you won't one-shot a perfect system, but try anyway

Have you ever experienced this exchange:A: Damn, <list unfairness or suffering under a specific system>, this system is so broken. My <Japanese/German/Dutch etc.> friend says in their country, <list everything that's better>. Why can't we have that?B: Well, to have that, you'd have to piss off <winners of the current system>. They (the government/the people in charge) would never allow it.or, even less usefully,B: You're too naive. Spend a few more years in the real world and you'll know why we can't have that.Stage 1: Notice a problem without having a solution yourselfI first started actually noticing systemic issues by myself in middle school in China. My Chinese teacher read my weekly essays discussing these issues, and encouraged me to leave China. Implicitly she had two reasons: The political climate in China did/does not encourage dissent. The cultural climate in China dislikes complaining without solutions.If you've also noticed problems or felt uncomfortable with the status quo without a solution: noticing problems is not unproductive or pessimistic. It is, in fact, the first step to improving matters. [1]Stage 2a: Realize there's no perfect, equilibrial alternativeSay, you hate seeing people go bankrupt over medical bills (US-specific example). You look at all the currently better healthcare systems in the world that deliver better results on average, and realize their costs in terms of taxpayer dollars are all significant and increasing, and they can't indefinitely sustain themselves under their currently-better system. Say, you hate the race dynamics between AI labs. You wish they would just shake hands and establish some sort of slow-down framework, but also realize the inherent fragility of such framework. You call it a coordination problem. You realize even the non-proliferation treaty of nuclear weapons -- widely considered a success or narrow escape from huge disutility -- did not delete all the stress and deaths associated with its enforcement in th