The societal problems of interest are those that escape from these constraints to a significant degree - beyond the threshold level up to which the legislation may be considered adequate. An international agreement may signal the presence of a world problem, and may of course contain it, if properly implemented. The difficulty is to determine when legislation disguises the presence of uncontained problems. Much legislation is a compromise and has often been deliberately designed to focus on the more obvious manifestations of a problem. Other dimensions of a problem, including various sub-problems, may not be recognized by the legislation.
Legal loopholes ensure that certain problems remain unrecognized and uncontained.
The insurance sector of the economy is not concerned with problems as such but is concerned with risks. Risks may however be considered as potential problems. In this sense the insurance sector is the most explicitly concerned with the definition of problems. These problems are in most cases defined in terms of the financial interests of the insurers. The insurance sector may however prove to be a rich source of information on the incidence of many problems.