Against Design

Institutions and the incentives they create can be designed or redesigned to produce desired outcomes. But design does not work if social and economic dynamics are “creative.” If it is impossible to know in advance how an institution will change behavior and incentives — and what interests it may serve or harm in the future — then it is impossible to “design” optimal institutions. Like organisms, institutions are adaptive functional wholes that change in unpredictable and unprestateable ways.