In my experience, conservatives contend that liberals overestimate the ability of government to solve problems, and overlook unforeseen problems, wheras liberals contend conservatives underes-...

Ah, let's be honest here. In my experience, liberals never even consider governmental efficacy and hidden costs, and cut right to calling conservatives cold heartless bastards who'd eat their own grandmothers for Thanksgiving dinner if it gave them a tax cut.

When I was in college, the administration felt advertising alcoholic drinks when publicly announcing frat parties was contributing to excessive drunkness. The administration put two policies in place:

(1) Ads for parties offering alcohol couldn't mention that fact, and

(2) If a party served alcoholic drinks, one also had to offer soft drinks and non-salty foods. (Big downer: I mean, how else will frat boys get girls to consume enough booze to make the boys look good?)

Anyway, conservatives can guess what happened: The fraternaties complied very nicely with these rules, and never missed a chance to prominently advertise "Non-salty Foods!" when throwing a bacchanalian. Everybody knew what that meant, rendering the policy worthless.

(Actually, there were literally quite a few parties dedicated to the god Bacchus. Sigh: welcome to Rome.)