Studying political science at first leaves you with the false hope that improving the social sphere is straightforward. However, you quickly realise the true messiness of the business, and not because of Marxist theory having convinced you of its Communist utopia (another word for a place based on wishful thinking), but because there doesn't seem to be universally-applicable answers. But right as you’re about to lose hope, you find something far more important than answers, appreciation. Rather than discover what should be done, you come to understand what shouldn’t be done. As a sort of law of entropy, there are a million ways in which it can go wrong, however, if something is right, it’s important to notice and value it. This is the impression that was on left me with, as I was drawing a map of understanding on how groups optimally make choices.
Let us start with a thought experiment that I consider the foundation of pretty much any social science, feeding directly into my longing for the secret recipe of my major. A hypothetical person stuck on an island who has to fend for themselves, such as Robinson Crusoe in William Dafoe’s eponymous novel, does not have to contend with the notion of ‘teamwork’ (of course assuming that raising other animals does not count as collaboration, at least not complex forms of such). However, add only a single other person to the mix, and the entire picture changes. The social world is born, and with it social science too. Suddenly, each can benefit from each other by collaborating, even when one is more efficient in achieving all desired outcomes (as first posited by classical economist David Ricardo) or smarter in understanding its mechanisms. Why? Because, we need to add both information and time to our list of scarce resources, or another way to conceptualise, trade-off or in economic lingo, opportunity cost, is a thing, because time spent on one thing, means less time spent on another. We are still dealing with the simplest possible social situation or interaction possible, making many assumptions, however, this truly allows us to understand the bedrock of politics, and possibly social science in the broadest sense. The question we face in our simplest possible model is this: Do the two individuals make use of the mathematical truth that collaboration = mutual benefit (a pillar of social theory, now we’re getting somewhere)? If yes, then we can move on the next question, and if not, then there is a fundamental problem with the laws of the social universe. How on earth could it be possible that cooperation doesn’t naturally follow in our example of extreme privation on a deserted island (except for the two individuals, and other animals), in which it is so vital for survival? The answer is again simpler than one would think: because preventing things from getting worse is more important than things getting better (risk-loss aversion), cause things can always get worse, much, much worse, even or perhaps especially in the face of privation (a bit worse can lead to death). Things deteriorating in this case happens when the other person does not reciprocate, and takes advantage of the other in the classic (usually one-shot) prisoner’s dilemma. Of course, this is not what we observe in most social interactions, due to repeated games, in which, once again, taking ‘time’ into consideration, it is beneficial to cooperate despite short term benefits of ‘cheating’ the other person’s trust (because trust is so delicate).
Before getting too bogged down in economics though (answering the questions what, why, when, and how things are produced given scarce resources), I’ll refocus on politics (who, why, when and how decisions are made within groups), since even when we have a decentralised decision-making market system, decisions (perhaps the most important ones) remain to be made in in the name of the group. So, after we now have multiple people on this island who are now willing to form a group, the next question is, how is this group going to make decisions/ agree on aims given differences in preferences. Of course, first there needs to be consent to a common set of rules, most prominently that they agree to punishment if they violate rules, and therefore embed enforcement in the ‘social contract’ being upheld. Only after this is guaranteed, discussions on deciding how to decide can take place, which is resolved through voting. However, it is after reading about Condorcet’s Paradox that it became clear to me that sometimes, there simply is no right answer to important questions. The theory posits that in democracies, if there is no majority preference for an alternative, there is no correct action to be taken ‘in the interest of the entire group’, since the group is constituted by individuals with different preferences. In this case, the process by which the best alternative for the group is found (despite there being none) determines what is decided on. This reminded me a little of gerrymandering in the USA, in which state district lines are drawn by politicians in such a way that they are able to get elected despite losing the popular vote. However, what is truly bothersome is that in cases of no Condorcet winner, “[T]hen outcomes will be either imposed […] or arbitrary”. Munger concludes that democratic methods are simply “convenient ways of doing business, useful but flawed[…] giv[ing] them all a useful place in the world, but mak[ing] none of them sacrosanct”. All this sounds pretty harsh and unfavourable towards democracy. Can democracies as they are played out practically truly call themselves democracies, as Munger wonders himself? Not really, since “there is no uniquely defensible mapping from preferences into outcomes”.
Nonetheless, while democracies can turn into chaos and anarchy, the least desirable state of affairs, still it is preferrable to dictatorships. While it possesses many flaws as pointed out in this chapter, it is only by looking at the alternatives that one develops the appreciation for it that is deserves. In the absence of a clear line of actions that can be said to represent the ‘interest of the group’, it isn’t necessarily the ‘fairness’ of the decision to choose a given alternative that is vital to the decision-making process, but the consistency of the mechanism behind it that guarantees a functioning, practical, and above all, a ‘useful’ political system despite being inevitably flawed. Perhaps, on top of that, the ‘illusion’ of a fair system, as each vote is counted, and the ignorance of citizens which are painfully unaware of the determining force of the process through which these votes contribute towards a perceived ‘common decision’, are equally important in the upholding of the stability of a democracy.
I do wish politics were more straightforward than ‘in the case of no right decision, pick according to the random machinery at hand’. Of course, it is far more complex than that. Unfortunately, that only makes the process trickier and muddier. However, if there’s something I’ve learnt, it is that the social world is more fragile than we think, and rather than be solely preoccupied with what is to be changed (the glass half empty), it is good to first preoccupy yourself with the question how is it half full in the first place, in other words, what is keeping this hugely messy structure up and running, and what must be respected and conserved if things are to be getting better, rather than accidentally worsened. This is essentially the new question I attempt to answer for myself in my studies.
- Aurélien Saphy
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