Fixing Broken Government

The next LongNow talk entitled Fixing Broken Government with Philip K. Howard is being held at Cowell Theater in Fort Mason Center, San Francisco on January 18, 2011.

Philip K. Howard is a conservative who inspires standing ovations from liberal audiences (short example here.) He says that governance in America---from the capitol to the classroom---has achieved near-total dysfunctionality by accumulating so many layers of piecemeal legalisms that the requirements of navigating them has replaced any hope of getting actual justice or effectiveness. Most attempts to fix the problems have made them worse. Howard thinks they can be fixed in a way that restores core functionality.

Howard is the author of Life Without Lawyers (2009) and Death of Common Sense (1994) and is the founder and chair of Common Good, a reform advocacy nonprofit.

Long Now members can tune into the live audio stream at 7:30 PST or you can become a member for just $8 a month.

Upcoming talks include:

Feb 9 (Wed.) - Mary Catherine Bateson, "Live Longer, Think Longer"
March 22 (Tue.) - Matt Ridley, "Deep Optimism"
April 13 (Wed.) - Ian Morris, "Why the West Rules - For Now"
May 4 (Wed.) - Tim Flannery, "Here on Earth"

June 7 (Tue.) - Carl Zimmer, "Viral Time"

This is one of a monthly series of Seminars About Long-term Thinking (SALT) organized by The Long Now Foundation. Free audios and my summaries of all previous talks are available for download here (or stay up to date with the Podcast here).