A spooky edition of the Muldering, starting with some mood music by none other than Ryan Gosling (I know, most were not aware):
tl;dr:
🧟♂️ Outdated laws and regulations like "haunted graveyards" of old code, they're holding back innovation and progress.
🌅 New era of abundance requires sunsetting obsolete laws and codes that inhibit growth.
dead man’s bones
What do you do when you see a graveyard?
Do you stare, run away, or cautiously slink past it in fear?
In his thought-provoking talk, John Reese from Google introduced the term "haunted graveyard" to depict specific facets of legacy software systems that people hesitate to modify, fearing the hellscape that might result from altering even a single line of old code.
Haunted graveyards can manifest in various forms:
Race conditions: Situations where the behavior of a system depends on the relative timing of events, such as the order in which tasks are executed, leading to unpredictable outcomes.
Misplaced functionality: Implementing a feature or function in the wrong part of the system due to a lack of confidence in modifying the correct section.
Sharp-edged APIs: Application programming interfaces (APIs) that are difficult to use or can cause unexpected problems because they haven't been adequately designed or documented.
A colleague put it well: In every codebase there's this kind of Jenga tower holding up most of the rest of the code. And the thought of swapping it out? That's enough to send shivers down anyone's spine.
As I learned about Reese’s concept of haunted graveyard for software engineers, a chilling realization dawned on me:
He could just as easily be describing our entire regulatory system.
red tape
The burdens of over regulation and unnecessary red tape are obvious, primarily because it’s an ever constant part of our daily existence.
Go to the DMV, or fill out the same old forms in the doctor’s office, or file your taxes, and you quickly feel the dull annoyance in these mundane aspects of regulatory life, what the Buddhist refer to as dukkha.
We justify our experience with irritating bureaucracy because we believe it nudges us all towards a better civil society. It's a way to shield ourselves from risks, compel adherence to rules for improved behavior, and generally deter us from causing harm for the greater good.
But what about another less-discussed reason, for all that red tape?
The haunted graveyard aspects of regulation.
What if all those strings of words forming rules, regulations, and laws—crafted much like a codebase—are so misplaced, outdated, and disjointed that they become nearly impossible to follow?
What if the only reason you have to fill out that same form in the doctor’s office is a confluence of disjointed, relic regulations that result in you having to be the one to suffer through the arbitrary and illogical process?
And what if the big reason we have to live with all this regulatory dukkha is that our policymakers are too afraid to go back and clean it all up?
Sounds superstitious. And it is.
But there are parts of DC where people are too fearful to cut red tape because of the potential unintended consequences.
The truth is there’s a lot of seemingly nonsensical content in our laws hidden behind "Congressional intent." Establishing why someone once thought something was a good idea can be nearly impossible.
A patchwork of code, perhaps written with the best intentions, now forms one massive haunted graveyard that leaves us unsure of how to proceed other than just living with it.
progress
The problem is, on a long enough time horizon, you cannot just live with it.
We may be entering that state. The fear is that we have become the Build-Nothing Country, as aptly described by Noah Smith in his insightful Substack.
We've turned into a nation unable to construct anything, as the dense web of red tape has made it nearly impossible for even the government itself to accomplish tasks, let alone ordinary citizens.
The stasis caused by outdated compliance rules and regulations is so severe that we now witness ribbon-cutting ceremonies by local officials celebrating the opening of a public restroom. This is because, in reality, completing anything "up to code" is actually a great accomplishment, overcoming a monumental challenge of codes, compliance, and administration:
So, where do we go from here?
Fortunately, some people are reimagining the path to genuine progress and are ready to face the haunted graveyard without fear.
A quick (and admittedly biased) shoutout to the Institute for Progress for their nonpartisan efforts in eliminating bottlenecks to promote U.S. growth.
More generally, we need to embrace the approach author and software engineer Tanya Reilly discussed in her presentation The History of Fire Escapes.
The emphasis should be on constructing better buildings, not better fire escapes.
Rather than continuing this method in the policy world of haphazardly attaching more complex and intricate chutes and ladders around old, crumbling buildings, we should muster the courage to do the scary thing of tearing down, or at least sunsetting, what is no longer useful.
R.I.P.