Responding To Incentives

I tend to keep politics out of my feed not because I lack opinions or conviction, but because I haven’t deluded myself into thinking that sharing them will change anyone’s mind. When asked why I didn’t have something ready on Wednesday, I answered that I had unexpectedly spent the previous evening “drinking while staring in disbelief at numbers on my screen”.

But this week, there is one thought I would like to share:

Politicians are not incompetent.

Towards the end of the night I tuned in to Hasan Piker’s stream to see what the socialists were talking about, and I was really impressed to see him push back when his guest described establishment democrats as being incompetent. Are they cynical? Calculating? Shrewd? Definitely. They might be dumb, but they’re not stupid¹. These people kiss babies and make public speeches about collaboration and reconciliation because they know that shit never backfires.

If you want to understand the behaviour of operators at the top of a field, you have to assume that someone involved is competent, that their access to information is different from yours, and that they exist in an incentive structure that you don’t share. In fact, the best way to understand politics is probably to study economics? Just substitute “power” for “money”² in the literature. Through that lens, it’s clear that you can build a long-assed career on top of tying yourself in knots to avoid offending your constituent majority.

But maybe this week gave us a counterexample? In terms of swing, Susan Collins outperformed other Republicans and still lost³, later complaining to the press⁴ about how “everybody ignores the fact that [she] voted to convict him in the second impeachment trial”. Great PR! But also, who does she think she’s fooling? That vote was a perfect opportunity for her to please her constituents in a vote that was guaranteed to break in her party’s favour. If it helps her keep her seat, there’s no downside to the party!

And let’s not delude ourselves. White people probably broke against Trump out of cost-of-living self interest, especially gas prices. That is the most hardship white voters can ever expect to suffer in America. Get prices down, kiss some babies, and the vote will come back⁵. But describing the Hispanic swing in Texas as self-interest—while technically also true!—feels like it seriously undersells how hard it will be for Republicans to win that constituency back.

So maybe, just maybe, this week’s results indicate that public speeches about collaboration and reconciliation won’t cut it anymore? That a substantial number of voters are hungry for consequences? Whichever opinion you hold, it’s up to you to call your reps and make sure they know. There are a lot of politicians updating their priors right now!