Are Big Problems Really More Difficult to Solve?
9th November 2026
As problems spread and involve more moving parts they generally do become harder to solve, though the reason is usually due to complexity rather than size alone.
Indeed many massive, complex problems don’t become unsolvable because of the problem itself. They become unsolvable because of the scaffolding we build around them.
When a social crisis emerges, our instinct is to build support systems: initiatives, funding streams, non-profit networks, and oversight agencies. In theory, this scaffolding is temporary infrastructure designed to hold a collapsing system together while we fix the problem. But over time, something else happens. Scaffolding becomes an industry. It develops its own bureaucracy, its own executive payrolls, and its own political constituency.
Eventually, the scaffolding stops being a temporary fix and becomes a permanent, self-reinforcing ecosystem. Many of the systems and institutions of today were originally envisaged as temporary safety nets.
This is why socialism always drowns in bureaucracy. Proglodytes almost invariably pursue an agenda that is primarily composed of Band-Aids: Health care problems? National Health Service! Medicare for All! Poverty? Universal Basic Income! They are perennially treating symptoms without addressing root causes.