Many problems we solve are actually harmful effects of really bad historical decisions.

So rather than "solving problems" we are alleviating symptoms of bad decisions. Some harm keeps leaking through with each "solution" and we can make more stuff to patch those leaks.

What this means is that we can continue to make bad decisions. They will create problems that can be solved and this will lead to profit. Harm must be alleviated and people will pay for that.

Over time this creates the illusion of progress.

There are a lot of things we should probably just stop doing right now, instead of building more stuff to solve the harm of that thing.

But it's not always obvious what those things are because we have over many decades done a decent job of making the harm in each previous step invisible.

We've done this with "solutions" that address the second and third and nth order effects of those things.

And obviously: if we remove the solutions a lot of people may lose their jobs.

In case you were wondering why so many people appear to be spending a lot of time not producing anything of value. They're actually quite busy making solutions to address harm that keeps leaking from some long-forgotten historical choice.

And nobody wants to bear the responsibility of that choice.

At some point in time I suppose this patchwork of solutions will come tumbling down. Until then we will be busy creating new and shiny problems for tomorrow.