What does it say about my consumption habits that little of this was new to me? I think this book does a pretty good job laying out the arguments that regulatory capture is a fundamental problem. The evidence they marshal, on licensing requirements, on zoning, on patent protection, on banking, is pretty compelling. The raw honestly they have that traditional small government libertarianism is not an option is refreshing. Overall, its clear that poorly written laws are a problem and that rent seeking driven by regulatory capture is self-perpetuating in a democracy.

I'm torn by the end of the book. First, theres a naive approach to the implications of the Trump presidency. Obviously in 2016/17 they couldn't have seen what would happen. The political science they mention about how polarization on certain aspects can open up legislatures to new methods of compromise has been shown to be misguided (IIRC either Not Another Politics Podcast or Capitalisnt [both of which are hosted by academics who are mentioned in this book] covered this point).

The ideas around stronger incentives and better structures for congressional staffers make sense in the abstract, but I think one major learning of the Obama presidency was that you need pork to make congress run. Technocratic law writing, especially as they suggest if it is driven by the Executive, cannot work in a Presidential system where there can be split government.

Overall worth a read especially if you're not already exposed to the mix of Cass Sunstein, Matt Yglesias, Strong Towns/New Urbanism, the two podcasts I mentioned above, among others. Oh and Elizabeth Warren fits VERY nicely into this camp.