Missions v Problems

Missions are often artifically 'constructed' problems that are used to justify action. But crucially, they are not problems that exist in the world. They are 'problems' that exist in the minds of policymakers and politicians. Problems are real, they exist in the world, and they are 'detectable' by the people who experience them. They emerge from the interactions between people and their environment. A classic example is the USA 1960's moonshot mission. It was a mission, not a problem. It was a mission to transform a political problem. But if you had measured the population of the world in 1960, you would have found that the population was not growing at a rate that would justify a moonshot mission. The population was growing at a rate of 1.5% per year. The USA was not facing a population crisis. It was facing a political crisis. It was facing a crisis of confidence in its ability to lead the world in the space race.