"The central, if unspoken premise of modern thinking is that human affairs are inherently manageable. Despite the chaos and suprises of history - peace, famine, invention, strife, revolution, progress and disaster - despite the intracacy of society's web of relationships and despite the confusion of motives that propel human action - despite all this, modern thinking finds the world limitlessly susceptible to improvement. The troubles and mysteries of life are only so many problems waiting for experts to solve. All that's needed is for the intelligent and well intentioned to grasp the power to get the job done. And that power lies in government.

Those who share the modern view fully will find it difficult to say "no" to any plan for government to make things better. They hope that, freed from the narrow and parochial interests of private individuals, the government's impartial administrators will run the plan with rational precision and will use the power of the state to assure that everyone cooperates.

The obvious tardiness, inefficiency and perversity of most government activity does nothing to discourage this attitude. Every government failure is counted as a valuable lesson- another step down the learning curve, a nessessary cost of making government more effective. Complaints about poor results are taken as proof that government needs more money and more power."