Home » Poems » David Welch » Problems We Can'T Fix, Part I

Problems We Can'T Fix, Part I

I often find myself pondering on
a rather uncomfortable fact,
that some of the big issues we all face
seem ever-present, all solutions lack.
We shout, we fight, we squabble over them,
and of course we all think that we’re right,
to the point that things somethings get so bad
that we feel we have to drop gloves and fight.
A simple study of our history
shows these issues always seem to repeat,
and what sense do we make of our nature
if there are problems we cannot defeat?

You can just look to the environment,
which we try so very hard to preserve,
to give our children the type of planet
that we think decent people deserve.
We put aside land which we then protect,
and we recognize that it’s a good thing,
then ban chemicals that mess up the joint,
which leaves many people celebrating.
But what started out as a good idea
inevitably goes to the extreme;
no mining, no drilled, no timber felled,
‘It’s for the animals,’the hippies scream.
Then normal people get thrown out of work,
and are justifiably upset
that some value deer more than fellow men,
and soon these people begin to regret
that they ever thought well of green causes,
they did not sign up just to be destroyed,
then they elect folks to service their needs,
and confrontation no one can avoid.
We can’t live without all those resources,
civilization no person will nix,
nor should they, leaving us with a problem
that mankind is unable to fix.

Then there’s the issue of poverty,
which we so desperately want to relieve,
it hurts us to see fellow souls struggle
that some of us truly start to believe
that it can finally be done away with,
we can all be successful and content,
and so they have spent trillions of dollars
truing to force along mankind’s betterment.
But hand-outs just encourage dependence,
and the recipients become addicts,
in the end they don’t value the money
because they didn’t have to toil for it.
But a bigger problem exists than that,
one that we have no real way to avoid,
you can’t make people spend cash wisely,
you’ve no power to toy with free choice.
Which means that people no good with money
will continue to make choices quite dumb,
those who won’t control impulse, or think ahead,
will spend all that they have made and then some.
Which means we’ll always be stuck with the poor
so long as folks are free to choose badly;
you could take it away, the socialists tried,
their mistake ended genocidally...

CONTINUES IN PART II.

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