The system we have chosen to live in does not serve us well. Most of us are too beaten down just surviving to even think about changing it.

In two weeks we get a chance to do just that.

Whatever the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections here in the USA, our world and how we live in it need urgent attention. We have big, complex and interdependent problems to address at every level, and they are pressing.

Successfully addressing these problems will require us to choose our challenges well, and focus our resources where they will deliver the most benefit for the least cost. We will need a way to see and weigh all the possible alternatives, a language to discuss them together, and a willingness to face the inevitable trade-offs.

We seem to have forgotten how to do those things, and so here we are with a damaged and unhealthy planet, an unbalanced and unfair economic system, and a society that is divided and deeply unhappy,

I want more. I want a world that makes sense, a world where people make decisions consistent with their values and where society is structured to give them that freedom. I want a world where those who put profit before people are shamed, not celebrated.

I see the idea of problem selection as a tool to help create that future. When someone suggests a particular decision, we should evaluate that decision against the likely and possible outcomes it will deliver. If we want to claim some other decision is “better,” the expected outcomes give us a way to prove it.

There will continue to be tradeoffs. Everything we say “yes” to comes at the cost of saying “no” to something else. To say Decision X is better than Decision Y, we need to evaluate perhaps dozens of goals. For each goal we need to know what “improvement” means, and then we can create a pro-and-con list to compare the two decisions.

When you say Decision X is better, you’re claiming that its benefits outweigh its drawbacks. Similarly, if you want to say Decision Y is bad, you need to provide an alternative to show why.

My home state of Colorado has a law that makes some of these tradeoffs show up on our ballot every year. There’s also a manual (the blue book) that gets mailed to every voter address to make those tradeoffs more concrete.

Consider an investment in schools. Colorado requires that to raise taxes, the language on the ballot has to say how much money will be raised. So, we read statements like “Shall 2 billion dollars of taxes be raised to make public services better.” The blue book adds the details – someone making $50K a year will save $170 annually. Someone else making $500K a year will save $300. People making over a million dollars a year will pay $26K more a year. As a result of these individual impacts, schools and healthcare and other things will benefit.

You have to dig deeper to learn that Colorado has critically underfunded our schools for years. My local school superintendent is a very humble guy who doesn’t like to ask our citizens to shell out more of their hard-earned income. The culture of the district is to be very lean and make the most of their limited resources. Still, my superintendent understands the impact limited resources have on our students and ultimately our future, and chooses to speak up.

He explains how gaps in funding limit our ability to serve students well. How students have fewer opportunities for extracurriculars, larger class sizes, and less personalized support. He also explains how the district is using the funding they have to provide as many opportunities as possible to our students. How past investments are paying off, and how they will continue to adapt in the future.

To me these are the critical details under the surface of our collective decisions about who gets what, and what the impact of those choices are.

I hope this post inspires you to think about the systems we live in and how we can improve them.