From the doctor’s office to the workplace, the federal government is taking on ever more responsibility for managing our lives. At the same time, Americans have never been more disaffected with Washington, seeing it as an intrusive, incompetent, wasteful giant. At a Cato Book Forum for Why Government Fails So Often — and How It Can Do Better, author Peter Schuck, the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor Emeritus at Yale Law School, examined an enormous body of evidence to explain why so many domestic policies go awry. But can the state get better results by pursuing more thoughtfully conceived policies designed to compensate for its structural flaws? Schuck believes that it can. Arnold Kling, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, offered his comments on why Schuck’s confidence is misplaced — and why government ineffectiveness is likely to continue.