Magical Thinking

Prediction: climate change, the US budget crisis, wealth inequality, etc will not actually be addressed by Governments until we actually are in crisis. Humans need crisis situations to actually accept unpopular policies.

Which means that by the time we deal with something, it's so bad that it's painful for almost everyone.

The magical thinking we exhibit is that we are sure "something will be done" or worse, "it's not actually an issue" or more cynically "this will be someone else's problem". Politicians know it will have to be someone else's problem. Because if they try to enact actual change, they'll likely be voted out.

Cut down on carbon emissions? You impact your GDP. You'll be voted out. Dramatically increase housing supply so that young people can afford homes? Crash the realestate market. Voted out. Raise taxes on billionaires and make large corporations pay their fair share? Your opponents get a huge boost in campaign spending and guess what, you get voted out.

We do not have a society that incentivises positive transformation. Because all transformation includes a period of pain as the Bad Thing™ is corrected. People don't like pain and they're not willing to give political parties the time for the transformation to actually take place.

Obviously the solution is not for people to become "farsighted adults". That's just not going to happen. Any solution to any problem that expects the citizenry to act more strategically, logically, and with common sense is doomed to fail. That does not happen at scale and will often end up being a tragedy of the commons problem.

A clever government would build the boring machinery of change quietly, enact strong policy that prevents future governments from easily sabotaging it. Systems like Medicare are politically untouchable because to undo them would be suicide.

If you want change, then you have to create that same sentiment in the people. You have to create enough winners from your policy who can defend your reforms, becoming a strong enough voting bloc that they can't be easily wound back.

I still don't know how to fix the magical thinking, though. So the only solution is to build a better system that they won't give happily up. Easy.