I've been consuming the darkness that is wartime histories from the past three or four centuries and I feel like I've encountered a lot of people who had what they believed to be justifiable reasons to launch wars against other powers. There are people who thought they had divine right to a particular position of power and so would launch a war to assert that god-given right. There are people who believed in a citizen's right to have some (any) say in how their tax money gets used in government and so would fight wars over that. People would fight wars to, as John Cleese once said, "Keep China British." Many wars are started to save the honor of a country/nation. Some are started in what is claimed to be self-defense and later turns out to have been a political play instigated to end what has been a political thorn in their sides.

In all this time, I've struggled to really justify many of these wars, but some of that comes with the knowledge of what other wars have cost in terms of human carnage and suffering. For some societies in some periods, the military is one of the few vehicles to social mobility (and I think tend to think social mobility is grease that keeps a society functioning). Often these conflicts come down to one man's penis and the inability to swallow their pride to find a workable solution unless at the end of a bayonet. These conflicts also come with the winning powers taking the opportunity to rid themselves of political threats and exacting new harms on the defeated powers (which comes back around again the next time people see each other in a conflict).

So help keep me from embracing a totally pacifistic approach to war. When is a war justifiable? When it is not only morally acceptable but a moral imperative to go to war? Please point to examples throughout history where these situations have happened, if you can (though if you're prepared to admit that there has been no justifiable war that you're aware of, I suppose that's fine if bitter).

This is a hard topic for me personally, so please be gentle. I am at my core an institutionalist and an incrementalist, so I tend to want to both value and improve institutions through incremental (bit-by-bit) change.

A common concern and criticism of people who are impatient with incremental changes is that there would be tons of unintended consequences. While that concern resonates with me, it clearly doesn't seem to resonate with much of anyone else right now.

So in this I feel alone, frankly, and a lot of the reason for that loneliness is because incrementalism seems to have been firmly rebuked by both left and right wing political groups around the world. Help me understand what's happening. Where is incrementalism failing for you? Do you see any role for bit-by-bit change?

The scope of this thread could expand to the high heavens, so please understand how widely varied the examples might be that we each might bring to this discussion.

In opposition to the post about incrementalism, I wanted to talk about a truly revolutionary and designed based approached to a policy called experimentalism. When I was a believer in public policy, this was the final stage for which I believed a benevolent state would move towards. Incrementalism doesn't work unless you have a dictatorship or some unchanging party like in the soviet union or China. This is because incremental changes need people to agree with the degree of which to increments and need to have the shared goal to continue adding them. Also, incremental change might bring little effect on their own or even make things worse rather than just enacting what you think is the final policy. It is politically impossible in a democracy. Instead what I argue for is radical experimentalism. This is a position people of radically different ideas can take an appeal to a general audience to test their political ideas on large groups of willing participants to see what effects policy has on them after certain periods of time. Isolating variables to really see what society works best. Regardless of general political will, the evidence wins out as we test ideas in different parts of the state as they compete to see who provides the best results for people. The only thing that is required is a dedication to results based on political decision and commitment to evidence. Lastly, an acknowledgement that we must dive into the unknown to truly find some answers. A scientific approach to policy that is consistent with democratic values and structures. I find that this spirit of democratic education on a societal level is much like John Dewey would have described as really necessary for democracy to continue to function. Without a dedication to experimentalism and skepticism there is no way I see democracy working very well over time if faced with structural problems and public ignorance.

Today, I had a dream. In this dream I have confronted the idea that systems are much like entities, they are living creatures of a sort. Just as groups have some selection process that makes them more likely to survive over time so do systems. Rulesets are not made for human beings but for themselves. Sets of rules beget their own continuation. Their constant reproduction. But this is no reason for an individual or a group to submit to a particular ruleset but a reason for them not to submit to her because she has no interest in the specific survival of a group or individual but in the survival of herself. The survival of herself can easily misalign with that of the group and the individual. Rulesets much like the State or other such things are self-interested. And to complete self-interested systems with altruistic systems would be a grave mistake . And since all systems are infact selfish we we cannot conflate the interest of the system with the interests of the people within the system, that would be the fallacy of composition. If a system existed that perfectly aligned its ideals with that of the people that lives under them there would be no need for such a system to be coercive because all would act according to the system regardless. Competing interests of human beings and of different proofs makes such a system impossible. we are then left only to consider the ruleset in decision-making processes but under no obligation to operate in its interest. We are only able to operate on our own.