If you surveyed people on whether they “want to speak another language” I think most people would say yes. But do they go and do it in practice? No, because of the enormous amount of time/money/work. That doesn’t seem like a tragically unmet “want”.
I think that analogy proves too much. You could also survey people on whether they “want to go to the doctor more often than they do”, and if they said yes, you could shrug and say “well they don’t do it because it costs a lot of money, that doesn’t seem like a tragically unmet want”. What’s the limiting principle behind “if people don’t do something because they are responding optimally to their financial/effort costs, then public policy doesn’t really need to help them do it”?
If you surveyed people on whether they “want to speak another language” I think most people would say yes. But do they go and do it in practice? No, because of the enormous amount of time/money/work. That doesn’t seem like a tragically unmet “want”.
I think that analogy proves too much. You could also survey people on whether they “want to go to the doctor more often than they do”, and if they said yes, you could shrug and say “well they don’t do it because it costs a lot of money, that doesn’t seem like a tragically unmet want”. What’s the limiting principle behind “if people don’t do something because they are responding optimally to their financial/effort costs, then public policy doesn’t really need to help them do it”?