Why governments' attempts to pick winners produce more losers than winners.
What is the word for a story that reached the level of fiasco some time ago and continued to deteriorate? Fiasco seems inadequate as a decription of the failures of the NHS IT system, several of which have been noted on this site by JG.
The Times has picked up on analysis in Computer Weekly magazine, which reports that the NHS IT systems experienced "more than 200 breakdowns in four months, potentially putting patients at risk". The incidents, between October and January, were "serious enough to be described as 'major incidents'", but Connecting for Health, which runs the project, dismissed the report saying that "the figures were misleading". Would that be misleading in the sense of making a good system look bad? I don't think so. Sounds worthy of comment to me, but we have become so inured to bad news on this front that the story only makes their "News in Brief" section.
"The king by the frightful and excessive taxes which he levies on all goods has drawn to himself all the money, and commerce has dried up. There are no rigors and cruelties which have not been employed upon the merchants by the farmers of the customs, a thousand trickeries to find grounds for making confiscations...Besides this, certain merchants, through the favour of the Court, put commerce into monopoly and get privileges given to them to exclude all others...And finally the prohibition of foreign goods, far from turning out well for commerce, is, on the contrary, what has ruined it...And all through this the despotic and sovereign power which prides itself on every whim, on reordering everything and reforming all things by absolute power", quoted in Murray Rothbard, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith.