Paul Krugman: When Government Intervention Works

Brad Plumer, an editor at Vox, tells us an important, little-known tale. It begins with things going badly: "Back in the 1980s and '90s," Mr. Plumer wrote earlier this month, "many fisheries in the U.S. were in serious trouble. Fish populations were dropping sharply. Some of New England's best-known groundfish stocks - including flounder, cod, and haddock - had collapsed, costing the region's coastal communities hundreds of millions of dollars."

So the government got involved. But we know that government is always the problem, never the solution, so you know what came next.

Or maybe you don't. In fact, government intervention has been a big success.