Engineers vs. Economists

Over at Aretae.

I was actually thinking about something similar earlier today. I think that people generally have the idea that "simpler is better". Meaning that given a complex system that accomplishes a goal, and a simple system that accomplishes roughly the same goal, someone will prefer the simpler system.

This was brought about by thinking of tax day, and the snaggle-toothed monstrosity that is the US tax code. I think I would actually be happier paying higher taxes, if the payment was much simpler - a flat 20% tax, for example. I figure that would increase my Federal taxes to about 2.5x what I pay now. In return, though, I'd understand my tax payments, and the uncertainty associated with the current tax system would be eliminated.

So... how does this figure into engineering/economics? Well, if economic problems are unsolvable, then why not select the simplest solution? Anything you're going to try will be inadequate in some way. Given that, it would seem to make sense to pick the simplest, most understandable economic system you can design that at least solves some part of a problem. At that point, you've made progress - you've solved 90%of X - and because your solution is simple, you're at least able to understand where it doesn't work, and possibly compensate for it's failings in other ways, or at least route around the conditions where it breaks down.