Strategy, the axiom of revealed preferences, and being "an ally"

 The analysis here is the culmination of observations over a long period of time, but the post is precipitated by a conversation which I will describe in broad strokes.  The details, for reasons which shall become clear, must be left opaque, and that necessity for opacity remains an ongoing frustration, and central to the observations here.  Cancel culture and identity politics.  In the most general terms, here was the precipitating conversation.  A fellow political scientist and I were discussing our mutual frustration with a specific topic about which we are afraid to speak publicly.  We are both generally inclined towards a policy goal, yet the associated activist group engages in such toxicity and reality-denying insanity that we are both afraid to speak in any public way on the core topic.  My conclusion, which was hardly original, was as follows.  The first rule of politics in a democracy:  don't make it hard to be your ally.

There is a lot to unpack here about democratic theory, economic theory, and the mechanics of politics, and I can address these concepts without revealing either the identity of the other party to the conversation, nor the specific topic about which I won't speak, the toxicity about which I speak, or the denial of reality.  There are multiple examples anyway.  So let's dig into the nature of politics.

First, academia.  How far left is academia?  Pretty far left.  Yet there is variation.  Hi!  What is truly difficult to find in academia is a cultural conservative.  Evangelicals, Trumpists and other styles of cultural conservatives are extraordinarily rare in academia.  Those who deviate from the leftist domination of academia tend to be either libertarian, perhaps classically conservative in the Burke-Oakeshott tradition, technocratic idealists, and other such oddities who don't fit cleanly on the current conceptualization of the left-right dimension.  Where do I fit?  None of this precisely describes me.  Admittedly, I have some libertarian inclinations, some classically conservative inclinations, there are some aspects of mid-20th Century American liberalism I liked, and... basically, I don't fit anywhere.  I don't blather about my policy positions here for a wide variety of reasons, but basically, I disagree with you about a lot.  Whatever you believe, I disagree with you about a lot, and you'd be surprised about what.  So never mind.

Yet within academia, even the weirdos who break from the commie mold (hi!) tend to agree on a few things.  Because we are not cultural conservatives.  Basically, we're for nondiscrimination and live-and-let-live in at least the general terms.  We can argue about the specifics, but that is the general inclination.  If there is a group that is being harassed or discriminated against for no reason other than INSERT BULLSHIT HERE, academics tend to call bullshit.  Why?  A wide variety of reasons, but part of it is that there is a general correlation between education and measures of this terrible word, "tolerance."  The more educated you are, the more you "tolerate" different people.  Pick apart that word all you want, but that's part of it.  There is also a career choice effect.  In general, academics choose academia because we want people to leave us the fuck alone so that we can pursue our own intellectual interests, which will hopefully result in something of interest.  Whether or not my ramblin's on this blog count is a separate question from whether or not my scholarly books and articles count, but this is that libertarian streak that many academics have.  So you have both an egalitarian streak and a libertarian streak which both lead to a leave-'em-the-fuck-alone attitude.  What is fascinating about this is that you may encounter the claim that politics can be broken down into a liberty-versus-equality conflict, where conservatives value liberty, and liberals value equality thanks to quirks of American ideological terminology.  Yet this oversimplified model misses the observation that treatment of minority groups can be conceptualized as either a liberty issue or an equality issue, depending on framing.  (Was gay marriage about "marriage equality," or the freedom to marry the person of one's choice?)  The left tends to frame these issues as equality issues because they favor terminology based around "equality," but actual concepts are more complicated than any such simplistic rhetorical devices.  But I'm gettin' off track here.  The general point is that academics basically side with the left on "cultural" issues, nondiscrimination-type-stuff, and such.  Leave me the fuck alone, leave them the fuck alone, leave everyone the fuck alone, and if someone is different, it ain't your fuckin' business.  Is that libertarian?  Egalitarian/lefty/hippy shit?  Does it matter?  It is what academics tend to think.

The general point is that if there is a group that faces discrimination etc., among the natural allies would be academics.  Lots of reasons, from libertarian to egalitarian to hermit-tarian.

And allies matter.  Depending on one's goals, and I'm getting to that.  Before we get to that, though, let's talk about democracy.  This is a slippery term, and many theorists have eschewed it entirely because of the amount of lube that has been applied to it, and wow that went somewhere I didn't like, but let me see if I can extricate myself from the rhetorical pit I just dug for myself.  Anyway, consider Robert Dahl.  The leading theorist in the pluralist school of thought argued that the term, "democracy," had become essentially useless, so his most insightful book, A Preface to Democratic Theory, despite using the word, "democratic," in the title, was actually about various concepts of pluralism.  In pluralist concepts, power is shared and held by alternating groups rather than by one hegemonic group, and basically any claim you hear about power being held by one hegemonic group in the US is easily debunked bullshit, as long as we can discuss the world in scientific, empirical terms.  And anyone who rejects the idea of discussing the world in scientific, empirical terms... well, you know how Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't bother to debate those who reject evolution and other basic principles of science?*  Same thing.  Don't engage people who reject science.  Just hope that they Mad Mike themselves.  Preferably through some means other than vaccine refusal, which puts me at risk too.  It isn't a Darwin Award if you take the smart people with you.**

Anyway, gettin' off track again here.  Regardless, I am still willing to use the term, democracy, in some narrow contexts, as long as I define it narrowly.  Here, I am defining democracy as majoritarian democracy.  Aaaand... here I get myself into a wee bit of trouble, because majoritarian democracy is a mathematical impossibility, as Kenneth Arrow demonstrated in Social Choice and Individual Values, but we're going to duck and dodge that today.  You see, electoral rules construct majorities, and for my purposes today, it doesn't matter whether or not those majorities are artificial, so bite me, Ken.  Democratic procedures are majoritarian in that 50%+1 is magic.  "Magic," as in, legerdemain, but also, magic as in, capable of creating dramatic effects.  Both, in a sense.  Get to 50%+1, and you can do big things, even if you have pulled the wool over someone's eyes by creating one possible 50%+1 as opposed to all of the other 50%+1's that could have been created.  Prestidigitation and presto-change-o-rearrange-o, policy happens because I believe in "magic," magic being fake.

Here's how it works.  Periodically, I tell you to read E.E. Schattschneider's A Semisovereign People.  Great book.  Political conflict is about drawing lines of cleavage.  You want to draw a line of cleavage that puts you in the majority.  Why?  50%+1 is magic.  The fight is that your opponents are trying to make sure that the line of cleavage gets drawn in such a way that you are in the minority.  The placement of that line, in a political-spatial sense, determines who wins because it's all about 50%+1.

Translation:  If you want to win, you need to be on the 50%+1 side.  Translation extrapolation:  If you want to fucking win, you need allies, dipshits!  And you know what?  I'm so annoyed right now that I split an infinitive.  Fuck.  Do you see what these people made me do?  They made me split an infinitive!  I mean, yeah, I'm clearly OK with incomplete sentences, beginning sentences with "and," and other such grammatical errors when constructed artfully, but a split infinitive?!  Holy shit, I'm disgusted with myself.  What a fucking obscenity!

Anyway, allies.  Victory means 50%+1.  And if a group is definitionally a minority, the entirety of the challenge, if victory is the goal (hint, hint), is the gathering of allies.  Succeed in that, and you win.  Fail, and you lose.  And if you play the game of allies and lose, you... um... well, that depends on the stakes, doesn't it?

So if you have a policy goal, a political goal dependent on 50%+1, the point is to make it as easy as possible for anyone who could be on your side of the Schattschneider-ian line of cleave to be so.  Make ally-ship easy.

You know what you don't do?  Make ally-ship hard.  Make it so that people don't want to talk to you, with you, about your issues, or anything like that by being a fucking asshole to your allies, your potential allies, those trying to be your allies, and so forth.

And this brings me to that mysterious conversation, that I can't even describe.  There's stuff about which we, academics, can't talk.  Like, we're on your fucking side, basically, for the most part, but we don't want to say a fucking word because any minor disagreement, be they rhetorical, or even minor policy disagreements would result in us up against the fucking wall.  So it is safer for us to say nothing, and do nothing.  And hence functionally not to be allies, but rather to stay on the sidelines.

Consider some random social media account managed by your spinster aunt who just posts pictures of her kittens.  Whatever.  Kitties are cute, and everyone loves them, except sickos.  Point being, a completely anodyne social media account.  Safe.  Maybe your aunt would post an occasional statement of support, were it not for the excesses of cancel culture, but she's afraid that anything she says will be used against her in the court of the SJWs if she gets the wording wrong.  So... kitty pictures.  Is this what you want?  I suppose if all you want is another kitty picture, then sure, because we all love more cute kitties, but there is a social science observation here about what you don't observe.  You don't observe the consequences of self-censorship.  When people are scared into silence, you don't observe what is not said.  By definition.  And some of what isn't said may even have been net positive for your side!

It goes beyond speech, of course.  The aggressive tactics of woke-ism alienate a lot of people.  The tactics do successfully silence people, and they get some employers to shell out money for hucksters to conduct "sensitivity training" sessions which have no measurable effect, but hey, some disingenuous capitalist is cashin' in, so there's that, right?  I, at least, believe in capitalism.  And a lot of people are alienated and silenced.

That alienation is my strategic observation.  It is politically relevant.  It has policy relevance.

If you have actual policy goals-- practical policy goals-- 50%+1 is magic.  Attract, rather than alienate.  You can then assess a group, or a movement, by whether it does one of two things.  Does it bring allies into the fold, towards a goal of reaching 50%+1 with practical, concrete policy goals in mind, or does it alienate, with either clearly impractical policy goals, or no coherent policy goals at all?

Economics terminology for the day:  the axiom of revealed preferences.  Have you ever noticed that people are fuckin' liars?  This bothers me, but whatever.  We deal.  The principle in economics is that if you want to know a person's preference structure, observe that person's actions.  If a person chooses A over B, infer that the person derives more utility from A than from B.  The axiom is based on the assumption of rationality, and I'll get to that, but if you can't trust a person to explain his preferences to you, watch what he does and infer from action.

Apply.

50%+1.

When you make it easy for people to be your ally, you move towards 50%+1.  When you attack your allies and potential allies for being insufficiently pure, you make it hard for people to be your ally.  You move away from 50%+1.

The point of noting my mysterious conversation with a fellow political scientist was to note that the wokeness movement engages in tactics that make it hard to be an ally.  Many of us stay silent, even though generally predisposed towards most of the general goals.  Cancel culture pushes the various groups away from 50%+1, and the irony is that you don't necessarily see it because it does so by forcing self-censorship.  As in, there are issues about which many of us are generally, for the most part, basically in agreement, but have enough either minor policy or rhetorical disagreements that we know to expect vicious retaliation were we to speak.  So we stay silent.  Cancel culture pushes the movement away from 50%+1.

Now why would anyone do that, rationally?  If your goal isn't a policy outcome!  John McWhorter argues that wokeness is functionally a religion.  Within the religion of wokeness, the action of challenging another's purity gains one points.  Why does virtue-signaling happen?  For the same reason that one church attendee will scornfully note another's absence on a given Sunday, or some other heresy.  That same sanctimonious church attendee will say nothing at all about the fact that I'll spend tomorrow morning quaffing some coffee and writing a blog post about a novel (probably Emily St. John Mandel's fucking amazing new book, The Glass Hotel-- oh my god, I love this woman's writing!).  The so-called church lady gains no points for making a snide comment about me, but gains virtue-signaling points for pointing out another congregation member's failure to attend tomorrow, checking a phone during a prayer, or something like that.

A lot of the social justice movement isn't really about attaining specific policy changes.  So much of it is rhetorical, and intentionally so.  Motivated by the utter bullshit that is postmodern philosophy, a lot SJWs would rather argue about words than do anything constructive.  Some understand the philosophical underpinnings of this approach, and many just go for the toxicity, but either way, what is happening in many quarters is a fight, not for policy by gathering allies towards achievable policy goals-- absurd goals don't count-- but a fight over who can say what.

We aren't quite at the thought police, but the word police?  The US government isn't engaging in it, but the SJWs don't want a marketplace of ideas.  They want something closer to a private militia of ideas, with the oddity being that they so often target those who should be their allies.

And it would be difficult to make sense of this, in rational choice theory, without understanding McWhorter's thesis.  By driving away allies, SJWs put 50%+1 out of reach, and make policy goals more difficult to achieve, yet examination of many elements of woke-ism reveal that it isn't always about policy anyway.  It is often centrally about rhetoric.  It is centrally about signaling individual virtue, and the utility gained by doing so reveals, by that economic axiom, the preferences of those engaged.

Of course, the axiom of revealed preferences presumes rationality, and many of the most devoted members of the church of woke-ism not only act irrationally in many circumstances, but openly disdain the concept of rationality as a tool of the oppressor class.  Which... no.  Yet it opens this line of analysis to the criticism that SJWs may think that the way to achieve their goals is to berate people into joining them.

OK.  Well... it ain't workin', but it is doing something, right?  Businesses hire hucksters to conduct those "sensitivity" courses, and all of that, but politically speaking, while the woke-sters have taken over academia, it is difficult to find institutions that weren't already within their grasp where these tactics have actually worked, and mostly what they have done to academia is... silence people.  But that's a real goal, for some woke-sters, and I hate that I can't say what I'm dancing around, but that's the point, isn't it?

So my observation here is to note when you observe woke-sters who are more interested in controlling rhetoric than in concrete policy goals.  The effect is to drive away potential allies.  Do some of them believe that they are going to win, in the long-term, through some postmodernist idea of controlling politics through controlling language?  Yeah, somewhere there is some bizarro-fascist follower of Foucault, but in order to think that way, they have to have read Foucault.  Most of them are just trying to score points, like sanctimonious church ladies, with the effect of actually silencing allies.

Ronald Reagan isn't popular on the left, and there is a lot about which I could criticize him, but he had a famous aphorism:  the person who agrees with you 80% of the time is a friend and an ally, not a 20% traitor.  Those who fail to understand this critical point are either engaged in bad political strategy, or aren't in it for concrete policy change.

Either way, you notice I ain't sayin' what that conversation was.  So if the goal was to silence this 80% ally... well done.

*Pretty sure I'm getting this right.  I think it was Neil, but it may have been one of the others in that group who was asked about "debating" those who reject evolution, and if you type, "Neil deGrasse Tyson," and "debate," into youtube, you don't get the same kind of stuff that you do when you type other science popularizers and "debate" into the search field.

**Have some fun by watching Doug Stanhope talk about eugenics.***  There aren't many comedians who matter, but Stanhope matters.

***Fuck off.  I'm joking.  This is a post about cancel culture.  If you are contemplating offense, fuck off.  Stanhope is a comedian.  You know what a "joke" is, right?  Fucking SJWs...  I want Carlin back.