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In public policy, experimenting is valuable. In particular, it provides a positive externality.
Let's say that a city tests out a somewhat quirky idea like paying NIMBYs to shut up about new housing. If that policy works well, other cities benefit because now they can use and benefit from that approach.
So then, shouldn't there be some sort of subsidy for cities that test out new policy ideas? Isn't it generally a good thing to subsidize things that provide positive externalities?
I'm sure there is a lot to consider. I'm not enough of a public policy person to know what the considerations are though or how to weigh them.
Experimentation is valuable for the high VoI, but it seems hard to encourage 'in general', because experimenting on anything is painful and difficult, and the more so the more important and valuable it is. So just 'subsidizing experiments' would be like 'subsidizing fixing bugs in source code'.
What would you do if you were a funder who wanted to avoid this? Well, you'd... fund specific experiments you knew were important and of high-value. Which is what the federal government and many other NGOs or philanthropists do.
2Davidmanheim
From my reading and understanding of the issue, the expected value of a proposed new policy interventions is almost certainly at least slightly negative, but the aggregate value of trying them is positive because you can drop the bad ones. (cf. evolution, where the expected value of mutations is massively negative, but it still works because of selection.)