Are there are governance/legal systems who systematically keep track of the costs/externalities of their rulesets and default to removing/changing rules if they are proven to be a net negative? 

Not “we realized that this is bad and campaign to change it”, but built in proactively.

(summer of) protocol {support | guild | fellowship} ☀️


None comes to mind that does it perfectly, especially in the public sphere (easier to do within a smaller for-profit scope where impacts are more obvious). Most governance bodies try to do that to some degree with regulatory impact analysis, public sounding, regulatory reviews / sunset, etc but some externalities…

PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Aviator, diver, ETH maxi, nexialist | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

Also: I’ve spoken with legislators who gladly acknowledge that most of their work entails playing whack-a-mole with ill-conceived legislation that had unintended negative externalities, dealing with Chesterton’s fence situations, & reacting to current issues with more ad-hoc laws hoping they don’t break sthg else

Imagine if every legislation came with not just the rule, but exactly what it intends to incentivize or avoid, its expected impact (quantified), possible areas of unintended externalities that should be monitored, and a clear sunset date by which the rule should be reviewed for effectiveness.

take longer to materialize than the scrutiny remains in place for. I’m thinking the optimal setup might be independent bodies dedicated to impact analysis - such as think tanks, external auditors, or supranational bodies like OECD which regularly measure ancillary impacts of legislation and incentivize change