It seems like the core issue underlying all of these specific examples is that “gather more information about the expected outcome and seek additional options” choice isn’t considered.
Sometimes the price gouging actually is someone who is making an obscene profit even considering their expenses. Price-fixing in that specific case can just be the socially desired outcome, but the policy maker has to have detailed information about the specifics of that specific case.
So far the idea that an embryo will become immortal if it exits the womb alive has been taken as an article of faith by people who claim that abortion is bad because it results in a death; if the choice is examined as including an option where the death is preceded by little suffering and an option where the death is preceded by an expected lot of suffering and little redeeming quality, the position that abortion is bad because death is bad loses all basis.
If someone is drowning (literally or metaphorically) and you don’t consider the option of calling a trained lifeguard or other person more competent or better equipped than you,, you haven’t considered all of the easily available options.
If you only consider the complete social pressure against ever blocking anyone for any reason or the policy of blocking people who are persuasive about things that you refuse to allow people to be swayed about, you completely miss the possible option of only blocking and banning people who are actually toxic or harmful.
And if you are raising a child who wants to hang out with someone harmful, like a white supremacist or someone who talks in the theater, your options include allowing closely supervised activities, not just blanket permission and blanket refusal. You can bribe them to practice piano (although that also probably won’t get you what you think you want), or you can try to identify what the aversive thing about piano practice is and figure out an option that addresses it directly- if the problem is that they are frustrated that their skill is increasing slowly, setting better expectations about what skill growth looks and feels like could completely resolve the aversion to practice (but that’s just me taking five actual minutes to think about the generic class of problem; anyone actually experiencing a specific problem of that class should be able to develop several different intentions of action based on their actual situation).
One of the core problems informing the entire process is that “spend some resources (time, money, attention) to get more options or more information about the options” is often not considered to be one of the options, and that course of action is declined not because the cost-benefit ratio is too low, but because it was not considered at all.
It seems like the core issue underlying all of these specific examples is that “gather more information about the expected outcome and seek additional options” choice isn’t considered.
Sometimes the price gouging actually is someone who is making an obscene profit even considering their expenses. Price-fixing in that specific case can just be the socially desired outcome, but the policy maker has to have detailed information about the specifics of that specific case.
So far the idea that an embryo will become immortal if it exits the womb alive has been taken as an article of faith by people who claim that abortion is bad because it results in a death; if the choice is examined as including an option where the death is preceded by little suffering and an option where the death is preceded by an expected lot of suffering and little redeeming quality, the position that abortion is bad because death is bad loses all basis.
If someone is drowning (literally or metaphorically) and you don’t consider the option of calling a trained lifeguard or other person more competent or better equipped than you,, you haven’t considered all of the easily available options.
If you only consider the complete social pressure against ever blocking anyone for any reason or the policy of blocking people who are persuasive about things that you refuse to allow people to be swayed about, you completely miss the possible option of only blocking and banning people who are actually toxic or harmful.
And if you are raising a child who wants to hang out with someone harmful, like a white supremacist or someone who talks in the theater, your options include allowing closely supervised activities, not just blanket permission and blanket refusal. You can bribe them to practice piano (although that also probably won’t get you what you think you want), or you can try to identify what the aversive thing about piano practice is and figure out an option that addresses it directly- if the problem is that they are frustrated that their skill is increasing slowly, setting better expectations about what skill growth looks and feels like could completely resolve the aversion to practice (but that’s just me taking five actual minutes to think about the generic class of problem; anyone actually experiencing a specific problem of that class should be able to develop several different intentions of action based on their actual situation).
One of the core problems informing the entire process is that “spend some resources (time, money, attention) to get more options or more information about the options” is often not considered to be one of the options, and that course of action is declined not because the cost-benefit ratio is too low, but because it was not considered at all.