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Vital City | Incrementalism Beats YOLO

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Are incremental policy change and its handmaiden, technocratic social science, doomed to failure? In these hyperpolarized times, there’s a growing view that the quality of life can’t be improved by modest policy interventions that are limited with respect to scope and scale. In this view, interventions need to be bold and broad, or the status quo will inevitably reassert itself. Of course, the evidence base for “bold and broad” interventions is often nonexistent, so what is really being advocated is a giant leap into the unknown — what one might call, for lack of a better term, the “you only live once” (YOLO) approach to policy. We disagree. For starters, there is no shortage of important, well-documented examples in which narrow, incremental social policies have made the world better. For example, over the 20th century, most states incrementally raised their compulsory schooling laws (the minimum age to leave school). This is no kitchen-sink policy: It doesn’t change who’s a teacher,

Are incremental policy change and its handmaiden, technocratic social science, doomed to failure? In these hyperpolarized times, there’s a growing view that the quality of life can’t be improved by modest policy interventions that are limited with respect to scope and scale. In this view, interventions need to be bold and broad, or the status quo will inevitably reassert itself. Of course, the evidence base for “bold and broad” interventions is often nonexistent, so what is really being advocated is a giant leap into the unknown — what one might call, for lack of a better term, the “you only l

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