There’s this concept I keep running into that seems to have no word to describe it, but that happens all the time. The concept is opposing a fix to something because it’s not perfect. Let’s say that a whole city block was on fire, and the fire chief, having limited resources, commands his crew to start putting out the house closest to them.

“But chief,” a firefighter complains, “that won’t put out the other fires on the block. I think it’s a bad idea.”

“Well, then, what do you propose we should do?”

“I don’t know.”

I see this happen all the time in groups, and it invariably drives me out of my mind. It’s one thing when you have a better fix (“but chief, what about the other 7 firetrucks parked at the station and their crews that we forgot to dispatch to the fire? Let’s call them in!”), but all the time I see people shoot down an okay-enough fix to something, and propose no alternative, because the fix only improves the situation without fixing it entirely.

This isn’t to say that there are no bad ideas at all; if the chief’s recommendation was to spit on the house engulfed in flames, it would be a bad idea, because the improvement won’t be noticed at all. But if the fix is start by putting out one house, why not start there? Fire may be a bad example, since putting out the fire in a house if it’s surrounded by other burning homes will probably lead to the house catching on fire as soon as you move on. But take Ralph Nader’s opposition to seatbelt laws on the grounds that they didn’t go far enough. His opposition worked, but a better solution was never proposed, so he ended up undermining the cause he was fighting for. Or look at California’s budget crisis, in which two parties arguing over how much to cut the budget by end up deadlocked and the state ends up with no budget at all. If something is slow and someone finds a way to speed it up, but only a little, it’s an improvement. If you need a lot of money and someone gives you a little bit of money, it’s an improvement. Don’t say no unless you have a better plan.

This is a fairly ethereal concept, but it pops up everywhere. Watch for it and you’ll see it happen in short order, I promise.