Cause and effect is always the key logical connection that those in authority need to consider. It's also at the heart of most argument writing.
I was listening to an NPR program this morning and caught some of the conversation about the need (or the opposite) of universal Medicare for all. Many of the experts and callers saw "single payer" to be the obvious choice to solve a large number of health problems, and it is so tempting to want ONE simple solution to be the cause of an effect almost anyone would like to see.
Alas, the world rarely turns out to offer easy "win-win" situations. If solutions had clear cause and effects, with a change in policy or procedure leading to great things for everyone, wouldn't we just go ahead and do those things?
The NPR "1A" program evidently focused on the need for better mental health services in America and one reporter whose beat is health mentioned that a challenge if "Medicare for all" were ever to be approved would be that there are not enough mental health professionals to handle all the patients.
If it's tough to find a mental health professional right now, it's likely that a nation that will support universal medical care of any type would be producing more users/patients. Cause and effect. Right now many high school students, for instance, could use some mental health support, but the lack of professionals and high costs keeps those numbers down.
A sudden change in policy would not produce a sudden change in the number of professionals, the reporter pointed out. It takes quite a while to bring more people into psychiatry, for instance. But wait times would predictably get longer, a natural effect of supply not meeting demand.
Having a large number of qualified mental health professionals might be the cause of an increase in people taking advantage of their services, but who is willing to invest years and thousands of dollars in education and training "just in case" there will be a need for those services in the future?
It's a chicken and egg situation, where a country having more mental health professionals, for example, might be able to handle increased numbers of users. But anyone trying to build new models would be faced with the challenge of balancing, probably slowly, health care providers with user needs.
I read recently in the NYT that a trend is for young people to purposely NOT save for retirement, preferring to enjoy life to the fullest while they can. After all, the future looks bleak, at least from their point of view, living in a nation that doesn't offer them all that much (their POV) and that doesn't seem to care about them.
It's not that different an attitude from we might see if scientists proved to us that the planet would be destroyed by an unavoidable collision with a large asteroid that will hit in one year. There is no possible escape.
That "cause" would produce some logical effects, from people NOT saving for retirement to engaging in dangerous pursuits to thrill seeking, to unethical and immoral behavior.
Over 42,000 Americans died in car crashes last year, a huge increase over even the worst pre-pandemic years. Young people who are bored and/or without much hope and all sorts of people who just didn't drive much over the course of the pandemic's worst days are back on the roads. They are driving too fast, perhaps impaired.
It's a pretty clear cause for increased deaths on the roads, even as vehicles get safer and safer.
I was thinking that the numbers would be even worse if vehicle manufactures had not continuously moved to make cars safer. But you can't guard against every potential stupid or aggressive or ignorant choice drivers can make.
Our society is a complex organism that creates complex cause-effect relationships. Nothing is simple.
But at some point, choices must be made.
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