Brief Review

As I reach the 700^th posting on this site, it’s time for a brief review.

For more than 20 years Americans have been dissatisfied with the direction of the country.  When asked whether the country is headed in the right direction overall in monthly polls, the majority (often around 65%) answers “no” more than three-quarters of the time.  They look to government to fix it, so parties rotate in and out of power and nothing seems to change.  Dissatisfaction remains high.

In place of ineffective government solutions, this site offers Real Solutions based on behavior, because behavior has consequences.  As individual behaviors accumulate, they become societal trends.  And just as individual foolishness results in individual unhappiness, these societal trends result in crises, epidemics and our general dissatisfaction with the overall direction.

Behavior, though, seems elusive.  Behavior is whatever someone says or does, the decisions he makes or beliefs she professes.  How to get this myriad of choices and actions organized and understandable can be a challenge.

One way to do this is to classify behaviors by the personality traits they reflect.  I use the term dimensions for these traits and propose five as key to success:  Economic Understanding, Discipline, Responsibility, Critical Thinking and Perspective.  If behaviors in these dimensions are positive, consequences will be beneficial, the individual and society with thrive.  The opposite is also true.

So for nearly seven years on each Monday and Friday, I have scanned the news and published a critique of one or more particular decisions, actions or choices that seem to reflect popular trends and result in poor outcomes.  Sometimes people don’t see the connection between their money and tax policy or between costs and prices urging lawmakers to take actions with unforeseen consequences (Economic Understanding).  Doing the right thing is hard in terms of saving money, eating healthy and the rest, so they turn to purveyors of too-good-to-be-true formulas, diets and get-rich-quick schemes wasting time and money (Discipline).  When they fail or are injured as a result of poor choices, they look for someone else to blame or bail them out (Responsibility).  Conspiracy theories, faulty scientific studies, unproven medicine, statistical long shots, hasty decision making, gut feel and emotional responses all lead to wasted time and money and dangerous outcomes (Critical Thinking).  Finally, lack of gratitude and unrealistic expectations cause us to feel that things are worse than they really are, that we don’t have enough and must keep striving for more (Perspective).

Taken together these five key dimensions explain why there are so many problems with retirement insecurity, obesity epidemic, gun violence, opioid epidemic, helicopter parenting, college debt, fad diets, smartphone and game addictions, failing schools, teen and adult sleep deprivation, consumer fraud, scientific illiteracy, deceptive advertising, media-driven fears and hype, health and financial scams, frustration over income inequality, frivolous lawsuits, plastic in the oceans, demonization of business, failed government programs, political divisiveness and much more.

The purpose of these short essays is not to nit-pick and complain, but to show how most major problems in the news, all those crises and epidemics, result not from the lack of some new government program, but from behavioral choices.  The examples are intended to teach readers how to identify faulty behaviors for themselves and classify them into the Big Five Dimensions. 

If some critical mass of the population begins to take the five dimensions seriously in their own lives and tries to influence the behavior of others, the pull of society will get the whole country headed in the right directions.  The government can keep us secure, maintain roads, and enforce laws, etc. while we do the rest.  Without a significant change in behavior, no law or regulation, no new administration will be able to fix what we ourselves have broken.