ML:

Herbert Simon: Bounded rationality---limited by what we know, what we can understand, etc...

I think it gets overly complicated, though, when we start mixing concepts of human settlements and governance--two different things.

Folks have been voting with their feet since the dawn of time, or scrambling to survive. That, and causations, are the basic drivers for population re-settlement. If everything was grand, we would all just procreate to scarcity.

But conflict zones are, by definition, never grand places to be, highly unstable, and treacherous to safe and prosperous existence..

I share the same insight from Iraq that dozens of soldiers noted before me---people are just trying to get by, and the challenges, to an extent, are complicated by US, and whatever "inspiration" was passing for wisdom inside the Beltway at a given time.

The difference between 120 and myself is that, hopefully, by being outside the command structure, you can influence it by, first, seeing things outside the internal lense, and, second, bringing forward the properly framed questions to drive more productive alternatives.

It never ceased to amaze me that, by catching up to folks ate ends of tours, they had folders of good ideas they would have liked to have implemented, but that weren't in their lanes.

Like any big bureaucracy, the challenge is to move the bureaucracy whether from above, below or within. It just ain't easy---don;t care whether it is Ford Motor Company or the Pentagon. Scale, organization, staffing, logistics create and define much of what will happen based on decisions made six or nine months in advance.

Not really a problem of sending folks out into the field to better their fishing if the bait and tackle are wrong, or there are no fish in the assigned river.