Incrementalism doesn’t work in times of crisis.

The argument

In extraordinary times, incrementalism does not work. Incrementalism (such as only banning large gatherings) did not work in halting the spread of COVID-19. Places that took more comprehensive measures had the best results. Incrementalism will also not work to restore the economy after the pandemic. The economy pre-pandemic will not be returning soon. For some time, the entire travel, tourism, and entertainment industries will not return to “normal”. These industries and all the people employed by them will not survive small changes. To address The Great Depression, the American government had to adopt full employment policies. We will again need such comprehensive reform.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The pandemic example describes incrementalism working rather than failing. Almost every government that ended up with comprehensive restrictions arrived there by escalation — advisories, then event bans, then closures, then full lockdown — tightening as case data and evidence about transmission arrived. That is the incremental method operating under uncertainty: act, observe, adjust. Reading the sequence as proof that small steps fail requires assuming that the final measures could have been known and imposed at the outset, which is exactly what was unavailable at the time. The New Deal comparison works the same way against the argument. The response to the Depression was not one comprehensive act but a decade-long succession of programmes, several of which were struck down, redesigned and relaunched; employment policy developed through that sequence rather than preceding it. Citing it as a model of non-incremental reform describes the outcome and omits the process. The standard case for incrementalism is also left unaddressed. Large simultaneous changes make attribution impossible — when everything moves at once, nothing can be evaluated — and errors made at scale cannot be corrected before they compound. Crises intensify that reasoning rather than suspending it, because they are precisely the conditions of poorest information and highest cost of being wrong. There is a further mismatch with the position it supports. The question asks whether incrementalism can work; this argument concerns crises specifically, and its own examples pair incremental steps with comprehensive ones. That combination is the sibling position — incrementalism works, but not by itself — rather than the flat denial the argument is filed under. Establishing that small measures were insufficient during an emergency does not establish that they do not work.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The sequence described is incrementalism functioning under uncertainty rather than failing: governments escalated from advisories to event bans to closures as transmission data arrived, and reading that as proof small steps fail assumes the final measures could have been known at the outset, which was precisely what was unavailable. [Rejecting P2] The New Deal was itself a decade-long succession of programmes, several struck down, redesigned and relaunched, with employment policy emerging through that sequence — so the example describes an incremental process by its outcome and omits how it was reached. [Rejecting C] Even granting that small measures alone were insufficient during an emergency, the conclusion overshoots: an argument confined to crises whose own examples pair incremental steps with comprehensive ones supports the rival position that incrementalism works but not by itself, not the flat denial that it works.