It’s hard to keep things simple

Jeffrey Veen wants to know why we just can’t make stuff simpler:

Most people who are in the position to fund projects and approve work are terrified by things that are just too simple. For some reason, most folks associate complexity with power, when the opposite is often true.

Well, the answer might have something to do with the color of the bikeshed:

Parkinson shows how you can go into the board of directors and get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will be tangled up in endless discussions.

Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody else checked all the details before it got this far.

A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those over a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is here.