Other People’s Problems

As you say this can cut both ways. A good example would be the US where people constantly wonder whether $thing-that-29-out-of-30-developed-countries-do-since-decades could truly work. Yeah it works, we have seen it work, it is currently working.

Now imagine you are a software developer entering the offices of a group of bueraucratic clercs that keep an intricate fax-and-scanner-based system of bullshit just barely afloat. Of course as a person that is specialized on thinking about the storage, transformation, santitizarion, transmission and deletion of data you are going to probably have a slightly more sophisticated take on information processing than them. They might know the law better or which combinations of checkboxes a person is allowed to tick on a form, but they suck at the meta task of organizing the efficient, fast and error free flow, storage, deletion, etc of information. And sure now one could argue about the merrits of paper (and I routinely argue it's merrits for democratic elections, where correctness and traceability are more important than speed), but that would be like arguing for making doctors use medival hand tools in the age of the scalpel.

Now it is true that outsiders to a system won't see what reasons there are for a certain thing being shaped a certain way, but this can sometimes even happen to insiders if the information handover is bad enough.

Ironically, most of what you’ve said here is false because it’s government in the driving seat, not business. The infamous avocado toast incident was regarding a mortgage down payment, not rent. That’s due to the post-2008 asset bubble created by central banks.

If you think fentanyl is not a critical component of the US’ homelessness crisis I don’t know what to say - go to Europe, the homeless there are not in a zombie-like state. There’s no compassion in ignoring people’s real problems and instead blaming them on our own political gripes. The festering of this problem is a product of bad government.

As for retirement savings - are you kidding me? Pensions are the most protected assets on this planet - no matter how hard they fail they will be bailed out. That inflation you speak of is, again, due to all that post-2008 money from the government. Interest rates are set by the central bank. (No doubt some unfortunate people had to draw-down their retirement savings but they’re the exception that proves the rule). For the first time in history we will have an economy where money is flowing up from the young to the old, rather than downwards - it is the young people who are being exploited! The children who will pay for this don’t even get a vote.

The real problem I see here is that people vote themselves all the money whenever they get the chance, with governments able to pile on more and more debt to be paid by future generations. Plus a government that is more interested in ideological posturing than solving problems - unless the solution is more government.

You could also go the ‘autistic’ route -

Frown, and walk away while they’re talking.

Or

Deeply analyze why they’re wrong and they know it. In front of them, where they can hear you do it.

You’ll get hate, but what else is new?

You could also just lie, say ‘oh that’s good advice’ and then ignore it like most normal people.

Or, figure out what painful personal failure they are trying to warn you about from their side, with no real solution they’ve been able to figure out. And see if there is some lesson you can learn from it.

Wait, am I giving unsolicited advice now?

There was a thread yesterday which was on /r/getmotivated, the typical word spew from a teenager who had started a newsletter.

Advising people that all they had to do is outlast everyone and that was easy because everyone else quit.

They didn't seem to understand the difference between simple and easy, when I mentioned that was the hard part and the reason everyone else was quitting was because it was hard, there response was that 'they just needed discipline, which is easy'.

So glad we have genius level thinking out there that has solved all of life's issues.

> It’s an ugly, toxic cycle that bottoms out at everyone constantly having their knowledge and competence questioned over things they know and can do, by people who don’t and can’t.

That rings so true in my head. Being too open and transparent got me quite a lot of misery already. More than once, I got the work of months discarded, because some other (shiny or new) approach was deemed to provide a better solution -- only to the effect that it was later discovered that it was the worse approach.

Apparently it is very easy to miss in the pursuit for the best solution, in unfortunate favor of one's preconceived notions.