...Piracy was a result of bad service on the part of game companies.
Today, I spent a while contemplating how much nicer the world would be if our leaders approached every problem like Gaben did with piracy. He figured out that the best way to discourage video game piracy was not to put up overly-invasive DRM, but instead to improve the experience of legitimately paying. Steam provides easy and trusted payment, fast downloads, achievement tracking, a friending system, and many other incentives, leading to users choosing to spend money through it, rather than go through the hassle of piracy.
Similarly, nobody pirates music anymore because iTunes made purchasing songs cheap, fast, and simple. Then, Spotify made listening even faster and simpler, all for a fixed subscription. It becomes easier to pay monthly for music than it is to pirate the song.
I wish that the government would do the same: Rather than tell people what not to do, or forcing people away from a particular thing, make the alternative better.
Case 1: Homelessness
This example, I fear, may be the most relevant example of a problem in need of a service-led solution for many people. As someone born and raised in Los Angeles, I have heard my entire life about "clearing the encampments" or "banning encampments within X distance of Y". Really, those things are just kicking the can down the road. There would no encampments to clear if the city made available long-term and supportive shelter space for those without homes. People do not want to live in squalor on the streets. Provide them a solution and they will take it. Kicking them into the next town over may remove them from your immediate sight, but it obviously just perpetuates the underlying issue. The “homelessness problem” is really just a problem of our government failing us, and it only happens because it’s politically easier to harass the homeless than it is to build new infrastructure.
These are people who need help getting themselves back on their feet. Giving them a stable roof over their head, 3 square meals a day, medical rehabilitation, and career services would allow these people to become productive members of our society. It would take a lot of work, but it's the government's job to do hard things.
Case 2: Transit
I sit here writing this while I wait for a subway train to arrive. Every few minutes, a looping audio reminder tells me to stand back from the platform edge. The world does not need to be so filled with abrasive noise like this. Instead of asking people to stand back from the platform, the government could make standing there far less dangerous by installing platform screen doors, keeping anybody standing there safe from a passing train.
We would be far better served by a government that removes dangerous things from our lives, rather than one that simply points it out to us. A passing train is an obvious danger, and a looping reminder helps nobody.
Case 3: Disposal
Every now and again I'll see some "public awareness campaign" from the government, asking us to avoid disposing of some item in some manner. Most recently, that was a campaign to tell me that plastic-foil chip bags are not recyclable, and to dispose of them in the landfill instead. For some reason, our current government has deemed it easier to change the behavior of millions... than to simply mandate that all chip bags be made of recyclable materials.
Fun fact: Potato chips were mass-manufactured as early as 1905. Do you know what didn't exist in 1905? Multi-layer plastic-foil chip bags. The government would be far more useful if it spent effort making packaging more sustainable, rather than instructing us to throw it away. People clearly want to recycle things, and a service-led approach would let us do that, rather than sit there wasting the planet's resources while they yell at citizens who are trying their best.
See also: Pringles cans are recyclable.
Case 4: Illegal Immigration
Undocumented immigrants do not decide to cross a border illegally out of some hatred of the legal process. When US President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to stop illegal immigration, his plan was to build a giant border wall upon the entire US-Mexico border... and he did. If we were to approach illegal immigration from a service-led point-of-view, the proper solution becomes obvious: Make legal immigration easier, and legalize existing undocumented immigrants. Suddenly, no more undocumented immigrants, problem solved.
Obviously, the example of Donald Trump I gave above has a false premise. He doesn’t actually care about the legal-vs-illegal status of immigrants, because he’s racist against immigrants, and wants to stop all immigration entirely.
However, even somebody as xenophobic as Donald Trump could benefit from a service-led point-of-view. People do not immigrate on a dime. It is a massive decision to leave one’s home, job, family, and country behind. It’s often motivated by famine, war, unstable economies, disasters, or other issues. If Donald Trump wants to reduce immigration, a service-led approach would point to a simple solution: Make the other countries better. Generous amounts of foreign aid, diplomatic assistance, peacemaking, and economic partnerships would go a long way to improving the living conditions of those abroad. Solving the problems that lead people to leave in the first place would be far more effective than a massive wall. If he had directed resources toward improving the state of the world, rather than ordering ICE to brutalize innocent people, he would reduce the number of refugees and immigrants arriving at the US without being a disgusting person.
That's not to say that America should go meddling in the politics of other nations with any CIA soft-power shenanigans. America has immense global-political power even without that (Highest GDP, UN Sec Council Member, Int'l reserve currency, etc.). Its word can bring warring nations to the negotiating table. American taxpayers used to donate $35B annually through USAID, saving millions of lives each year. We do not need to continue down this path of American nationalism and xenophobic isolationism. Diplomacy and peacekeeping hard, but America can do, has done, and must do hard things sometimes.
Really, this entire post is about how our government leaders take the easy way out of any issue, rather than a better solution that requires more political capital. Our politicians seem to only be focused on staying in office for the next election, instead of actually representing the citizens. People are really, really tired of stuff like this, which is why the few politicians who do focus on fixing issues have had a surge of popularity.
New York City's new mayor Zohran Mamdani is riding a wave of extreme popularity by finding a problem in the city, fixing it, and moving on to the next problem.
Two months ago, we revived the long-delayed Tremont Avenue busway. This week, it’s up and running. That means 39,000 daily riders on the Bx36 are getting faster, safer, more reliable commutes. www.amny.com/news/bronx-f...
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@mayor.nyc.gov) September 24, 2026 at 12:06 AM
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We need more leaders him. (minus the whole transphobia bit, or my disagreements with his party, but ykwim) He has a sheer-force-of-will hyper-local service-led approach to things that I really like. Sure, he also has a lot of political capital to spend given his wave of popularity, but it is because of his great approach to everyday issues that has given him the political popularity and capital to focus on said issues in the first place. His approach should be a model used by politicians everywhere, but unfortunately people like him are few and far between.
This is speculative, but I personally believe that fewer people would be politically conservative if they believed that the government offered them better value for their tax money. When I give a good chunk of my paycheck to Uncle Sam, I'd feel a lot better about it if I believed I was getting a solid return on my investment. Otherwise, it just feels like we're dumping it all into the money hole. We can and must do better.