"Among the sources of political polarization is the quantity of privileges that the political machinery is delegated with distributing. A higher pile of goodies attracts more special interests and their lobbyists. It is not that geese are particularly greedy, they simply respond to incentives."
Reprinted with permission of IPR
Polarization: An Avian Parable Fighting over a fixed prize leaves no room for reconciliation of differences and indeed increases the degree of disagreement.
by Nathanael Snow, Ph.D.
Over the White River on the east side of Muncie a bridge spans connecting the Kitselman Trail to the Cardinal Greenway. The Canada geese below responded with some interest to the first bits of stale bread I tossed down. As I manifested as the source of manna by throwing more morsels to the combative flock, other birds joined the fray. The more crumbs the greater the combat. When the crusts were gone the honks of demand persisted.
Among the sources of political polarization is the quantity of privileges that the political machinery is delegated with distributing. A higher pile of goodies attracts more special interests and their lobbyists. It is not that geese are particularly greedy, they simply respond to incentives.
Among the harms counted by economists when analyzing this phenomenon are the taxes that must be collected to accumulate the pile of goodies. Taxes, from a purely economic point of view, are harmful because they foreclose upon various exchanges, that should they obtain, would have generated mutual benefits to both exchanging parties. The distribution of goodies is also considered harmful because some exchanges obtain that the parties involved would have considered wasteful but for the subsidy.
Less frequently will the political economist point out that the energies expended in the battle for the benefits are energies that could have been put to productive activities. And one may generally have to consult a political scientist to also learn that fighting over a fixed prize leaves no room for reconciliation of differences and indeed increases the degree of disagreement. Hence, polarization.
No one directly involved in the battle has an individual incentive to back away, or to promote policies that reduce the size or scope of government. Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan with co-author Richard Wagner explained that we can expect “Democracy in Deficit” (1977) perpetually.
When we advocate for an increase in spending for our favorite flavor of stale bread, we ought to consider that we invite a similar appeal by those who have different preferences. Among the costs we must calculate the losses from taxes, the waste from subsidies, the lost productivity expended on lobbying, but also the harm to our democratic republic that we observe in lost civility and increase polarization.
Instead, we can each contemplate what privileges we can do without, unilaterally, to help restore and preserve good governance.
Nathanael Snow, an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, is Assistant Teaching Professor of Economics at Ball State University and Affiliated Scholar with the Institute for the Study of Political Economy. He researches the constitution of informal social groups the political economy of Archbishop Richard Whately, and the economic history of the abolition of slavery.
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