I was having a similar conversation yesterday, and my stance is that the political grand-standing like this is worse than doing nothing because it gives the populace the sense that something is being done, although very little is likely to change. Resources are being applied far from optimally. Funding that could be useful is being spent on the useless. As such, it's taking things in the wrong direction whilst still costing more than what previously existed and also impinging on other areas of literally everyone else's lives.
I believe that acting locally, funding child protection services, providing more boots on the ground, is actual progress (I mean, these organisations are literally called "child protection services", who else better, then?)
I've mentioned this a number of times before: my wife is a teacher and therefore has 'mandatory reporting' responsibilities. The frustration is that, with the resources currently available, they're only able to intervene where a child's life is in immediate danger.
I'm not sure if the bar could be any lower.
I should also make the disclaimer that what I know is second-hand information from my wife, and may be out of date and / or biased due to frustrations due to the misalignment between 'mandatory reporting' and 'what can actually be done'.
> my stance is that the political grand-standing like this is worse than doing nothing because it gives the populace the sense that something is being done, although very little is likely to change.
I mostly agree with this. Unfortunately I think it is also true of a lot of activist tactics (e.g., big protests), which seem to be more about making their participants feel good than about producing genuine results. It's human nature to lose interest in things when there is no crisis, and to be vulnerable to misdirection.
It's like the old joke about how there's no good time to fix the roof, because when it's raining you can't fix it, and when it's not raining you don't need to fix it. Of course, you have to fix it when it's not raining. Likewise the only real way to avoid this "sense of something being done" is to push sizable changes at a moment when no one thinks they are urgent, and that's often difficult to accomplish.
I believe that acting locally, funding child protection services, providing more boots on the ground, is actual progress (I mean, these organisations are literally called "child protection services", who else better, then?)
I've mentioned this a number of times before: my wife is a teacher and therefore has 'mandatory reporting' responsibilities. The frustration is that, with the resources currently available, they're only able to intervene where a child's life is in immediate danger.
I'm not sure if the bar could be any lower.
I should also make the disclaimer that what I know is second-hand information from my wife, and may be out of date and / or biased due to frustrations due to the misalignment between 'mandatory reporting' and 'what can actually be done'.