Recent decades have seen a rise in homelessness through much of the Western world. In Australia, levels increased by almost five per cent from 2011 to 2016. On census night in 2016, 116,000 people were homeless; that is a rate of 5 per 1,000 people. Who is responsible? ‘Get a good job that pays good money’, said Joe Hockey, the Australian treasurer, to young people complaining they could not get a start in the inflated housing market – or get your parents to buy them for you, the Australian prime minister chipped in.

Gun crime in the US frequently makes headlines around the world. Between 2014 and 2018, according to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 71,429 deaths and 113,947 injuries in gunrage incidents: an average of 14,286 deaths and 22,590 injuries per year. Who is to blame? Again, according to some leading US politicians, it's citizens who are to blame. The bad guys. Guns don't kill people, people do, the argument runs (and some of those killers are only three years old). Some go further and say the solution to gun crime lies in more weapons: ‘The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun’.

Obesity levels are rising sharply internationally. In the UK about 28 per cent of the population are thought to be obese, with a further 35 per cent overweight. In the UK obesity is estimated to reduce life expectancy by about three years. Obesity costs the National Health Service (NHS) about £5 billion per year, with the costs to the economy estimated to be £27 billion per annum. The government response to growing obesity is health campaigns advising people to be careful about what they eat, and to take more exercise. It is as if the rise in obesity has nothing to do with modern methods of food manufacture developed in the 1960s and 1970s; methods that the government has barely regulated. It is the choice of people to eat the food that is widely available in the shops, not the government that regulates what is sold in shops, that is to blame for the obesity crisis.