I've been thinking about a confounding feature of competitive political systems: given the dynamics of the system, being right is not a virtue. 1/?

Take a case of pressure group competition. An industry group is pressing to decrease regulation of, say, fracking. An environmental group is opposing them. We should expect that the former will downplay risks and exaggerate benfits of fracking, and the latter the reverse. 2/

An observer, noticing the exaggeration on one side, may decide that the group in question is not a fair player, and shouldn't be trusted. But their dishonesty (or unconcern with the whole truth) is systemically rational and functional. 3/

Something similar happens with partisan competition. Centrist actors may deplore the more extreme partisans on their side of the aisle, but given competition with the opposite party, the only way to get centrist policies is for them to seem like a compromise. 4/

To generalize a bit: if you want x to be the outcome, you want there to be a rough balance between x+ partisans and x- partisans. But x- partisans want a balance between x partisans and x-- partisans, etc. 5/

This means that it is rational for any partisan to exaggerate their own distance from what they take to be the strongest opposing position. But, of course, this is also dangerous: you may at any point lose credibility or fall out of the range of plausible bargaining. 6/

The point being: truth is not a virtue for any actor within the system. But we also can't help but evaluate actors using the non-systemic ethical values we are accustomed to -- AND, hitting opposing actors for their lack of truthfulness might be advantageous. 7/

Cynicism and hypocrisy are baked in to the operation of competitive systems, in other words.

They obviously have massive advantages, and it may be impossible to imagine a free political system that didn't centrally employ them. But we shouldn't kid ourselves. 8/

Just something I have been thinking about stuck in quarantine and watching the discourse.

Fin