This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 1st, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The federal government has more and more power as time goes on, but it is becoming less able to aggregate and make use of

the relevant knowledge needed to plan for a population of hundreds of millions.

In the face of that disparity between knowledge and power, why is government becoming more centralized?

Cato Institute adjunct scholar Arnold Kling's new book is unchecked and unbalanced.

How the discrepancy between knowledge and power caused the financial

crisis and threatens democracy.

E argues that those who have the knowledge to make the right decision should have the power

too. There's a quote that says, it's not. decision should have the power to.

There's a quote that says,

it's not that a fool in his money are soon parted.

It's that it was amazing that they ever

got together in the first place.

And you sort of make a I guess a similar argument about

modern government regarding knowledge of what's going on in the world around it.

Yeah, the point of this book, Unchecked and Unbalanced,

is that it's remarkable to see in a world where knowledge is getting increasingly dispersed that a government where power is heavily concentrated works at all in that world.

And actually I think it's working worse than people

realize and

The the attempt to concentrate more power in government at this moment in time is exactly the wrong thing historically.

You mean an example?

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