Scott explains why firing bureaucrats wouldn't reduce red tape, as bureaucratic delays come from legal requirements and mandates rather than staff numbers, using the FDA and other examples to illustrate his point. Longer summary

Scott critiques Vivek Ramaswamy's proposal to fire 50% of federal bureaucrats by explaining how bureaucracy works in practice. Using the FDA as a main example, he shows that the number of bureaucrats isn't the bottleneck - rather, it's the amount of required paperwork, legal requirements, and Congressional mandates that create bureaucratic delays. He explains that reducing staff would just make existing processes take longer, and explores why even industries like crypto sometimes want more regulation. The post ends by examining Idaho's successful reduction of regulations, while remaining uncertain whether similar methods could work at the federal level. Shorter summary

Scott Alexander reviews comments on his posts about aducanumab and the FDA, acknowledging some mistakes while defending his overall critique of FDA conservatism. Longer summary

Scott Alexander reviews comments on his recent posts about aducanumab and the FDA. He acknowledges some mistakes in his original post, but defends his overall critique of the FDA as overly conservative. The comments cover various aspects of drug approval, including the aducanumab controversy, surrogate endpoints, the FDA's impact on small biotech companies, and comparisons to other regulatory systems. Scott reflects on how to improve his fact-checking process while still writing passionate pieces. Shorter summary