Polarization By Analogy

Polarization concerns me. 

My reason for concern is that polarization is probably intuited as an intensification of competition, but I feel, for the day to day it is actually the collapse of competition. It's a doom spiral.

The analogy I take from a delightful little book called 'co-opetition' but I'm reproducing it from memory.

Some time in the late 70's early 80's this happened:

American Airlines' AAdvantage program launched in 1981 as a modification of a never-realized concept from 1979 that would have given special fares to frequent customers.[4] It was quickly followed later that year by programs from United Airlines (Mileage Plus), Delta (Delta Air Lines Frequent Flyer Program, which later changed to SkyMiles), Continental Airlines (OnePass), Air Canada (Altitude), and in 1982 from British Airways (Executive Club).[5]

I believe American Airlines initially thought they had devised the ultimate competitive advantage, with the frequent flyer program. Everyone would want to join and fly with them so they would bury the competition. They failed to realise how quickly the program could be imitated by competitors. So all the frequent flyer programs just cancel each other out right?

Wrong. What happens with 'loyalty' programs is you increase the switching costs. For example, you like McDonalds, but for some reason today you feel like Burger King, switching costs you nothing. 

But if you are accruing points on a loyalty program with each purchase of an airfare, flying with another airline costs you the points accrued, even if you usually fly American but Delta has it's own easy to sign up for loyalty program. The points are non-transferrable, so if your AAdvantage program has 500 points in it and you fly Delta, you have 500 points with AA and 12 points with Delta that you can't even trade for a coke or some shit.

So what happens when there's switching costs, is people switch less and this gives the airways leverage to bump up their airfares. Because what are you going to do? You've accrued almost enough points for a trip to Hawaii. So when the airfare of your usual route from Pittsburgh to Baltimore bumps up the price $50 what are you going to do? Walk away from those points? From Hawaii? Or pony up?

...

This analogy is probably dated, as frequent flyer point programs got incredibly complicated with time, and super budget airlines like Ryan Air in Europe came into existence and so do people pay $50 extra on a $400 flight with British Airways or just pay $50 total to fly to Ibiza or whatever.

That conceded, the doom spiral of political polarization manifests in terms of parties generating candidates and policies that are increasingly hard for the losers to live with.

What's happening is switching costs are being erected, and that proves costly for the polarized. British MP Tony Benn had five questions for the powerful: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” 

In an unpolarized democracy, that crucial last question had the answer of 'vote me out.' Having that answer, the previous question becomes 'I'm accountable to you.' Provided that is sufficiently true, the previous questions answer becomes 'you're interests.' and 'you.' and the first question just provides context.

A persuasive analysis of this dynamic comes from 'The Dictators Handbook' breaking down more meaningful political poles of 'large coalition' vs. 'small coalition' here's my best summation. The smaller the coalition needed to retain power, the closer you come to a tyrannical dictator, or the more costly the ruler is to the ruled. The larger the coalition needed to retain power, the closer you get to a true public servant, or the less costly the ruler is to the ruled.

From this it follows, if you are principally unable to vote for the other side then what obligation does 'your guy' have to deliver on promises? 

Where is the wall? 

At a minimum we can make a prediction that promises will get more extravagant, impractical, unfeasible and delivery will become obsolete. 

I don't know, and frankly don't care who my readership is. In Australia when you go to vote, the first thing is that it costs some nominal amount of time and money to not vote. This means most people enrolled and eligible to vote turns up. And they are perfectly free to donkey vote it, write 'FUCK YOUS' on your ballet, or leave your ballet blank.

But somewhere between 88~95% of eligible (Australian citizens over 18 years of age) voters turn out and vote. Likely the majority of them vote this person 1st, this dude 2nd, doofus here 3rd and this arsehole is my last preference down at 4. 

This I feel is why, Australia produces some of the least inspiring and least interesting politicians in the world. It's also why, elections often boil down to speculating on interest rates. Until the lockdowns following the global pandemic, it wasn't even fringe to feel the government interfered in your life. It was super fringe. 

Tiny political parties that represented people who felt the governments knee on their neck by having 110km speed limits on freeways, some doctors who felt the government and Australian Medical Association couldn't force them to refer a patient seeking an abortion to a professional who had no qualms performing the procedure. (And if you are thinking, that's not fringe, that's almost half the population...not in Australia.)

In fact we can segue on that bodily autonomy issue right there. It's a perfect demonstration of the cost of polarization. 

Because the US system offers four options - vote democrat, vote republican, vote for a third party candidate (libertarian, green, independent etc.) or don't vote.

The last two options basically collapse into the same option, because it isn't a preferential voting system. One can infer for example that in the state of Arizona, or Georgia in the US where last Presidential election the vote was decided by a margin of around or less than 1%, reasonably that the libertarian presidential candidate's votes under a preferential system like Australia, would likely have gone predominantly to the Republican Party. What's hard to tell is how much of the libertarian parties votes came from former Republicans turned never-trumpers etc.

Anyway, that's all digression. The point is, my impression being that the majority of Americans did not want Wade v Roe overturned. With only 58% of Republicans supporting it, it's barely popular in the partisan sense. So it's a good example of a cost born by people who cannot stomach voting for the competition, because they've come to see it as the opposition.

Can't abide the thought of some welfare being distributed, or being civicly dutybound to get a vaccine? Well now that's going to cost you access to abortion.

Have we set our watches for when a Republican politician is outed by the media arranging an abortion? 

Anyway, this in turn segues into the last way to expect polarization to hit you in both the literal and figurative hip-pocket: The narcissism of small differences.

What people reliably, I feel, get wrong is the following:

1. Who out of the following is effected most by the overturning of Wade v Roe - Deep Red States or any other states?

2. Who is more adversely affected by Islamic Fundamentalism/Jihadism/Terrorism - People living in secular states, or people living in Islamic states?

3. Who is more effected by cancel culture - Conservatives or Progressives?

4. Who takes more shit from Vegans - Omnivores or Vegetarians?

5. Who takes more shit from Gays and Lesbians - Straight people or Bisexuals?

 The narcissism of small differences predicts that the danger goes up, the smaller the difference in opinion is. Do you think more Sunnis and Shiites have been killed by Catholics historically, or more Protestants? I think it will pan out, certainly in percentage terms of current living populations, that more Catholics and Protestants have been killed by each other, and more Sunnis and Shiites by eachother, than across the Christian-Muslim divide.

The exceptions are likely to be pandemics, like when Catholics brought diseases to the indigenous populations of the Americas. 

Which is all to say that proximity is dangerous, and polarization facilitates proximity. You basically can't walk away, you as a moderate lock yourself in with the fanatics and extremists, and typically, historically the first people on purge lists are the moderates. 

In summary, polarization is literally like going to an Airline and saying 'Charge me whatever you like. I'm not switching to the competition.' The only thing mitigating an instant implosion into suffrage sessions, show trials and public executions, is if you have that no vote/no go option. Fly American Airlines or stay home is what kept them from charging you your home and its contents. In a super polarized United States, and due to cultural influence, increasingly polarized democracies globally it's the no-vote, the donkey vote, the blank ballot that keeps your side from bending you over and pounding away. 

I disagree with requiring a photo ID or whatever to vote, the argument of 'what's wrong with taking measures to prevent voter fraud and reassure blah blah blah.' is primarily because the onus of proof is on establishing that electoral fraud is a problem before you solve it. Or basically I'm generally opposed to solving not-problems. 

But another is, admittedly a slippery slope argument, but if the voter base shrinks, that's a smaller number of your tribe necessary to turn up. The extreme form of dictatorship, can be conceptualized as the only persons eligible to vote are the rulers. They don't require a photo ID to establish citizenship, residency etc. they tend to require a military uniform, proof of party membership, proof of strict adherence to the strictest doctrines of the leader, proof, basically of how they will vote.

And that's when your team gets really fucking expensive.

So if there's like a 1% drop in eligible voters from some vote securing legislation, there will be a corresponding cost associated with your party's incremental loss of need for you to turn up for them.

Predictably though, I'm not very polarized as a person. Narcissism of small differences says the people most affected by polarization are far away from me, geographically and ideologically.