"The real problem is what to do with the problem-solvers after the problems are solved"
About this Quote
A profession built on crises is always quietly invested in keeping the crisis supply stocked. Talese’s line is a scalpel aimed at the self-preserving logic of institutions: once you create a class of “problem-solvers,” you’ve also created salaries, status, and identity that depend on the continued existence of problems. The sentence works because it flips the usual hero narrative. The satisfying ending we’re promised - fix the thing, move on - becomes the beginning of a messier question: what happens to the people and systems organized around fixing?
Talese came up in the era when American expertise was ascendant: postwar bureaucracies, Cold War think tanks, urban renewal czars, federal anti-poverty programs, later the professionalized consulting class. He was also a key figure in New Journalism, reporting with an eye for motives, incentives, and the backstage mechanics of power. Read in that tradition, the quote isn’t anti-solution; it’s anti-myth. It suggests “solving” can be less a finish line than a threat to the solver’s relevance.
The subtext is unnervingly contemporary. Tech builds products to “solve” communication, then monetizes the anxiety it creates. Politics promises to “fix” immigration, crime, inflation, then campaigns on their persistence. Nonprofits, media, and public agencies can drift into outcome theater, because real resolution shrinks the stage.
Talese’s intent is to make us suspicious of clean narratives and to ask the adult question: are we designing solutions that end dependency, or industries that manage it?
Talese came up in the era when American expertise was ascendant: postwar bureaucracies, Cold War think tanks, urban renewal czars, federal anti-poverty programs, later the professionalized consulting class. He was also a key figure in New Journalism, reporting with an eye for motives, incentives, and the backstage mechanics of power. Read in that tradition, the quote isn’t anti-solution; it’s anti-myth. It suggests “solving” can be less a finish line than a threat to the solver’s relevance.
The subtext is unnervingly contemporary. Tech builds products to “solve” communication, then monetizes the anxiety it creates. Politics promises to “fix” immigration, crime, inflation, then campaigns on their persistence. Nonprofits, media, and public agencies can drift into outcome theater, because real resolution shrinks the stage.
Talese’s intent is to make us suspicious of clean narratives and to ask the adult question: are we designing solutions that end dependency, or industries that manage it?
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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