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There is no ‘We’: Why Collective Action Fails in Solving Major Problems
What if the greatest obstacle to solving the world’s biggest problems is the very idea that we must do it together?
Here is a link to a free version of this essay.
Something isn’t working…
And you know it, but you can’t put a finger on it for some reason.
Despite trillions of dollars and decades spent on combating climate change, global carbon emissions continue to rise, seemingly unabated. Despite ever-increasing funding for the education in America, American kids continue in their descent in academic performance relative to the rest of the world. Argentina has been bailed out by the IMF to the tune of 32 billion dollars and was bailed out by the IMF 20 times over the last 6 decades (There is some hope for that country now that change is coming from the inside, more on that later).
The list of such examples is practically endless. There is no realm in the human civilization where a similar statistic can’t be found. It isn’t that nothing ever get’s better, it’s just that the bigger the perceived threat, and the more far off it is (in time and in distance) the harder it is to get solved now, rather than kicking the can down the road.
