No one at the fda stood up and said, well, i did that, and here's why i did it. So far as i know, noonde even got embarrassed by it. That's kind of a major characteristic of bureaucracyi - diffuse blame to the point where you don't have anyone you can blame. Business discovered in 19 eighties and 19 nineties they wanted to have people accountable. I think we should also be wary of having a chief operating officer become a permanentr semi-permanently autocrat.
Economist and author Arnold Kling talks about improving government regulation with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Kling suggests ways to improve the administrative state--the agencies and regulatory bodies that often write the regulations that they enforce. The conversation concludes with Kling's idea for holding public intellectuals accountable for their pronouncements.