How Much Did GM’s Bailout Cost Us?

Manzi says it’s a near-impossible question to answer with much certainty:

Anybody who tells you they can answer all of these questions reliably is full of it. And that doesn’t even start to get to the really long-run considerations of what effects this has on rule of law and moral hazard (or if you want to make the case for the bailout, social solidarity and degradation of the working class)…. I don’t believe that human beings currently have the capability to conduct the kind of analysis that should convince a rational observer to change his mind about the GM bailout in isolation from a more profound paradigm-shift-like change in his beliefs about the world.

What are the implications of grasping the limits of our understanding?

Decentralized decision-making, experiments, and entrepreneurial groping toward knowledge.