You may have heard the parable of the starfish thrower,1 in which an elderly man walking on the beach sees a young boy picking up starfish and throwing them into the ocean. Upon inquiring as to what the boy was doing, the boy explained that as high tide receded, the starfish were left stranded on the beach. As the sun grew higher in the sky, the starfish would die, so the boy was throwing them back into the ocean to save them. The old man looked up and down along the beach and noticed there were hundreds upon hundreds of starfish strewn on the sand. The old man pointed out that one person could not possibly make a difference with the large number that were stranded. The boy stooped down, picked up another starfish, threw it in the ocean and said, “It made a difference to that one.”
As...