Putting highly sensitive, unproven assumptions into models with hundreds/thousands of lines of opaque code spitting out numbers that get handed to bureaucrats to tell tens of millions of people how to live is not how any of this is supposed to work

The epistemological and political philosophy failure that this entire chain of policy formation entails represents what's wrong in most other areas of public policy. This technocratic authoritarianism remains THE barrier to progress in C21st, thrusting us toward impoverishment.

The fact that 'the models' were hopelessly wrong irks me far less than the fact they were used to devise a course of action that violated human agency in the most egregious and unconscionable fashion. That's where the real shame lies, not with play-play spreadsheets.