#96 A Lazy Start To 2021🎧

<em>This newsletter is really a weekly public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question: </em><strong><em>how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?</em></strong><br/><br/><em>PS: If you enjoy listening instead of reading, we have this edition available as an audio narration courtesy the good folks at </em><a target="_blank" href="https://www.ad-auris.com/"><em>Ad-Auris</em></a><em>. If you have any feedback, please send it to us.</em><br/><br/>— RSJ<br/><br/><em>Happy 2021 everyone!</em><br/><br/>There’s no logical reason to believe that turning over to a new year will make a difference in the fortunes of humankind. But we are an optimistic lot. <br/><br/>So, we hope the spectre of 2020 is behind us. It was what it was. If you are a believer, you’d think there was a cosmic message to us through the year. <br/><br/>Like Alexander Pope wrote in that great defence of the ways of God to men – <em>An Essay On Man:</em><br/><br/>“Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;<br/><br/>Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore!<br/><br/>What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,<br/><br/>But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.<br/><br/>Hope springs eternal in the human breast:<br/><br/>Man never is, but always to be blest:<br/><br/>The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,<br/><br/>Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”<br/><br/>Pope concludes with:<br/><br/>“All nature is but art, unknown to thee;<br/><br/>All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;<br/><br/>All discord, harmony, not understood;<br/><br/>All partial evil, universal good:<br/><br/>And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,<br/><br/>One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.”<br/><br/>We must accept <em>whatever is, is right</em><br/><br/>We will continue to