Rory Sutherland

that they fall back on often totally inappropriate rules and regulations.

And there are a whole bunch of people who are employed, not always by the government, just as much by the private sector, who are much more interested in adherence to approved procedure than they are in quality of outcome.

Because you can't get fired.

But if I do that, if I have a little head-eyed parapet, there's no upside.

And there's considerable reputational risk and career risk from doing something slightly perverse and different.

But there are a whole bunch of arguments.

First of all, an awful lot of quality human decision making of necessity has to be tacit,

and instinctive, not regulatory.

There are various people, I think it might be Michael Polanyi, who says, most of life is like a kaleidoscope.

We never completely encounter the same situation twice.

And therefore, regulating for the universal, when in fact, the great evolutionary gift of the human brain is adapting to context.

is inherently, lawyers love it, of course, because they make money out of this.

Arguably, the legal system, particularly in the United States, has strayed into all kinds of areas which were once settled by two humans amicably discussing something.

And possibly finding a creative resolution to the trade-off that's replaced by, effectively, we will take this to a legal decision.

And that starts to infect, particularly because there's no tort law reform in the US.

And that's partly because, I was told yesterday, trial lawyers are just donors to the Democratic Party because they resist any kind of tort law reform.

This has led to things that should be solved through our evolved human talent for conflict resolution being solved through a totally inappropriate application of legal structures to a situation which is, in many cases, not really adequately captured by law or where a legal decision is made which makes perfect sense within one setting

but which sets a precedent which leads to ludicrous second-order consequences.

So, for example, if you accept the fact that a, I think has happened in one of Philip K. Howard's cases, someone demanded that trees were dropped down in their streets because one of their grandchildren was allergic to the nut that came off the tree.

The argument would be that if you accept that, which may seem kind-hearted and generous within that particular frame of reference, ultimately you've opened up the path to widespread deforestation because nobody can grow a tree anywhere to which anybody could claim to be allergic.