Relatedly, when discussing complex issues, "why don't we just" almost always demonstrates that you aren't engaging with the complexity at hand. The world, people, really everything isn't simple. It never was and never will be.

Actually: moral issues only seem complex if you're an asshole

There are simple things, though? There are simple solutions to complex things? For the last 7 months, the people in my feed waxing poetic about unknowable complexity are using this idea to cloak their own moral rot (often from themselves).

I will keep this in mind In my line of work I often have designers trying to make utterly complex solutions when a simple practical solution is at hand. phrasing differently might work better 'what if we tried x' 'have we looked at x option' 'could option x be a better solution?'

It should be culturally acceptable to respond to any “why don’t you just…” with “why don’t you just go fuck yourself?”

Why don’t you just have simplistic solutions to today’s problems, like blaming everything on migrants or better yet pretending the problem doesn’t exist like COVID and climate change?!!!!!1!

My boss two jobs back forbade the use of "just" for similar reasons.

If you even reframe it as “why won’t this seemingly obvious solution work?” you’re at least somebody who’s trying g to learn the problem rather than a jerk who thinks he knows better than everybody.

I think 90% of what's wrong with the world today can be explained by people refusing to grasp this. The modern conservative urge is to move everything back to an imagined time in the past when things were simpler. They never were; we just didn't understand how complex they really were.