What You Don't See and What You Do

US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, was on a recent episode of the 99% Invisible podcast (in their ongoing coverage of the book "The Power Broker") One thing he said really echoed into the podcast's title, about the importance of what you DON'T see:

Again, to my earlier point, its elegance is often in the fact that you DON'T think about it. The way I always approach and conceptualize these things is the less you have to worry about whether you're gonna get a glass of clean, safe drinking water or for that matter whether there's a hole in the road on the way to work - the more free you are to concentrate on whatever lifts your soul, you know? Whatever matters to you in life. Raising your kids, practicing your faith, starting a business, being a scholar, whatever it is.

But later in the podcast, he points out the power of making things MORE visible:

And I'll give you an example that's less in the realm of building things but is one of the most important things we [of the Department of Transportation have] worked on, which is how airlines treat their passengers. So there are some things we've been trying to to get done, and are still trying to get done, through rule-making. But the rule-making process, the Administrative Procedures Act, the notice and comment period - it can take years. While we were working on that, especially in the summer of 2022 when there were so many frustrations around cancellations and delays, the idea emerged that if we just put more information out in a really easy to understand form, that not only would help passengers know which airlines would take better care of 'em, but knowing it was out there might actually change the airlines' behavior. And living in this world where it takes months or years to do something, I asked the team 'well, ok if we set up a website, like how long would that actually take?' and they said 'we could do it in a couple of weeks' and I said, ok, I'll send a letter to all the CEOs of the airlines saying, 'hey, in a couple of weeks we're gonna put this website up, you might want to change your customer service plan before we do it, because there's gonna be a bunch of green checkmarks and red Xs' - and they DID! This was not an enforcement, we've done those, this was not a rule-making, we're doing those... this was just saying we're going to tell people what you're doing, so you might want to think about what you're doing... and it led to real change.

So, superficially a bit of a contradiction, but really two complementary ideas: both what you can take for granted and what you have awareness of can be greatly important, depending on the context. (Broad stroke implications for my job in UI/UX as well!)