It is unserious to prioritize the old over the young

From The Case for American Seriousness by Katherine Boyle.  The subheading is We don't need aging institutions to pave the way for 21st-century dynamism. What we need is will. And audacity.

Boyle advocates energetically for a return to seriousness in American discourse.  

It is unserious to pour six trillion dollars into failed nation-building—more than three times what has gone into American venture-backed technology companies in the same two decades—only to let a nation collapse in a jumbled weekend withdrawal. The U.S. military is still the most trusted institution in America, but has experienced a precipitous decline in trust with only 45 percent of Americans claiming to have “a great deal of confidence in the military,” down 25 points in three years. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have allowed this trust to decay, going so far as to claim “Mission Accomplished” 18 years too early—or to pretend there was never really a war happening at all.

It is unserious to prioritize the old over the young, to shut down public schools for two years in the name of safety, sacrificing the needs of children for the neuroses of adults. Twenty years of educational gains and investment in schooling were “wiped out” by Covid policies, according to the United Nations. This is the real, lasting effect of long Covid.

I have written of the enervating effects of prosperity which both allow us to take greater risks in the past but also divorce us in some situations from the consequences of those risks.  An environment of risk taking without baring the consequences of those risks is both profoundly unserious and conducive to very bad decision-making.

One aspect of decision-making is simply the reluctance to make trade-off decisions.  When two desirable outcomes are on offer but are mutually exclusive from one another (because of time, or resources, or social adaptability or . . . ) we have a strong inclination to either not make a decision or to undertake both in a deeply unserious, half-assed fashion such that both viable choices fail.

Probably our greatest weakness in trade-off decision making is a demonstrated incapacity to leave well enough alone.  There are many wicked problems which do not have simple cause-and-effect answers.  We have a choice of continuing some tolerable but less than desirable current state or we can undertake a risky, and poorly considered new policy or intervention.  

Instead of leaving well-enough alone, we seem to always choose the half-baked idea which then fails.  Our political leader's pathological desire to be seen to be doing something, even when they do not understand what it is that they are doing, is profoundly unserious.

We have to get serious again, doing the right things and doing them right.  Focusing on the issues of greatest consequence, not the kabuki theater of vestigially fringe issues.  We have to get serious again, taking risks that are justifiable while ignoring the hunger to do something without consideration.

The whole piece warrants reading, especially for the supporting links.