I'd argue we have over-corrected on that stuff. Go back and look how processes worked in the 1950s and 1960s. People used to write relatively short proposals to do quite massive works. It's the meme: "You can just do stuff!"

I'd argue that this is one of the advantages of Anglo and Anglo-American culture that has become eroded over time. I've been reading about the British East India Company and how much discretion employees were afforded in carrying out their work: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-com.... They had like 35 employees in London and managed to take over Mughal India, which was a gunpowder empire with guns, cannons, 4-5x the state revenues and 25x the population of Britain. Pound for pound it's probably one of the most effective organizations in history.

The Federal laws on grants are Byzantine and I’m not going to defend them. I think they make research much too expensive, and the compliance costs exclude smaller businesses and institutions. With that said: the general public voted for them. They did this because politicians raised the specter of fraud (which is real) and the public does not like their tax dollars being stolen. The current administration is doing things right now that sure look a lot like the type of stuff that motivates even stricter laws in the future, and will cause blowback for years. So no, I don’t think they’re in a good position to leave us with “reforms”. If anything I think they’re going to be gone in two years and all their works will sum up to even more new laws designed to keep the next version of them in check.

Effective at what though? The article is not exactly painting a rosy picture of EIC, nor should it. More of an advertisement for laws and regulations that curtail such abuses and an educated populace that can see such a threat to their liberty.

effectiveness does not equate moral or ethical goodness