Incremental Change

In making some of my political arguments I have noticed something.  Often an argument is dismissed because we put the argument in its extreme form and then do a reductio ad absurdum.  While this is sometimes valid, there is a risk that we are ruling out incremental reforms of the type that our adversaries advocate.  The fact that an extreme version of the reform would be undesirable doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility that an incremental reform of that type would.

For example let's take world governance.  We have a U.N. that is very weak.  Some people would like to see it strengthened, while others would like to see it weaker.  There are points to be made on both sides.  There are various ways that we might go about strengthening it.  I might support some, but would oppose others.  As a libertarian, I would like to make it more difficult for countries to impose tariffs, trade barriers and immigration controls.  I would favor empowering the U.N. to do this.  I also think that we should apply pressure against governments that wished to discriminate on the basis of religion.

On the other hand, I would oppose strengthening the U.N. in a way that would give it the power to implement international socialism.  The way that I have dealt with this issue in the past is to argue that complete and total world government would be undesirable.  However, this is not a valid argument against any strengthening of world governance.  We need to consider the effects of any kind of incremental change.  How much international socialism are we willing to tolerate in exchange for the religious liberty that we want other countries to implement?  The answer might well be the extreme one: none whatsoever.  Nevertheless we have to consider incremental changes, wherever they are possible.  I'm not sure they are in this case.

Also we need to consider that the trade-offs that we are willing to accept are likely to be different from what other people in our country would be comfortable with.  Just about every individual in our society will disagree with the majority on some subject.  While I would be happy to limit my country's ability to discriminate against foreigners through harsh immigration policy, others might not be so keen on the idea.

Incremental change starts with moral and ethical values.  We need to think about what kind of effect an incremental change in these values with respect to policy will have on the world as it exists.  What sorts of changes in assignments of blame and credit are likely to improve the world?

Naturally, we will want to discourage people from harming others and encourage them to help.  In advocating change in the most effective manner we need to take into consideration the strength of any opposition to our ideas.  Blaming people for taking certain political stances will have more of an effect on alienating the opposition.  There is also a cost associated with taking unusual political opinions as far as decreasing your influence.