I was thinking about what we talked about in class today about reforms and I was wondering, are reforms just Band-Aids for the broken ”system”? Reforms fix the problem for now but they don’t help the “root” cause of the problem that the system has like a revolution (possibly because revolutions are too long and costly to push forward). Maybe it’s a form of self-imposed ”cooling out” because we all think that our problems are solved because something changed but deep down we know that we only scratched the surface of our long list of problems but we’re content with that one thing being changed. Sometimes it feels like people only come together to change something when something drastic happens that affects everyone in the country or state and not just a handful of people in the neighborhood. But since there’s a reform, we feel like things are ok because that drastic thing that would affect a lot of people was fixed or avoided; forgetting that there’s other problems that could slowly hurt an equal amount of people because it’s not as visible.
Reforms = Social Bandaids?
May 6th, 2008 by CWong · 3 Comments
Tags: BEARCAT
3 responses so far ↓
1 John Pham // May 6, 2008 at 6:30 am
I like the Band-Aid analogy: you can stop the bleeding this time, but if you don’t address the root causes, then you’ll keep getting new cuts.
The more meaningful the reform, the harder it is to fight for. I remember sitting in a meeting with the New York City Board of Elections (NYCBOE) as an intern with Citizens Union, a good government group. As a brief history, the City Board of Elections is very political and has a hard time getting important things done, so many groups, including Citizens Union, had been advocating for change for years. My boss presented a paper to the executive director of NYCBOE with different types of reforms. The funny thing is, the NYCBOE head actually laughed at the reforms that would fundamentally change business as usual for the Board, saying that it was impossible.
This example doesn’t really have anything to do with the class, but it’s a good example of why a Band-aid approach is sometimes the only victory a reformer can get. The meeting ended up being productive, since the City Board of Elections accommodated some smaller reforms.
Maybe what we have to keep in mind is, you’ve got to push for both feasible and long-term changes.
2 lisadelgado // May 6, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Yea. I think thats a great analogy. I wasnt there in class to hear the discussions because I had to leave early for registration for classes but Yes I think that reforms are like band-aids. I think that there are many things wrong with this world we live in. I think that the idea of a band-aid is great because that is what is used in US. The government acknowledges that there is a problem and kind of addresses the issues and says “improvement is being made” when there isn’t. They say that something is being done about it to improve conditions, but one cant see that improvement.
I think that the government tries to find the easy way out to fix the problem instead of getting to the real root cause of it. Instead of covering things up, they should really completely fix the problem to begin with, so people dont get fed up and try to start a revolution.
3 Marc // May 7, 2008 at 12:39 am
I think you’re kind of thinking a little cynical. Sometimes some reforms can lead to more and some real change can occur. Couldn’t you say that a small victory is better that none? There are many problems that need to be fixed but they can’t all be solved at once with huge major reform. You need to start small and keep building up to major change. I think thats the point that McNally and the prof. were trying to illustrate.
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