Simple like that.

"There never has been anything irrevocably wrong with our country and our world--just a horrid accumulation of silly mistakes that could be corrected with horse sense and the will to do it."
--Robert A. Heinlein, "Over the Rainbow" (found in Expanded Universe)

There's a scene the above cited story wherein a new President of the United States takes office --an African American woman, no less, not that it matters--and proceeds to do a whole hell of a lot of good in a very short time, mostly by making things simpler. A simpler sampler:
--she attempts to read the budget and finds it so stuffed with legal gobblegygook as to be incomprehensible; she therefore crafts and passes a law saying that all government legislation must be readable by a person of average intelligence. Including the tax code.
--she moves to outlaw the internal combustion engine, replacing it with the external combustion engine, i.e. steam power...reasoning that what oil we have left is far too valuable to waste on personal transportation. To further wean the country off oil, she mandates the use of unlimited solar power, such as can be found in orbit and harvested using existing technology. (This was written in 1980, I might add.)
--she solves water pollution by requiring each user to place their intake valve immediately downstream of their discharge. "It's self-enforcing. No need to test the water until someone downtream complains. Seldom. Because it has negative feedback...Complying with a law should be more rewarding than breaking it...."
--she dissolves the lobbying industry at a stroke, and I'm going to quote at length here because I absolutely love this passage:

"I intend to refuse to see any splinter group claiming to deserve special treatment not accorded other citizens and I will veto any legislation perverted to that end. Wheat farmers. Bankrupt corporations. Bankrupt cities. Labour leaders claiming to represent "the workers"...when most of the people they claim to represent repudiate any such leadership. Business leaders just as phony. Anyone who wants the deck stacked in his favour because, somehow, he's special...
"Any such group gets thrown out. But two groups will get thrown out so hard they'll bounce! I'm a woman and I'm a Negro. We've wiped the Jim-Crow laws off the books; I'll veto any Crow-Jim bill that reaches this office. Discrimination? Certainly there is still discrimination--but you can't kill prejudice by passing a law. We'll make it by how we behave and what we produce--not by trick laws.
"I feel even more strongly about women. We women are a majority, by so many millions that in an election it would be called a landslide. And it will be a landslide, on anything, any time women really want it to be. So women don't need any special favours; they just need to make up their minds what they want--then take it....
"Now, git...and don't come back! Not as a splinter group. Come back as Americans."

What a world that would be.

This particular story has had a major impact on me. While I'm able, at long last, to accept that the world is not black and white but is instead varying shades of gray, I still believe that most problems have simple solutions, and politics tends to needlessly complicate.

Here's some ideas...

The first thing I'd do is ban drive-throughs. Drive-through anythings. You want to poison your body with fast food, you should at least have to exercise just a little to get it; there's no need to poison the planet while you do it. According to the polls, the Canadian public is prepared to make serious sacrifices for the sake of the environment. Well, let's try a really small sacrifice and see if our money's where our mouths are.
While I'm on the subject of cars, let's make all new vehicles sold after, say, the 2010 model year meet extremely stringent emissions standards...the sort of standards that only hybrids can currently achieve. As technology improves, keep trimming acceptable emissions.
You can't tell me this can't be done, because hybrid engines exist. All that's required is a retrofit of automobile factories...and we'll even make that a tax writeoff.
We've got an obesity pandemic on our hands...and there are some simple ways to help cure it.
Mandatory physical activity in all schools, obviously, at least an hour a day's worth. A makeover of the food industry--let's tax junk food, take the profits and subsidize healthy food.
Simple like that.
We've spent millions and millions of dollars fighting an endless "war on drugs"...and it's patently obvious we're losing. Here's a thought: let's stop fighting. Let's legalize soft drugs, making it acceptable to grow, say, four marijuana plants for personal consumption. Consider: the black market and all its attendant crime would be almost entirely eliminated. The government would have an entirely new tax stream. Space in our jails would be freed up for those whose actions actually harm society. Win-win-win.

I'm sure each of us has a problem or two in our heads, along with its solution. They're the sort of things that finish off the sentence that begins, "If I was in charge..."
What if you were? Because we all are, you know. Perhaps we can't just pass a law in our heads and have everybody obey it. But the whole point of a democracy is, ostensibly, that the citizens are in charge. (And tyrannies only succeed so long as they convince people they have no power. The moment people begin to understand they are collectively more powerful than even the worst tyrant, the death of tyranny is a foregone conclusion.)

The thing is, just about any problem you can name has been solved somewhere, successfully. The issue isn't our adaptability or intelligence: it's a matter of focus. We humans have a remarkable ability to spread hate and indifference over the globe. It shouldn't be all that difficult to spread a little hope.