> When wearing your policymaking hat, I agree that you should consider what people actually do (which is not always wise) rather than just what they should do.

> When wearing your policymaking hat, I agree that you should consider what people actually do (which is not always wise) rather than just what they should do. > But when actually struggling (or perhaps even when comfortable), you should forget about policy and fairness and just make the best decisions you can and keep trying to do the right thing, and that gives you or your children or grandchildren the best chance to make it to a comfortable place. This exact dichotomy comes up when I give advice. I have started calling it 'advice for persons' vs 'advice for peoples' (the grammatical peculiarity is on purpose). Both are often completely different. OP's advice is great for persons. It doesn't work for policy making which is decidedly about peoples. But, I don't think that was its intention to begin with.