Comment by rebeccaskinner

I think there are parts of the policy that people wouldn’t be able to agree on because of differences in values.

To look at another example, some people view the purpose of prisons as being primarily for causing suffering and to punish people. Other people don’t care much either way about suffering and see prisons as a way to remove people from society. Some people think the purpose of prisons should be rehabilitation, and see suffering as practically counterproductive. Some people don’t believe that if the state is taking someone’s freedom they have an ethical obligation to minimize that persons suffering. Some people don’t believe in the concept of prison at all.

There are a lot of views there, and while you might be able to get some of the people with differing views to agree on policy some of the time, the goals are significantly different and that’s going to be a significant obstacle in shaping a meaningful policy in all but perhaps a few isolated cases.