interventionism cannot be optimal because the expectation of future discretion frustrates present intervention
1. Effective government intervention in the present needs present discretion. 2. It is difficult for an agency to give up discretionary power once they have it. 3. The subjects of intervention expect that the agency might use its discretion in the future to modify the outcome of those actions which the agency wants them to take in the present in a way that will reduces their value to the subjects. 4. This expectation induces subjects to refrain from performing the actions the agency wants them to perform in the present.
Boettke, Peter. 1993. Why Perestroika Failed. The Politics and Economics of Socialist Transformation. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 96-102