I was going to ask the GP, I'll ask you instead, can you think of concrete historical cases where pointing out a ton of problems led to a dramatic reform instead of just slight tweaking that ends up introducing more problems? Can you think of cases where (bad) --causes alone--> (worse) --causes alone--> (incredibly better)? (It seems to me it's more of an ebb and flow of good/bad.) The sentiment seems especially popular among nerds for some reason. To both charitably and caricaturely quote: "I hope SOPA passes; then everyone will use Freenet!" "I hope Facebook severely violates its users' trust, then people will care about privacy." "I hope someone blows up a security line at an airport, then we'll get rid of security theater." "I hope we have patent Armageddon, it will hasten the destruction of IP."
It's a bit unclear what you're asking - are you looking for historical examples where heightening the contradictions has actually led to a good resolution? Because I was definitely arguing against that. Or examples where it's made it worse? For the latter, the most event would probably be Nader.
Dramatic and successful reform has happened, of course. Look at Upton Sinclair, the Chicago meat-packers, and the rise of muckraker journalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckraker
Sure, drawing from recent history in the US I'd say that 1986 tax reforms[1] the 1996 welfare reforms[2]. I don't think that they happen often enough that they should be relied on, though, and I'd say that they're pretty much impossible in the current US political climate. On the other hand, countries that aren't the US might have better luck, since most are smaller and more homogeneous, and have parliamentary systems with less veto points. But then again, smaller countries are by their very nature less able to take on the rest of the world in the resulting trade disputes, and the EU countries I believe have the EU itself dictating aspects of patent law.
