why, why, why, why, why
there’s a wonderful story of the five whys
Discussion
the Lincoln Memorial stonework was being damaged
Why? by cleaning spray eroding it
Why? bc it’s used to clean bird poop
so they tried killing the birds. didn’t work
Why are the birds there? to eat insects
let’s kill the insects! didn’t work
Why are the insects there?
bc the lights are on after dusk
so let’s just turn the lights off. that works
this is a clean and understandable example of why adding more layers and more rules to a problem doesn’t always work
if you stop at some level then you’re missing out on the ultimate solution
if we’d stopped at killing insects. we’d spend more money and still have the same problems
if you keep asking why then you get to solve problems
similarly the US Constitution, as a set of rules, fixed most problems with government
that document alone probably fixed 80%+ of governmental problems and now we’re reduced to rules making it illegal to be a hairdresser without a government license, or whatever
https://stevecoast.substack.com/p/the-world-will-only-get-weirder
Reminded me this: https://youtu.be/86Hyjx5U8Ns?si=a_W1x66uMiY6e0DB