It subverts the default, knee-jerk tendency of bureaucracies to choose inaction over action, status quo over change, and idiotic rules over common sense.
"The cost of action," he intoned, "must be weighed against the price of inaction". So true -- just as it was true in the spring, when he chose inaction with the U.N.'s Kofi Annan, and true recently when he flinched at the last minute and gave Saddam a cheap victory by recalling an air strike.
Their thesis is that the Commission chose inaction in order to protect the industry from the $5 billion cost of the expedited transfer program and not because the agency determined that the public is more than adequately protected under current conditions.
Instead, the state's leaders have chosen inaction.
Stop funding the only party who can end it, but have chosen inaction.
As Bankowski et al. 30 report, patients can choose inaction, keeping embryos stored in preference to making any other decisions.
If we don't want to choose between inaction and war, we must get better – all of us – at the policies that prevent the breakdown of basic order.
Yet, in that context, he also pointed out the pragmatic value of efforts such as the Water for the World Act: "If we don't want to choose between inaction and war, we must get better--all of us--at the policies that prevent the breakdown of basic order," including "development assistance that brings hope to the marginalized".
Alternatively, "we can choose action over inaction," he said.
Oddly, in announcing that he would put his royal charter plan, minus statutory underpinning, to a vote, he then said: "I have chosen action over inaction.
