In policy terms I'm pretty negative, really prone to pointing out stupid or unoriginal ideas

But most ideas *are* bad.

I guess it's like trying to pick a good apple out of a barrel. If you can find and remove just half the rotten ones, your chance of a good one improves

It's not like the private sector, where there's a market to weed out bad ventures and boost the good. Bad policies *hang around a long time* before whatever democratic process you think we have weeds them out. You need people to snark them away early

So "I don't know the answer but the following twelve things ARE stupid" is a perfectly reasonable position to take. When we're ruled badly, we're ruled by people full to bursting of ideas that no one else stopped

Constrained governments are great.