It's Taken Care Of

Perhaps this is a corollary to the idea that "Nothing is impossible to the person who doesn't plan on doing it themselves." The idea that "Unleashing the 'free market' is the simple key to solving the housing crisis," had come up, and, as usual, the proponent was someone who saw the "free market" as the answer for everything from acne to world peace, rather than someone who'd actually thought through how a genuinely free market would operate.

But what I found to be interesting about it was when the discussion turned to day care, and other ways that people could have their children looked after while they were doing other things. The speaker noted that surely it was possible for someone to simultaneously run a profitable business, charge low enough rates to attract a steady clientele and pay their workers enough to find adequate housing.

"Who do you know who has managed that?"
"I don't know anyone. But we all know that they're out there."

The conversation didn't improve from there. But what struck me about it was the confidence that interlocutor showed in the idea that what would be the holy grail of child care was lurking around out there somewhere, just waiting for people to find and replicate it. Especially when they showed no sign of wishing to get into (or invest in) the business themselves.

The idea that there are things that one might find to be worthwhile ideas, but have a high enough opportunity cost that it's worth taking a pass makes sense. One can't do everything, and so choices have to be made. But this idea, that I encounter from time to time, that since some really desirable thing is clearly happening somewhere, that there's no need to look deeply enough into it to understand if it actually pencils out seems a bit off.

But more importantly, if solving some of these difficult problems is easy, surely it's worth actually doing it, rather than simply assuming that it's solved. (And even in failure, new things are learned and breakthroughs developed.) And so I wonder if humanity wouldn't be farther along if more people set out to implement the solutions they think they have, rather than presuming that someone else will accomplish those tasks.