The Widening Gyre
Epsilon Theory
September 19, 2022·39 comments·Politics
The political system has shifted from a game where cooperation was possible to one where conflict is the only stable outcome. Both parties now operate under the shared belief that the other poses an existential threat to democracy. Once everyone knows that everyone knows this, the rational response is escalation, not compromise, regardless of what anyone privately believes. The machinery that produced this shift cannot be reversed by the machinery that produced it.
- The center is mathematically impossible. When political distributions split into two peaks with minimal overlap, any candidate between them loses to candidates on both extremes. Centrist politicians face only two choices: stay silent and compromise their values, or quit entirely. This isn't a failure of individuals. It's the shape of the electorate itself.
- Common knowledge makes escalation inevitable. When a critical mass believes the other party will destroy democracy, the rational move is to do whatever it takes to stop them first. You're not choosing to play dirty. You're choosing self-defense against an opponent you must assume is willing to do worse.
- The system locked into this equilibrium simultaneously on both sides. Trump shifted Republican politics from coordination to competition. Biden's Philadelphia speech did the same for Democratic politics. Now both parties operate under identical logic: the other side is an enemy, so any measure is justified. The symmetry is what makes it stable.
- Cutting off the head grows two more back. Winning elections or breaking up media companies doesn't matter if the underlying structure remains intact. The three-headed hydra of Big Politics, Big Media, and Big Tech will regenerate as long as the common knowledge stays the same.
- Changing what's possible requires changing the rules themselves. The problem isn't the players or the beliefs. It's the game. Only a structural shift that alters the incentive architecture can break the competition equilibrium, but no one operating inside the system has the leverage to change it.
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Comments
Thanks Ben - I needed to see that. In the U.S., what can an individual do to facilitate change on the scale this country needs when opposed by the Big 3? Nothing… but the states can. My concern was that this massive divide would end in succession. Thanks for the new direction, and for confirming what Buckminster Fuller wrote:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing models obsolete.” ~ Buckminster Fuller, 1895 - 1983
You and Rusty continue to inspire the pack.
Ben, I usually agree with you, but the people’s amendment has been tried and failed miserably, I live in a city where we went from citywide city council seats to single districts. Once that occurred, the common good went out the door, lobbyists easily funded smaller campaigns and the city became obsessed with pork to district indicatives and lost focus on real issues that the city faced.
It’s now firmly in control of a few high powered local titans, entrenched district politicians… and zero cooperation for the real issues facing the city…
When voters have a ballot issue, they uniformity voted over the city council to override the district led decisions… but, then the titans and their proxies just recreated new laws like a tax loss strategy to restart the process and overrule the vote of the people…
I don’t think a real democracy over a republic will be the answer.
Keep up the good work,
This post by BH is so interesting. Thank you! But there is something disquieting about the (apparent) assumption that the lower-right quadrant of the competition game [defect, defect] = [1,1] is a negative outcome. Doesn’t that mean that no deer are harvested and so may multiply into the future? As a Nash newbie (despite my Princeton Math BA), I would welcome being schooled on this; maybe more examples would help. Meanwhile, as BH has emphasized, we’re in the Widening Gyre for sure. Personally, I’m not in favor of diluting the Electoral College with originalist proportional representation because the coastal population will prevail over the productive (food and energy) population in the interior.
I don’t believe it would work this way. The changes are all relative, so Ohio would go from having 20 EC votes (18 House, 2 Senate) to 237 EC votes.
17 / 535 = 3.1% of the EC
New math is one seat per 50,000 residents. So 11,780,000 / 50,000 = 235
235 House, 2 Senate = 237
237 / 6,260 (6,160 House, 100 Senate) = 3.7% of EC votes
You’d need 3,159 EC votes to win a Presidential election if you just took the existing formula of 270 to win and applied it to the newest absolute number of representatives. Ohio’s 237 EC votes would be 7.5% of what you’d need to win. Today Ohio’s 17 EC votes are…6.3% of what you’d need to win.
Edit to add: I started with the incorrect number of EC votes for Ohio. My mistake. I have changed the numbers to reflect the 2024 presidential election.
I certainly hope you are right!
It changes the EC dynamics for the tiny population Western states.
Hmm. So Idaho and Montana both have 4 EC votes as of today. Half of those votes come from having the same number of Senators as every other state, so by expanding the House the influence of their Senate seats goes down in both absolute and relative terms. Is that what you’re getting at or am I making up a different problem?
That is what I am getting at!
Great article and an interesting proposal. But check my math: It takes 38 states to ratify an amendment. Idaho is the 38th least-populated state with 1,893,000. Dividing by 50,000 results in 38 house electors and 2 senate electors for a total of 40. 40/6700 = 0.597%. Currently, Idaho has 4 electoral votes out of 538 = 0.74%. Why would the state legislature vote to dilute their influence in the EC?
Yes, big picture based on the numbers in DY’s example. Senate seats go from 100/538 in the EC to 100/6260. Huge dilution for states with very small populations that punch above their weight due to 2 Senate seats.
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