‘The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.’
-Albert Einstein
The US government currently employs about 23 million people (including federal, state, and local). They work to implement a legal code that has grown into a leviathan over time. Interpreting and enforcing the legal code becomes an impossible task when that legal code written in anything but the most simple and explicit language possible.
Consider the chart above (These are just the federal ones, mind you. We also have 50 states and thousands of municipalities each with their own sets of regulations). Without getting into the necessity of all the regulations on the book, it’s not difficult to conceive of the difficulty in implementing them. If we want those that do exist to at least be implemented in a fair, systematic, way, we need to consider the logistics of how they will work when creating them.
If this all seems daunting, that’s because it is. Difficulty understanding laws is not limited to the unsophisticated. Examples abound, so we’re going to talk about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. You may have heard about the scandal surrounding the program, but you can be…forgiven (sorry)… for letting it pass you by. Essentially, it’s a program designed to encourage public service by promising loan forgiveness upon faithful repayment over the course of 10 years. You might be on a public sector salary, but you’re doing good and at least your student debt will be sunsetted after enough time (at least that was the intent).
Instead, minor errors in paperwork meant that thousands of people in the program were kicked off of it with no notification – and reached the end of their repayments schedule only to discover that it was far from over. This was clearly not the intent of the program; in fact, when news of it surfaced, Congress sprung into uncharacteristic bipartisan action to rectify the situation. That is not the end of the story; it’s an ongoing issue with the Department of Education still struggling to implement a seemingly simple directive, but you get the picture.
This also happened at the federal level where every lawmaker has large teams at his or her disposal. Clarity at the state or local level? Fuhggetaboudit. This clip encapsulates that pretty well (I know Louis CK has been embroiled in scandal, but this is just too accurate a depiction to pass up):
How do we avoid messes like this? We lay out what is intended by a law with concise, explicit direction. We have nearly 1.2 million people working in the legal services industry making up nearly $300 billion per year. This does not even include those working for the government. The point is: interpreting the law is big business. Perhaps rather than haphazardly letting an unreadable law enter the books, we could devote more resources towards ensuring the legibility of a law for all readers. Leave nothing to the imagination; the less room for interpretation, the fewer resources it will cost when it’s time to actually work within the framework.
It may take genius to take the complex and make it simple, but if anyone has the resources to pay for that genius, it’s the US government. Given the size of our government, it’s inevitable that not everything will work properly. The 23 million employees couldn’t possibly all be on the exact same page. Running anything that size is a monumental task under any circumstances. Without clear operating instructions, it is an impossibility.