There are no solutions, only trade-offs

I watched a video last week on a channel to which I subscribe, Conor Neill’s YouTube channel.

He made a video about there being no solutions to problems, but trade-offs or compromises.

He points to the problem of global warming, energy consumption and generation and all the associated problems and points out that the global warming problem solution is to stop creating energy and engaging in the activities that are at the root cause of global warming.

That decision will, of course, involve a massive trade-off in terms of sacrificing jobs, wealth creation, eradication of poverty, and many other worth objectives.

In Ireland we could provide a solution to the housing crisis by pouring all our resources into houses. But the trade-off would be to sacrifice other competing demands in areas like the health service and so on.

The sporting analogy for this hypothesis is that nobody has everything. Every player in every sport, no matter how talented, has some little weakness, some imperfection.