Things we all agree need to change. No one has changed them.
Some you cause yourself. Some you just suffer. Some hit you today. Some hit your grandchildren. All share the same feature: collective stuckness.
This is a living document. I’ll update it as systems break or get fixed.
Stuck
- Daylight saving time. Twice a year. Heart attacks spike. Productivity drops. Politicians promise to end it. Nothing changes.
- Traffic. Rush hour. Everyone leaves at the same time. Everyone stuck.
- Healthcare enrollment. Annual re-enrollment for plans that didn’t change. Click the buttons or get penalized.
- College tuition. Rising every year. No school wants to be the cheap one.
- Tipping culture. Nobody wants to calculate 20%. Servers want stable income. Restaurants can’t switch alone.
- The PhD process. Too long. Too bureaucratic. Academics agree. Universities continue.
- The justice system. Optimizes for convictions and acquittals. Not justice.
- Fast food and processed food. Everyone knows it’s unhealthy. The system keeps producing it.
- Spam calls. Carriers, regulators, consumers all complain. Requires international coordination.
- Junk mail. Nobody wants it. Trees die. Mailboxes overflow. The system keeps sending.
- Junk fees. Resort fees. Cleaning fees. Everyone hates them. Companies keep them because competitors keep them.
- Auto-renew subscriptions. Dark patterns by design. Laws lag.
- Middlemen stacking costs. Healthcare, real estate, government contracting. Everyone admits the layers inflate prices.
- Housing restrictions. Cities admit restrictions cause high prices. NIMBYs block reform.
- Employer-based health insurance. Businesses hate administering it. Employees hate losing coverage when switching jobs.
- Credit score opacity. Consumers hate it. Banks hate disputes. Incumbents hold the power.
- Modern hiring. ATS keyword scanning. Ghosting. Both candidates and recruiters dislike it.
- Work email overload. Everyone hates it. Corporate norms self-reinforce.
- College applications. Common App plus endless essays plus fees. Everyone says it’s broken.
- Falling birthrates. Rational individual choice. Pension systems collapse. Everyone sees it coming.
- Climate emissions. Convenient now. Atmospheric cost later. Everyone agrees it’s a problem.
- Antibiotic overuse. Feels helpful individually. Creates superbugs collectively.
- Overfishing. Profitable per boat. Depletes the ocean.
- Government debt. Easy borrowing now. Future generations pay.
Changed (or Changing)
Systems that actually moved.
- Taxis -> Rideshare. Uber/Lyft bypassed the medallion system.
- Bank payments -> Stripe. APIs routed around slow banks.
- Smoking culture. Took fifty years. Narrative shifted. Now disgusting instead of cool.
- Seatbelts. Went from optional to mandatory through regulation and norms.
- Therapy stigma. Shifting from shameful to normal.
Watching
Companies or movements attempting to fix stuck systems.
- The Boring Company. Attempting to bypass traffic with tunnels.
- Charter cities. Attempting to bypass housing and governance failures.
- Alternative credentials. Attempting to bypass college tuition inflation.
Last updated: December 2025
Related: Architects of Leverage
I’m exploring agency, systems, and how change actually happens.