Voted up for extremely clear writing on an important topic, but I vehemently disagree with part of your thesis.

Lack of success at fighting corruption does not imply anything about how harmful or harmless it is.

Agreed.

But it is the critic who counts. ... Just because nobody knows how to end poverty doesn’t mean poverty is okay.

I disagree on both points.

First, it is not the critic who counts. A critic with no solutions and no realistic hope of inspiring any counts for nothing; a volunteer who builds one house with Habitat for Humanity is better than a state legislator who delivers a thousand eloquent speeches in favor of increased housing funding but ultimately fails to secure passage for any of her bills.

One could point to a handful of reformers who have successfully focused attention on an issue with good results; e.g., Rachel Carson criticized America's environmental practices and asked people to pay more attention to the environment. For Carson, though, the criticism came with its own realistic solution--during the prosperous 1960s, at a time when rivers were literally aflame with floating toxic waste, it was plausible to think that people would spend more resources on environmental protection if only the topic were skillfully brought to their attention.

Today, there is little interest in poverty in the US, and not simply because of ignorance; many people are more or less aware of the conditions in which the other half lives, and yet they don't care. Claiming (correctly) that poverty is very, very bad, without some novel or concrete solution, is highly unlikely to rouse the rich and the middle classes from their apathy. Such a claim is merely pleasant speech; one who makes it has no claim on the kind of glory that Teddy Roosevelt was praising.

Second, if there really are no solutions to a problem, not even partial ones, then, in my opinion, it really is OK to take no action to solve the problem. I would, e.g., like to talk to my dead grandmother; I have a few questions to ask her. Unfortunately, her body has been in the dirt for 10 years, and her living relatives do not remember her clearly enough for me to construct some sort of holographic emulation. Therefore, this is an impossible problem, and I do not want to talk to her badly enough to tackle an impossible problem the way Eliezer describes in the sequences.

May I feel badly? May I feel outraged? Sure, if I like. Or, if I like, I can try to cultivate a sort of detachment from the problem; I can try to let go. In this sense, it is "OK" that my grandmother is dead beyond recall. I experience her deadness as harmful; I would not wish the death of a grandmother on others, and yet, I do not see the wisdom in stirring myself up and urging myself to be especially upset. Where would the energy I get from being upset go? There is nothing to be done. My time and energy are better spent on problems that can actually be solved.

I debate policy issues with friends a fair bit for fun, in part because it helps me think about where I might want to work, donate money, or volunteer. If the economy can be fixed but not the criminal justice system, I want to know that. I don't really care how 'wrong' each system is in the abstract, because most things are 'wrong' to one degree or another; our world is much less than perfect. What matters is whether a system is worse than a system that could actually be implemented, or, more precisely, worse than a system that people within my circle of influence could significantly help to implement.