You know, I believe in government.

There are things that can't do, of course, But I think the government has had a positive effect in the lives of millions of people.

And yet no matter where you fall on the political spectrum, it's hard to argue with those who criticize government for the way that it allocates and spends the money that it takes out of our paychecks.

The US government is a vast bureaucracy prone to waste and redundant spending.

And this is because it doesn't do what most of us would consider to be common sense.

It doesn't make decisions based on evidence by setting priorities and making sure tax dollars are spent wisely.

American can be compassionate and responsible at the same time.

Let me just give you an example of what I'm talking about.

In 2005.

George W.

Bush signed the deficit reduction act and that bill set up a council to figure out how many federal programs were spending money on things that were actually working.

The council found that for example, the government was funding 105 stem education initiatives totaling $3 billion in 2000 and six of those 105 only 10 had evaluations that were scientifically worth a damn.

And of those 10, just four were found to be effective four out of 105 for $3 billion.

You can find ugly statistics like that all throughout the government.

And the reason is because spending decisions in Washington and in the states too, by the way, are made on things like costs on public opinion, on the pressure from lobbyists and on the particular political ideology of parties and politicians.

In other words, everything but evidence.

I mean you read essays on evidence based policy and you invariably come across sentences like the rise and promotion of evidence based orientations within government agencies is consistent with the public sectors, increased interest in efficiency and effectiveness as if before they were primarily concerned with inefficiency and ineffectiveness.

Back to the video.

Everything about life in our technocratic society is hyper efficient.

I mean, google just came out with a function for web searching within the messaging app because switching apps is, you know, like really unproductive.

I think the feeling is that we're getting more efficient by orders of magnitude.

While government is just taking a lot of time switching between apps, the result of that is frustration and the result of frustration is one of the great sleazebags of our time.

Why can't we use science and evidence to improve government?

How would it even work?

Well, applying evidence to social programs involves a few things.

But the most important is something called randomized controlled trials.

This means randomly selecting a large number of people, splitting them into two groups where one group gets the benefits of the program in question while the other group, the control group doesn't and these groups are monitored over a long period taken from medicine.

Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard for determining how effective something really is.

The government can apply this to policy by offering money only to the programs that do this kind of research and by attaching the condition that scientifically rigorous evaluations must be kept up over time or the money will disappear.

Now of course, if you're going to go down this road, you have to be willing to hear results that you might not like.

One of the most rigorous studies ever in this field.

For example, was the Head Start impact study plan during the clinton years implemented during the bush years and reported just before Obama's reelection.

In 2012, the study found that Head Start a program that aimed to help Children in poverty had by the end of the third grade, very few impacts in any of the four domains of cognitive social, emotional health and parenting practices at a cost of $8 billion a year to the taxpayer.

Those were pretty shocking findings.

Now the question is, does poor spending mean that funding should be cut for poverty programs so that we should scale back on stem initiatives.

I don't think so.

In fact, I think we should increase spending on both, but the money should be given to stuff that works.

I mean that just makes sense.

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward, where the answer is no.

Programs will end.

Major kudos has to be given to the Obama administration for facing the head start results squarely and ordering a full review of one of the signature pieces of liberal legislation in the 20th century.

In fact, evidence based policy has been a cornerstone of the Obama agenda.

In some key areas, there have been some major wins by using a competitive model of funding that requires strong standards of evidence.

Evidence based policy doesn't work for everything but that any administration managed to shoehorn science in among the other legislative pressures is a major accomplishment.

Of course, you won't ever hear about accomplishments like this on the news because this stuff is incredibly boring.

But that's part of the problem.

Under the sensationalism of the media and the squabbling of political parties, there is a deep boring ocean of governance where tedious but crucial work is being done every day.

I think it's part of our responsibility to wade into that ocean every once in a while and tune out the noise.

If you do, who knows?

Maybe you'll find something in there that will make you believe in government too.

Hey, everybody thanks for watching.

I have to give a heartfelt thanks to everybody who supports this channel on Patreon by pledging a dollar or $3 per video because that allows me to put a lot of work into a video like this with ideas that I think are important and fascinating, but not very clickbaiting.

So thank you for that freedom.

I don't take it lightly and I'll see you guys next Wednesday.