ABSTRACT
What the government wants to do, and has the power to do, it will generally try to do—law, ethics, and common sense frequently notwithstanding. Officials may pause at the outset of an undertaking for a nominal weighing of the pros and cons. This can involve elaborate cost-benefit analyses, hearing records, legal briefs, committee reports, environmental-impact statements, and the like. Still, it will be the enthusiasm of the proponents and their political power, rather than the merits of the case, that usually prove decisive. Once a major project is begun, moreover, it will grow and create a life of its own. If its rationale is disproven or forgotten, if it produces unwanted side effects, or even if it fails utterly, the momentum it achieves—its ineradicable, weedlike vitality—will often be enough to sustain the program long past the point at which it should be curtailed or abandoned. Curiously, the more that is at stake the more this appears likely to be the case.
Daniel Ford, “The Cult of the Atom—II,” The New Yorker, 1 November 1982.
