Pick Two: Scale, Safety, Control
One rulebook for millions, nobody left carrying the errors, the final say kept. Michigan's unemployment agency chose scale and control, and claimants paid.
Recent essays
What a Form Can't Record, Policy Can't See
When a form has no field for something, it keeps happening and the records stop showing it. Long COVID went more than a year without its own US billing code.
Public Ownership Didn't Stop the Post Office Scandal
More than 900 subpostmasters were convicted on faulty software while the state owned the business. The question after ownership is who can refuse correction.
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Better at Finding You, No Better at Fixing Its Mistakes
The state can match your records across agencies before the month ends.
How a Failure Repeats Tells You What's Broken
Tennessee's Medicaid system mailed DiJuana Davis's notices to the wrong address and cut her family's coverage.
Aligned With Whom?
An AI that does exactly what its owner wants still doesn’t explain why it holds authority over you, or how you correct it when it’s wrong.
Each Score Was Fair. The Rejection Wasn't.
By 2026 a landlord with a laptop could score a rental applicant.
Refusal Isn't an Opening Bid
A water authority chartered in 1908 passes every test against its charter.
An Old Charter Doesn't Cover New Powers
A wetlands board chartered in 1974 swapped paper surveys for a digital portal, then began scoring parcels before anyone applied for a permit.
Permission Is Not Contagious
An institution's power stops being legitimate when it stretches a permission it was given to cover a new act.
Who Corrects the Corrector?
Australia joined its tax and welfare records and raised false debts against hundreds of thousands of people.
Forgiveness Is for the First Mistake
Every institution errs.
Apologies Are Cheap When No One Can Challenge the Error
An institution earns authority by what its errors can do.
Keep Part of Your Thinking Outside the AI
Clicking the final button isn’t control once the model has learned how you think.
Crackdowns and Task Forces Are One Policy
Three responses to homelessness in one budget cycle, and not one eligibility, zoning or lending rule changed.
A Good Complaints Office Can Protect a Bad Rule
An ombuds office can answer every complaint flawlessly and never change a coverage rule, because its charter routes what it learns back to management.
Feedback Without Standing Fixes Only the Cases It Finds
Britain's benefit conversion skipped half the assessment for years.
The Power to Correct the Rules Is Handed Out Too
Two health systems offer identical coverage.
Rank Means Never Having to Adapt
Someone always flexes when a rule meets a world it cannot hold.
The Rule Works. She Doesn't Fit.
Every rule drops some cases, from benefits claims to database fields.
Public or Private, She Was Denied Both Ways
A woman with seasonal income is denied by the public system and by the private one, for different reasons.
Don't Blame the Nurse for the Sixteen-Hour Shift
People keep being blamed for outcomes nobody gave them the power to change.
An Appeal Process Can Work and Still Be Built Not to Be Used
Medicare Advantage insurers overturned 75 percent of the denials patients appealed.
An Audit That Can't Stop Anything Is Theater
Transparency, participation, and better categories present as democratization.
Nobody Broke a Rule, and Nobody Can Fix It
In a bureaucracy where the software, the clerk and the regulator all follow the rules, nobody can be corrected.
Appeals Test the Clerk, Never the Rule
A 21-year-old's cancer drug was denied for an accurate reason: not approved for his diagnosis.
Being Relied On Doesn't Give You Authority
Being useful, available, large, or already relied on: each gets read as authority over the people who depend on you.
A Great Metric Can Mean Someone Is Quietly Fixing It
The dashboard shows 94 percent of patients leaving with a follow-up booked.
Control Makes Institutions Brittle
Workplaces, wards and governments that choose control over trust lose the ability to adapt, and break when conditions change.
Explaining an AI Decision Doesn't Let You Change It
Audits and explanation tools have become an industry.
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