Ways We Fail to Do Good

it is easier to identify problems than to offer positive, workable proposals.

This explains the more severe problems of landscaping and architecture: architects today build to impress other architects, and we end up with strange—irreversible—structures that do not satisfy the well-being of their residents; it takes time and a lot of progressive tinkering for that. Or some specialist sitting in the ministry of urban planning

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Anyone who has spent much time around “the poor” knows they are not angels nor are they devoid of agency or responsibility. This doesn’t mean it is never virtuous to help them - it means operating on the ground requires more care and discernment than fiction or thought experiments prepare us for.

many possibilities for service are closed to us until we expand our capabilities.