Dan Davies

British economist and financial analyst who wrote The Unaccountability Machine (2024) — applying cybernetics and systems thinking to explain why large institutions consistently fail to be accountable and make the wrong decisions — and Lying for Money (2018) on financial fraud.

Applied cybernetics to explain institutional failure — The Unaccountability Machine's argument that large organizations have evolved to absorb accountability rather than exercise it (because accountability is costly) explains regulatory capture, corporate wrongdoing, and government failure as system properties rather than individual moral failures.