[appleskeptic]

Your perspective makes sense if you accept as good that massive political effort must be taken to do obviously good things against the wishes of special interest groups. But most people would think that the US Mint churning out worthless coins every year at the expense of citizens is an undesirable state of affairs. Wasting other people’s money is inherently despicable.

Not that worthless coins are anywhere near the top of the list of bad and wasteful policies. But if we can’t even solve the obvious low-hanging fruit, we’re not solving those bigger problems either.

[jmye]

That’s a interesting opinion.

It seems like saying if you won’t bother bending over to pick up a penny, how can anyone expect you to bend over and pick up a one hundred dollar bill - one is worth the effort and one isn’t. People regularly make efforts and propose laws to solve bigger issues - the issue isn’t effort as much as adversarial disagreement.

[appleskeptic]

A system that lets minor inefficiencies endlessly accumulate, because the activation energy to address them is too high, is rotten. As for picking up hundred dollar bills, Congress isn’t solving big problems either.

[jmye]

Hard disagree. The infrastructure act is a clear example of solving big problems.

It’s also neither here nor there - an implication that not solving a really, really small problem says anything about an ability or desire to solve bigger problems is clearly incorrect.