Unsolvable Problems
Contrary to modern hubris, many problems can’t be solved; their unsolvability is often useful.
Israel/Palestine. Israelis want their country to continue to exist; most Palestinians do not. Israel tried land for peace in Gaza; Palestinians took the land but gave no peace. Israel regards a general Palestinian right of return as a death warrant; Palestinians demand nothing less. Israelis won’t compromise their existence; Palestinians won’t compromise their identity and their prospects of ultimate victory. Hence the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is unsolvable. But the illusion that it can be solved is politically useful. It gives American leaders an opportunity to exert influence in an important region through the “peace process.” It enables American progressives to keep displaying their anticolonial virtue by attributing the oppressive stalemate to those unreasonable Jews who maintain their apartheid state rather than accept a single multiracial country “from the river to the sea.” Many other parties—Iran, Arabs, Europe—have a use for ongoing conflict. For all such outsiders, and even for some direct participants, it is too good a problem to solve.
Racial Inequality. For 60 years, America has been solving the problem of racial inequality. Black and white were made equal before the law; public opinion on (inter)racial issues shifted massively; court decisions opened access to jobs by easing requirements; a governmental apparatus monitored racial mistreatment; billions of dollars flowed to minority recipients as part of the growing welfare state; in many cities, black majority rule instituted black power; elite colleges pursued diversity by favoring black applicants. But that hardly counts. Blacks still trail in education, income, and health. Racism, we discovered, is systemic. Therefore, new laws and attitudes and money flows and power bases don’t suffice: progress is no solution. From a progressive point of view, anything short of full, constant equality signals failure. Since racial groups are bound to differ in some respects, that failure is guaranteed. Reparations will not repair: if some recipients squander their prize, they will clamor for more. And the very framing of the problem boosts its longevity: historically underrepresented groups will always be historically underrepresented. The problem is unsolvable, and therefore will remain politically exploitable.
Immigration. For decades, America has also worked on solving the problem of illegal immigration. In the 1980s, it tried with Immigration Reform and Control Act—the reform worked to provide mass amnesty, but the control part unexpectedly failed. Millions kept coming. Barack Obama tried another solution of sorts with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, using executive discretion to exempt entire categories of the “undocumented” from what still appeared to be the law on the books. Donald Trump proposed a big, beautiful wall, to be paid for by Mexico no less, but unexpectedly left it unfinished. Under the more welcoming regime of Joe Biden, the streams of migrants resumed, at times simply walking in through deliberately opened border gates—no problem there. People concerned about blue sanctuary cities straining under the influx now call for solutions—more federal money for shelter, easier work requirements, faster processing, and so on—but, like other solutions, such as amnesty and deferrals, they just happen to incentivize foreigners to hasten their entry, thus perpetuating the problem. Meanwhile, the actual immigration control system has accumulated a multi-million-case backlog, taking every request for “asylum” seriously to the point that removal of abusers becomes impossible. The American establishment, including business groups, seems to like it that way. Perhaps with a little progressive creativity, the problem can actually be redefined as an opportunity—each poor foreign family triggering a humanitarian response, each asylum seeker supplying much-needed labor, and America the better for it. For the moment, that sentiment has not fully taken hold, but it helps to keep the problem unsolvable.
Climate Change. Not long ago, we were told to worry about “global warming,” or more precisely, anthropogenic global warming. The problem has since been reframed as “climate change.” Human beings are still at fault, of course, and must atone, but the term provides some flexibility: even a pause in temperature increases, or the absence of warming signals in weather events, or sheer natural variability in climate trends cannot refute the fear of climate change. The more general the framing, the less solvable the problem. The trillions to be spent on the green energy transition, the millions of mineral-heavy and inconvenient EVs, the thousands of short-lived bird-killing wind turbines—none of it will suppress global temperatures by more than fractions of a degree. Which may be a feature, not a bug, of climate policy. As long as “the climate” is changing at all, and some cow somewhere dares to belch, the problem is unsolvable in any case. Climate change will always be with us. Since it justifies endless self-flagellation and political grift, it may well be the perfect unsolvable problem.
Other worthy candidates are left as an exercise for the reader—in America, they include “gun violence” and “the war on drugs.” In each case, fuzzy framing guarantees inadequacy, and vested interests embrace the unsolvability. Falling short pays. Solutions are so last century.