Mathematical Induction as an Analogy for Social/Political change

I wrote this long ago, it's conclusion is as old as time, the analogy to get there is perhaps attractive to some people

Maybe there's still STEM people that are liberal or even conservative idk, it's probably not all that convincing

Providing the base case for a particular political or philosophical idea is usually quite easy. For example, strong social safety nets lead to a more resilient economy or higher worker satisfaction, given the right conditions. This is provable in some narrow sense through the historical record or scientific study in some other way.

Providing the induction step in this analogy is not another exercise of academic thought, but the political act of implementing these systems or changing them, at least narrowly successfully based on the idealistic assumption that in the future this act proves our political idea correct in a less narrow way.

But in a break with the process of mathematical induction, we cannot conclude this particular political idea or implementation to be universally applicable, because in this field nothing is. Instead through this exercise in analogy, I want to stress the importance of idealism or ideology for genuine social progress, especially if this ideology actually tries to serve all the people and is occasionally successful in that service.

Or viewed Negatively, without the assumption that Social change exists and can be used for good - as in progressive ideology - no Political or social development can take place.

Even more compact, without hope for better, there will never be change.

So above all keep the hope.