It’s easy to push for the common good of society. Feed the hungry. Provide housing for the homeless. Protect jobs. Save our environment. The list goes on. However, it’s often harder to actually implement policies in order to make these things happen. Oftentimes, there are communities that will struggle as a byproduct of well-intentioned policies working to solve problems.

Spending 6 days with my peers from around California to learn about and participate in mock-local government opened my eyes not only to perspectives from teens of vastly differing backgrounds and upbringing but also what it means on a personal level.

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.

Building more desperately needed housing in California means sacrificing some part of the environment. And I learned from another CAGS participant whose father’s job and the entire town’s existence depended on continuing to drill for oil that forcing Californians to switch to renewable energy would result in loss of thousands of jobs. There’s never going to be a perfect solution to anything.

Finding the Right Balance

We need to weigh the pros and cons of each policy that we are proposing to understand the real life implications to each segment of the population that we are trying to help. CAGS helped me realize on a very personal level that it’s not as simple as “let’s protect the environment” or “lets provide more affordable housing” (the two are kind of juxtaposed since more building will have an impact on the environment).

There’s no doubt in my mind that we need to provide housing to the homeless, nor that it’s important to protect our planet — but I now understand that it takes a lot of interpersonal communication and research to create efficient policy with the most limited repercussions to other segments of society that we care about.