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Notes -
Because they are the experts. In addition to @Capital_Room's posts, there's Scott's "On Priesthoods" that goes into this.
Let's take forestry. The amount of logging or controlled burns you can do in a year is regulated by the states' forestry departments. How do they determine this? They do the science thing: compile and analyze the historical data on forest recovery, seek the opinion of external experts in local and international academia and come up with a number: you can log at most X% of forests per year, you have to burn the protected forests every Y years, pest extermination requires Z dollars per year.
If a governor is lobbied by the loggers' union to increase the logging to X+M%, by the real estate developers and insurance companies to reduce the burns to once every 2*Y years, if he promises to cut down the spending on pest extermination by 50% and then tries to force the forestry service to do all this, then his actions are deleterious!
His job is to harmonize the constraints imposed by various experts, not to choose one set over the other for political reasons.
That presumes much. First it presumes that these people even have expertise. Next it presumes that the incentive structure within the organization will lead to the right results. Third, it assumes that there are not other sources of expertise that may even be greater.
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