#no solutions

Thomas Sowell's greatest insight | Konstantin Kisin

Konstantin Kisin: The single line that has made the greatest impact to my understanding of the world is from Thomas Sowell who, to me, is one of the greatest modern thinkers. "There are no solutions, only trade-offs."

You're not going to solve climate change you're not going to solve anything. You can make adjustments and - you know this much better than I do from being in government - every policy has a trade-off and very often, I think always actually, the reason that issues become difficult and controversial is precisely because the trade-offs are as bad as the solution, quite often. And you have to pick very carefully how exactly you calibrate your solution to avoid causing a lot more damage than you're trying to prevent.

And we've completely lost the ability to see that nuance. Everything now is seen as-- you know, we have this conversation in this country all the time. If Labour are in, the reason the NHS is broken is because Labour's broken it. If the Conservatives are in, it's because the Tory, Tory Cuts or whatever. No one seems to understand that like all of these problems are eternal. They're gonna go on forever. They're not solvable. No one's going to solve the NHS. No one's going to solve climate change. No one's going to solve anything.

What we can do is tinker at the edges and improve certain aspects of it, at the cost of others. At the cost of others. This was exactly - and you and I talked about this last time - what happened over COVID. People forgot that safety has trade-offs. That freedom has trade-offs. This is what no one wants to say. No one wants to say, "yes, freedom of speech has the consequence that some guy is gonna be insulting to someone else online, and someone might get upset." But that is the price we're willing to pay because we want to live in a free society.

Yes, not locking down the country may, may, we don't know, may have caused more people to die, but locking down the country also caused more people to die. So, which one of those do we want, how do we calibrate that policy.

We've completely lost the ability to have those conversations, which is why I think it's really important that we we try to bring that idea back. There are no solutions. There just aren't. You know this. Am I wrong about this John?

John Anderson: No, you're absolutely right. And the other great problem though, is that a good government reflecting a good society recognizes, not just that there's no absolute answer to anything, but that you actually have to be able to manage many difficult issues at any given time. You and I have to do that in our own personal lives. And so do governments. And so, what we're reducing politics to is sort of a series of one-trick pony shows where there's a crisis here and that's the only thing we'll talk about. It's not just that there are trade-offs, we're ignoring a whole lot of other problems which will swamp that one if we don't pay them attention as well.

“Can I show you something?” Jax sat down on his bed, a book in his hand. Since their discovery that Lyra’s voice was broken beneath the water and above, Jax hadn’t known exactly what to say or do. He tried to distract her and to be positive, but he wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. “It can wait if you’re not in the mood.” @siren-scng​