or like highly polished software. In the latest Econtalk Russ Roberts and Edward Castronova, of Indiana University and author of Exodus to the Virtual World, discuss the implications of virtual worlds. Highly polished government is just one of the topics that two economists find illuminated by the virtual reality massively multiplayer games.
The products we love to use are invariably developed around a tightly controlled core set of features, giving the developers the time necessary to test and polish each feature until it either works really well — or is eliminated. Testing is the only way to reach reliability and customer satisfaction.
Conversely, the customers of government usually are on the receiving end of a 0.1 release. The party in power had an idea, which got codified into law. If we are very lucky, after a generation or two this new law gets “reformed” to fix some of the bugs. Bad law is almost never just killed.
There’s more — such as what we can learn from the games industry about human motivations. Enjoy…
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