We like to say that things are broken. Education is broken, immigration is broken, healthcare is broken, politics are broken.

When we label something as broken, we may mean a few things: first, that it’s so broken that we just throw it away and it doesn’t do any good. If I drop a glass on the floor and it shatters and breaks, I throw it in the garbage because it doesn’t serve its purpose anymore. Second, we may think it’s still repairable, but it’s not going to function well until we repair it. If a car is broken, then you need to take it into the shop and fix it up so that it can drive safely again. When something is broken, we have an idea of how it should work and function, and it’s not meeting that ideal. It’s no longer in good working order, and it needs to be fixed before it does any good. And if it can’t be fixed, it should just be thrown away.

But I think it’s not helpful when we label things as broken when they are, instead, flawed, but valuable.¹

There are many things we can’t really fix to some perfect functioning because there is no perfect functioning. Instead, there are going to be messy tradeoffs. Sure, some items have a clear function and can be broken and then fixed. Things like cars and computers and shoes and stuff like that. But many other things, like education and immigration and healthcare and politics, don’t have a singular function at all. They have multiple functions that often conflict with each other.

Take education. Part of the purpose education is to educate people, but even that isn’t a singular thing. We want to teach students various subjects and skills, and they can’t learn everything all at once. And education also does things like research, innovation, job training, community support, extracurricular activities, sports, childcare, ensuring basic well-being and care, feeding students–this list goes on and on. There is no such thing as education that functions perfectly. It’s always going to be flawed, but it still can be extremely valuable.

Then let’s look at healthcare. There are a lot of tradeoffs in healthcare. If it’s more affordable, there may be longer wait times. If there is a lot of innovation and research, someone has to pay for it somewhere. If we want more access, sometimes we have to do it at the expensive of lower quality. There is no system that does all of it well. When we have so many different specialties and we need medications, research, preventative care, palliative care, specialized care, mental health resources–no one system can do it all. So, it’s going to be flawed, but it still can be valuable.

We should definitely still work on improving things. The systems that we have are doing some things well and doing some things rather poorly, and sometimes there are improvements that can increase efficiency and lead to overall better outcomes to people. (And sometimes a system might be the best at creating more wealth for the wealthy, which is not a functioning that I particularly support.)

Instead of just throwing up our hands and saying something is broken, let’s also recognize that these systems are in place for certain reasons, they are giving a certain value, and even if we do improve them in certain ways, there will still be tradeoffs. It’s not going to perfect. It’s not going to get all fixed up. But it can be a bit better, and if we’re more worried about improving something flawed but valuable, then often we can make more progress. We don’t always have to overhaul everything, but instead make small changes, building on what is already working.

1. I got that phrase on this post: Universities: Flawed but Valuable – Daily Nous ↩︎