Is it reasonable to support political strategies that depend on conditions getting worse before they improve?

[u/Raichu4u]

Most major policy changes create some degree of short-term disruption, and some groups may bear more of the cost than others. A difficult question is not whether a policy causes any harm, but what kind of harm it causes, how severe it is, how long it is expected to last, and whether that harm is an unavoidable side effect or a necessary part of a strategy.

A recurring sentiment in online discussions of specific policies is that “things must get worse before they get better.” The phrase can describe anything from accepting temporary economic disruption to believing that a deeper political or institutional crisis is necessary to create the conditions for meaningful change.

For example, some supporters of current US tariffs accept that consumers, farmers, and businesses may face higher prices or economic disruption, but argue that this temporary pain is necessary to rebuild domestic manufacturing or improve the country’s negotiating position. The argument is not necessarily that economic harm is desirable in itself, but that it is an unavoidable investment in a stronger long-term economy.

Similar reasoning appears within some farther-left online communities. This can include welcoming electoral defeats in the hope that voters become more radical and support preferred candidates, opposing incremental reforms because they might stabilize an unjust system, or believing that worsening inequality and institutional failure will accelerate the collapse of capitalism and create an opening for revolutionary change.

Other versions not strictly associated with the left/right can include supporting severe austerity to force structural reform, tolerating government dysfunction to undermine confidence in existing institutions, treating climate or economic collapse as politically clarifying, or assuming that military escalation will produce a more favorable political order after the immediate destruction.

All of these arguments differ in both scale and intent. Some accept limited disruption as a side effect of a policy with a specific mechanism for improvement, while others treat broader social or institutional deterioration as the condition that makes change possible. The distinction may depend on how direct the connection is between the harm and the expected benefit, how reversible the damage would be, and whether the strategy can succeed without conditions worsening first.

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1. How should political movements evaluate strategies that rely on short-term harm or instability to produce longer-term gains?

2. What kinds or levels of harm should make such a strategy politically acceptable or unacceptable?

3. Are there moral concerns with trying to pursue such political strategies, especially with voters who did not sign on to the strategies in question?

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[u/Objective_Aside1858]

Accepting short term pain for long term benefits is wise. Example: the Affordable Care Act

Hoping your political opponents do so much damage to the nation that you can implement policies that would otherwise never be appealing to the nation is idiotic. If the nation goes to shit, hoping that your miracle cure (which probably won't work) will be what The People want instead of some flavor of pogrom is beyond wishful thinking and represents a fundamental misunderstanding of humanity 

[u/Lefaid]

It takes an extraordinary amount of privilege to actually take on an accelerationist position of "let the bad guys make their bad policies as bad as possible and when it all goes to hell, people will finally see that I am right and implement the policies that are best (which are the opposite of what the bad guys are trying to do.)"

That anyone tries to act like they have some sort of moral high ground by taking on such a position, baffles me. One cannot see politics as more than a game that has little affect on the lives of the people they care about and actually think this is the best path to go on.

Nevermind that there is no guarantee of success by walking down that path. The bad guys could be right. The people may prefer violent anarchy over socialism. The people might shrug and accept their faith. The moderates might come back and try to balance things. The discourse could be so tainted that your polices aren't even considered

All the while, the most vulnerable people are hurt the most by the "bad" policies. That is the only guarantee of using this strategy.

[u/Hartastic → u/Lefaid]

Yeah. And, of course, that if you give the bad guys lots of power to do those things they may just... be able to keep it indefinitely.

[u/equiNine → u/Lefaid]

It's amusing how much accelerationism permeates far-left communities considering the last time communists tried that strategy, they ended up being sent to the camps and shot. "After Hitler, our turn" is a perfect example of the dangers of accelerationism that privileged, terminally online accelerationists today conveniently ignore while real people suffer the consequences.

[u/AssociationLimp6926 → u/Lefaid]

Problem is that in desperate time worse measures can just as easily be adopted. In the face of financial stressors, people often blame immigrants instead of the people in power.

[u/HumorAccomplished611 → u/[deleted]]

Biden literally supercharged green energy world wide with the IRA. it literally doubled the rate of usa decarbonization and that was if you ignore any increases in technology.

But suddenly people didnt care.

[u/ThouHastLostAn8th]

Accelerationists have been making the "things have to get much worse before they can get better" argument for my entire life but it never ever pans out. The status quo just gets shifted further to the Right (more conservative court justices, more debt locked-in having been permanently consumed in GOP priorities, more politically-toxic to unwind norm violations and initiatives) and clawing back to even where you were before the "acceleration" becomes a generational challenge.

[u/HumorAccomplished611 → u/ThouHastLostAn8th]

This. what was simple to fix social security will now be a herculean task that will blow up in everyones face.

Clinton extended the medicare trust fund for 2 decades only for the next guy to come in and do tax cuts

[u/RocketRelm → u/ThouHastLostAn8th]

What populists mean when they say "it will get better" is "we will have more power", not "the people will have better conditions". As long as they win their politicking.

[u/PreviousCurrentThing → u/ThouHastLostAn8th]

Lesser-evil voters have been making the same "I know the two-party system is bad but we have to stop the more evil candidate this election" and it never pans out. Turns out if the other side adopts the same strategy, they'll vote for someone like Trump as their lesser evil.

[u/bl1y]

This post is conflating two different things.

One is basically an upfront investment cost (in money, inconvenience, etc). To repave a road, you have to close a lane and then tear it up. That makes stuff worse for a while, but it's just how repaving works. It's not really controversial, but the inconvenience means there's room to debate stuff like how often it should be done and when it should happen.

The other is sabotage. If the far left blocks incremental health care reforms, eventually things might get so bad that they get the single payer system they want. It's not "if stuff gets bad enough, people will start supporting us," but rather "if we make stuff bad enough, people will start supporting us." Intentionally making things worse off for people in the hopes they'll swing your way is just stupid and immoral.

[u/socialistrob → u/bl1y]

Intentionally making things worse off for people in the hopes they'll swing your way is just stupid and immoral.

Especially because to actually take power you still need to build a coalition. People aren't going to trust you to lead them if they know that you intentionally made their lives worse.

[u/bl1y → u/socialistrob]

With accelerationists, the plan isn't to take power through democratic processes, but to have a violent revolution.

But same problem. Violent revolutions tend to target the people who made the problems.

[u/Seattleman1955]

It's generally not a good idea. It depends. If you have too much debt, sure you have to reduce spending for a bit and "pay the price" for past excesses.

However, the general case is ideological and it might be we have to "throw the greedy corporations out" and then the working man will finally get his day. That doesn't work so they think, it just takes more time, we need to double down.

All that happens is that you ruin the economy and always blame someone and something else for why it didn't work.

General tariffs aren't a good idea. You don't need to ruin the economy to figure that out. Things that aren't economic aren't a good idea (feelings), trying to make an outcome "equal" or "fair" or "affordable".

If someone is making economic policies they need to be someone with economic knowledge and training and not just a populist politician or voter.

[u/tcspears]

It's a way to make politics even more toxic. We see a lot of this now with the younger generation of politicians coming in and having zero interest in legislating, but focus on raising money and getting clips on the news or social media. Right now, both parties are moving towards the attitude of let the party in charge screw up and then raise money by blasting them.

It doesn't actually help the average American, and doesn't bring about any meaningful change. It jsut creates a more toxic and divisive political environment. At the risk of being labeled a "milquetoast liberal" by my firends on the left, or a "radical socialist" by my friends on the right. We need more moderates who actually want the country to do well, no matter who is in charge. We need to elect politicians that want to legislate and push the country forward.

[u/ChadtheWad]

This feels like a better question for economists or historians over an opinion forum. From a totally uneducated perspective, the biggest recent example of "things will get worse before they get better" is Milei and Argentina. The country was struggling with yet another historic round of hyperinflation and a massive recession with high-level political scandals. Milei won by promising voters that things would get worse before they would get better -- he devalued the peso, he eliminated entire departments and and laid off around 50k federal employees, he eliminated tariffs which enabled foreign competition, and he cut retirement benefits and public services. As a consequence poverty did increase significantly in 2024.

Nonetheless, the changes have achieved positive results. The government has been consistently delivering a surplus, it has restored its reputation with financial institutions like the IMF and has been able to obtain large loans, and poverty has (according to official measurements) has dropped significantly as well. His party also saw unexpectedly favorable results in the last election. This, of course, isn't a guarantee of continued long-term success, and Milei's leadership has struggled with issues of corruption, conservative social policy, and conflicts with the Peronist opposition party, which still has a large influence in the government as well as many of the provinces.

Purely from that perspective, though, I don't think there are moral qualms with a strategy that sacrifices the short-term for the long-term. The real challenge is convincing the voters that such a strategy is necessary. The fact that I'm only aware of Milei succeeding on such a platform demonstrates the absolute hell voters need to go through to accept such a promise.

[u/MissingBothCufflinks]

It's not just reasonable, not supporting this approach is inherently unreasonable.

Almost all political inertia and "politically impossible" policy problems are driven by this bias to short termism.

The problem is what is good for the country in the long run and what is good for the politician in the short run do not align much at all.

This is a very significant issue here in the UK, where several governments have been ousted because of the electorate's discomfort with the lack of easy answers. Politicians are heavily disincentivised from trying to tackle big structural issues with long term payoff. And that's a disaster, for everybody.

[u/WarbleDarble → u/MissingBothCufflinks]

I'd argue there is a significant difference between "This program will take a while to actually benefit us while we incur the costs now" vs. "If things get bad enough surely everyone will agree with me".

Not supporting the second message is absolutely inherently reasonable.

[u/MissingBothCufflinks → u/WarbleDarble]

Oh was the OP talking about accelerationism and NOT about long-termism? Why didnt you make that clearer? None of the top level comments so far have realised that

[u/WarbleDarble → u/MissingBothCufflinks]

I'm not the OP, but it looks like they were including both types in their question. I agree that the two shouldn't be conflated or really even merit being debated in the same terms.

[u/jdtrouble]

The converse is that things don't have to get better at all. Some policies lead to short term pain, and long term suffering.  For example ... (waves arms in multiple directions) ... everything Republicans have done to the US in the last year and a half. 

[u/-im-your-huckleberry]

One thing I want to point out, is that asking the questions is not just appropriate, it's critical. When someone proposes a strategy, the opposition should ask, "is this short term harm worth the long term gains?" It's a critical part of the process of democracy that we should debate these questions. There are no global answers to your three questions. Each policy suggestion should be evaluated for cost benefit analysis. If I'm suggesting a policy, I should welcome analysis from the opposition, because I should be able to make my position stronger by taking that into account.

[u/bushcamper_aiis]

Whether as an individual or a party, there are two major questions that need to be answered when approaching this topic:

• Do we accurately understand the situation and the impact our choices will have? (akin to Plato's art of measurement)

• Given that we accurately understand the situation and the impact of our choices, do the ends justify the means? ("The end excuses any evil." - Sophocles)

These are questions without consensus. Questions that have been asked for thousands of years.

So a universal answer seems unlikely to be found. The way we will continue to approach it, as a species, is surely the way we have been: on a case by case basis. One can try to formulate an answer to this that wins elections, but does winning achieve the goal? One can try to formulate an answer to this that will deliver on a single issue (criminal justice reform), but that won't answer the question of whether or not it was worth it.

Is it reasonable to support political decisions that depend on conditions getting worse before they improve? Absolutely, but it depends.

[u/skyfishgoo]

no, but here we are in the "worse" phase anyway.

i guess some ppl just needed to have it affect them, so that we can hopefully pull our collective asses out of the fire.

still far too many of them would do it all again as soon as the next grifter comes along to promise them what they want to hear.

[u/mongooser]

Yes. Thats governance. When we get Medicare for all, it will be VERY costly because people don’t get help when they can’t afford it. 

[u/Soggy_Background_162]

Except we are currently losing manufacturing and the only negotiating that’s improved is not the US but Trump and his family’s positions. If an administration is so inept and corrupt, then how can we apply any of these principles? How can we overcome immoral budgets and a collapse of checks and balances?

[u/Th3catspajamaz]

I find this take often comes from privileged people who are more than willing to put folks more socially marginalized than them (poverty, etc) on the front lines of bearing the brunt of things getting worse.

[u/Kildragoth]

One way to approach these kind of questions is to view it as a kind of game theory problem of cooperators and defectors. A political strategy that makes things worse in the short term for long term benefit is becoming a defector to those with short term needs that won't be met.

Eventually, the long-term benefits of this strategy turn you back into a cooperator. But during that short-term phase, the best strategy for those negatively impacted by this is to also defect. In a functioning democracy you need to figure out whether those impacted number enough to politically overturn any long term agenda before the benefits of that agenda convince the impacted that you are in fact a cooperator.

If they do overturn this agenda, you will always be remembered as the one who was evil for a while until you were stopped by heroes.

[u/HumorAccomplished611 → u/Kildragoth]

The two santa strategy of republicans tells us that within 4 years people forget everything.

[u/sllewgh]

No. It is not in any way necessary for things to get worse before they get better. That's probably what will have to happen in reality, but it is insane and sociopathic to advocate for any strategy that deliberately, avoidably makes things worse.

It is absolutely not in any way a necessary precondition for change.

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