you try to reply to a message, go ahead and hit "reply" button, instead of taking one sentence out of context and then not even attempting to address the point being made.

Which brings up the old saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

"Naive" is the wrong word here. Stupid, venal, totalitarian, deceitful, take your pick; but not naive.

Ms. McArdle is a diplomatic person who does a lot of explaining why Bernie Sanders style economics does not work. Good lord, guys, she is one of the good guys. Quit frothing.

You're cherry picking. She'll do the occasional post about how some detail of a leftist program doesn't work but she always gives them a pass on the whole because of their "good intentions". Meanwhile, she'll trash the right as a whole for missing some detail.

BTW - the death spiral has begun....

McArdle fancies herself a libertarian, but in reality she does not even have a clue what a libertarian is. To even consider that Obamacare might be useful displays one's idiocy.

Naive? Or a desire to exert control over the "ungovernable" Americans? The only mistake was failing to anticipate how fast the Stupid Voters wise up when they are the ones paying the piper.

It didn't go wrong. It was conceived and created that way. It never could have been otherwise. The website was pure cronyism, not based on any kind of competence or expertise.