The Shutdown Wasn’t Pointless. It Revealed Information

Perhaps an analogy to war is useful. War is stupid–you could always take the result of the war, implement it without fighting, and leave everyone better off. But sometimes a weak parties believes it is stronger than it really is. This makes it overly optimistic in bargaining, leading to a breakdown and war. However, the process of fighting reveals the weakness, in turn making the weak side willing to sit down at the bargaining table. The Republicans are the weak side. The Democrats are the strong side. The costs of war are the costs of the shutdown.

William Spaniel says on twitter he is not sure about how he feels about our models of war also explaining U.S. Congress bargaining. Besides war being politics by other means, I say we obviously should expect the models to work to a limited extent. Democracy is a highly ritualized form of civil war and not any kind of war but the kind practiced in the 19th century when democracy began its march. Instead of drafting a mob and then ordering them to shoot the opposing mob, you orderly assemble your respective mobs and then count them via voting. Since Samuel Colt made men equal in the 19th century you assume the slightly larger mob wins. Some nations even factor in territory held to decide outcomes. After elections both mobs go safely home and about their business, while in theory the government implements a real outcome of the simulated war.

I'm half expecting that sooner or later someone will realize you can with current technology win civil wars with drones agains mobs and Democracy will be discarded in favor of a more stable equilibrium. On the other hand early 20th century thinkers, futurists and fiction writers expected people to realize air power changed the calculus of war and for this change to impact politics quite profoundly. Arguably maybe we would even be better off had they been right. All power to the pilots! Yet they weren't. Evidence against.