THE WEEK

Four hundred and sixty-seven Mafiosi went on trial in Palermo, Sicily, last week, and not a single one of them is a Queens Democrat. Governor Mario Cuomo is expected to advise the Palermo judge that the Mafia does not exist.

According to preliminary reports on investigations still under way, the explosion of the space shuttle was the result not of an act of God or of human error— but of institutional error. Morton Thiokol, the company that supplied the rubber sealing rings in the booster rocket whose failure seems to have caused the disaster, had doubts about the rings’ ability to perform in cold weather. (Temperature at liftoff was in the thirties.) The manufacturers had passed their concerns on to NASA, but the information never reached those who had the authority to launch or not to launch. In Hayek’s terms, the circulation of information was impeded. Typically in government, routine and bureaucracy are the great enemies of information flow. Government can execute certain kinds of tasks—D-Day, the Manhattan Project, designing the Stealth bomber —when it sets its mind to it. NASA operations should be of that character.

Featured Tags

Department of Education

Four hundred and sixty-seven Mafiosi went on trial in Palermo, Sicily, last week, and not a single one of them is a Queens Democrat. Governor Mario Cuomo is expected to advise the Palermo judge that the Mafia does not exist.

According to preliminary reports on investigations still under way, the explosion of the space shuttle was the result not of an act of God or of human error— but of institutional error. Morton Thiokol, the company that supplied the rubber sealing rings in the booster rocket whose failure seems to have caused the disaster, had doubts about the rings’ ability to perform in cold weather. (Temperature at liftoff was in the thirties.) The manufacturers had passed their concerns on to NASA, but the information never reached those who had the authority to launch or not to launch. In Hayek’s terms, the circulation of information was impeded. Typically in government, routine and bureaucracy are the great enemies of information flow. Government can execute certain kinds of tasks—D-Day, the Manhattan Project, designing the Stealth bomber —when it sets its mind to it. NASA operations should be of that character.