Issue56. "Governments should focus more on solving the immediate problems of today rather than trying to solve the anticipated problems of the future."
The speaker asserts that governments should place more emphasis on solving the immediate problems of today rather than trying to solve the anticipated problems of future. In my opinion, it is arbitrary to judge the priorities of problems just according to their urgency. When faced with problems, governments should consider not only the urgency of problems but also
their importance. As far as I concerned, problems should be classified into four categories as immediate and important, immediate but not important, not immediate but important, neither immediate nor important. I will discuss the details about them as follow.
To begin with, many immediate problems are important which should be give highest priorities to solve. Natural disasters are the best examples of this kind of problems. We can see no further than Haiti earthquake, the deadly earthquake killed a countless number of people. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to be homeless. In this case, if the Haitian government still funds some projects to solve the anticipated problems such as clone which have nothing to do with the disaster, its actions equal suicide and would indirectly kill thousands of Haitians. At that point, the only choice of the government was to entirely focus on the immediate problems and try its best to rescue as more as possible people from the disaster. When it comes to this matter, I agree with the speaker's assertion that governments should give priority to solve the immediate problems.
However, we should also realize that many anticipated problems are also important even if they are not urgent. Obviously if governments pay too many material and human resources to solve some problems which are immediate but not important, they may lack resource to solve those not immediate but important problems. We can draw the conclusion also from Haiti earthquake in which many problems having not been solve leaded to serious consequences. Severe deforestation, leading to flooding and landslides, and a lack of proper emergency services and infrastructure has resulted in the storms causing the deaths of thousands of Haitians. Compared with some other projects, planting trees and establishing emergency services may not be immediate problems. However, the cost of failing to solve these anticipated problems is so high that no government can afford to it. In sum, comparing those immediate but not important problems, governments should place more emphasis on solving the anticipated important problems.
What's more, it should be admitted that some anticipated problems in future is neither urgent nor important. Compared with these problems, I advocate that governments should give the priority to solve the immediate problems despite the fact that they are not important for the reason that immediate problems is more urgent than the anticipated problems.
To sum up, the immediate and important problems should be gave the highest priority by government to deal with, while the neither immediate nor important problems will get the lowest priority. Turn our attention to the immediate but not important problems and those not immediate but important, it is confused to decide which of them should be placed more emphasis on. In general, It's natural that people concentrate more emphasis on the immediate problems while ignoring the not immediate ones even they are more important. In order to avoid it, I think governments should place emphasis on the not immediate but important problems.