Originally published on The Left Eye
By André Faust
As activists we have many challenges that have to be overcome in order to increase the likelihood of a successful outcome of the target goal that we are trying to achieve. There many adversaries that have to be overcome, whether they are politicians, police, military and any other opponents to the goal that is to be attained. Continued -->
I don't think it is correct that "your opponents are studying game theory". For one thing, you say its among "rational players" and there is little 'rationality' involved in politics, otherwise we wouldn't have a society that gets angrier at people for wrecking cars than they do at people who are wrecking the planet.
ReplyDeleteTaking Charles as an example, we've got a classic case of a scottish standoff-two stubborn groups who won't give in. And sadly, sorry to be derogatory Charles, but its the crazy guy who is acting more 'rationally' than the political system he is up against-except of course all systems are made up of people, so there you have the problem. Game theory by definition is 'theory', and that rarely holds up in reality.
That doesn't mean its not possible to think strategically, but thats not 'theory' unless you try to predict the outcome of your behaviour. As Canadians we are pretty bad at activism, but there is no lack of literature out there on how to be an effective activist, but it has little to do with 'game theory' and more to do with politics.
Yeah, the economy is 'like a game' because it 'has rules'. Mathematics has 'rules', so the economy is like 'math'. My health club has 'rules', so the economy is 'like a health club'. People 'play' games, and there is nothing 'fun' about our economy. Some people play 'to win', and there is no 'winning', although there are certainly winners and losers, but if you think Irving is 'competing' against a homeless guy, you're kidding yourself.
And it really makes no sense to say we need to change 'classical economics' because its all about growth. The reality is that GDP CAN work just fine. In New Brunswick there needs to be MORE wind power, and MORE hydro power and MORE solar power. That means buying stuff and increasing GDP. It just so happens that the government prefers to build more pipelines and more nuclear power. Both are growth, and both are policy decisions, we just have a government that is focused on the wrong decisions (at least to a lot of people).
So the problem is NOT that the 'solution' of 'more' is 'bad'. We need MORE effective education, more health care, more environmental decisions, more human rights, more animal rights, more environmental rights. We need LOTS 'more'. So that is certainly not the problem. The problem is that the political system represents the people who want 'more' for themselves, and the only way to do that is to challenge the political system.