Suppose you come up with a good idea to do something.
There may be a few reasons why your seemingly obvious idea hasn’t already been done yet.
No one else thought of it
Congratulations! This is the best case scenario, because:
- You get to feel good about thinking up a great idea.
- Since it’s a great idea, everyone else will immediately agree to it and implement it.
There’s something wrong with it
Some smart guy (H.L. Mencken, a journalist) a while ago said:
there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.
Your idea might fit into this category. So give it a bit of thought before rushing out and proclaiming it to be great.
It’s not a priority
Maybe your idea is good, and people want it, but they don’t want it that much.
You have to consider the opportunity cost of doing your idea, versus doing any other thing, in the finite time you have.
Someone benefits from the problem
Maybe your idea really is good, and if implemented would be overall better for everyone, and is viewed as important by others.
Unfortunately, it might the case be that some powerful minority benefits from not implementing your idea.
This powerful minority likely will wish to keep those benefits, and will thus fight your and your attempts to raise awareness about the problem and your solution.
As just one example, a simple idea to help solve the crisis of prohibitively expensive housing would be to let people build more homes in desirable areas. The market forces of supply and demand would then naturally take effect and lower the cost of living.
However, NIMBYs wield their outsized influence on local politics to block construction of new homes, ensuring that the privileged few current residents “benefit” while the general public suffers.
Note that I put “benefit” in scare quotes because I claim that when an neighborhood is stagnant and inaccessible, it is not actually that great of an neighborhood.
They have outsized influence because they are residents, and they use that influence to prevent other people who might disagree with them from becoming residents. This thus shows how they use the problem to perpetrate the problem and maintain their own power.