“Okay, but what do we do?”

or

“You talk about problems but never offer any solutions!”

Aside from your main topic here, this is not something you need to respond to. I don’t know who started this line of thinking, but it makes no logical sense at all.

Identifying problems is an end in itself ; it doesn’t obligate you to find a solution, as well. And it oftentimes IS better to do nothing, because it’s very easy to make things worse in a complex system.

Of all the things you have to think about, Caitlin, this is not one of them. These types of argument are made by people who might have some good points, but they aren’t able to persuade anyone so they have to use a non sequiter to invoke guilt on your part, like you’re doing nothing but complaining.

Put this on the list of idiodic comments, with no rhetorical weight, that you can freely ignore.