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Meditations on Doge — LessWrong

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All marshrutka [mini taxi bus] drivers had to have a medical exam every day to make sure they were not drunk and did not have high blood pressure. If a driver did not display his health certificate, he risked losing his license. By the time Shevarnadze was in power there were hundreds, probably thousands , of marshrutkas ferrying people all over the capital city of Tbilisi. Shevernadze’s government was detail-oriented not only when it came to taxi drivers. It decided that all the stalls of petty street-side traders had to conform to a particular architectural design. Like marshrutka drivers, such traders had to renew their licenses twice a year. These regulations were only the tip of the iceberg. Gas stations, for example, had to be located at a specific distance from the street. […] These regulations, and thousands like them, were never intended to be implemented. Nobody really expected marshrutka drivers to have a daily medical exam, and they didn’t. But by creating such a rule, the

x Meditations on Doge — LessWrong World Optimization Frontpage 2025 Top Fifty: 14 % 132 Meditations on Doge by Martin Sustrik 25th May 2025 250bpm 11 min read 44 132 Lessons from shutting down institutions in Eastern Europe. This is a cross post from: https://250bpm.substack.com/p/meditations-on-doge Imagine living in the former Soviet republic of Georgia in early 2000’s: All marshrutka [mini taxi bus] drivers had to have a medical exam every day to make sure they were not drunk and did not have high blood pressure. If a driver did not display his health certificate, he risked losing his licen

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