Alex Bloomberg and Robert Smith take a look at the new congressional super-committee from the perspective of game theory, which is a way economists study the choices of two parties working against each other in some capacity.
They set up the metaphor by saying game theory is like a game of chicken... two cars barreling toward a head-on collision. At the beginning of the game there are three choices for each side. First, drive and never swerve, thereby winning, and letting your opponent chicken out. Second, swerve, lose, and chicken out, but live. Third, crash into each other and explode.
Now at the start of the game, you'd probably rank the outcomes as 1) win, 2) lose but live, 3) explode and die. The strategy to winning is to prove you are more crazy than your opponent, more willing to cast aside self-preservation for a victory. But as the game goes on and you realize your opponent doesn't seem to be changing course and bringing his own level of crazy to the fight, you might change your rankings to 1) lose but live, 2) win, 3) explode and die.
Planet Money says that's basically what happened this summer with the debt ceiling debate. At first, people stared each other down and we got speeches from President "Two Steps Back" Obama and John "Not Going To Happen" Boehner. The democrats rank their top choice as protecting favorite entitlement programs. The republicans make their top choice cutting taxes. Okay, so those two choices create a situation where the cars will smash into each other.
Their second choices, on both sides, might be doing something about the deficit, and the third choice is deadlock and defaulting on the debt. So the debate rages on, both sides seeing how long they can go without swerving, and as the debt ceiling deadline got closer, both sides shifted their priorities just like in the game of chicken. Suddenly the second choice rises to the top because it's the only way to guarantee that the third, disastrous, option doesn't happen.
The wrench in the debt ceiling game of chicken, according to Steven Smith, a political scientist from Washington University, is that one faction in the debate didn't believe they were playing a game of chicken at all. He says:
The Tea Party types are saying that a crash isn't all that harmful. We think both cars are made out of rubber. We have experts who tell us the cars are made of rubber and that we'll survive this just fine... so it's more important that we stick to our guns and plow straight ahead then it is to cave in on the basis of these threats.Smith went on to describe the car the republicans were driving in this game of chicken as having two people fighting over the wheel as they sped toward a collision. Boehner and the more moderate republicans trying to swerve while the Tea Party tried to keep it straight. In the end, Boehner et al won out, both parties swerved their cars at the last second and declared victory for their side.
The super-committee sets out to change the stakes of this congressional game of chicken. Smith says:
This time they decided to up the ante. This time they decided that not only will the driver die, but the driver's family is going to die.The super-committee is tasked with cutting $1.5 trillion from the deficit by Thanksgiving, and if they fail, tough cuts automatically go into effect. Those cuts slash each side's pet projects... medicare and medicaid for the democrats, defense for the republicans. These pet projects are now the family riding in the car for this game of chicken. And to make sure there aren't too many hands fighting for control of the wheel, Congress has stepped back and left the debate to twelve people. A smaller groups of drivers with more incentive to swerve.
In general, the podcast says, there are two schools of thought in the social sciences when it comes to winning in a negotiation. Psychologists believe that minds can be changed through strong persuasion. Make that great speech, come up with that brilliant ad, and you will win people over to what you want. Economists believe that preferences are fixed... you want what you want, and getting what you want is more about your strategy in forcing your position than convincing people to join you.
What's interesting is that none of this applies in a small group. Small groups allow for people to come around to someone else's viewpoint with necessarily forgetting what they want. It allows for actual, honest debate with the chance to achieve real compromise partly because you know the person you're attempting to sway. Essentially, it gets a lot more specific and filters out the noise that comes with the full Congress blustering about in sound bytes.
It's a simpler game of chicken, a more patient game of chicken.
It begs the question. Given how ineffectual Congress has become, are super-committees going to be the only way we get meaningful legislations worked on in the future? Will each super-committee have to face a doomsday deadline in order to motivate them not to act crazy? What's the role for the rest of Congress in light of these super-committees with their doomsday deadlines? Do they handle the light work while the adults get to sit around the table and talk over the real issues? Does that relegate most of Congress into becoming a bigger joke than it already is on many levels?
And if you let Tea Party members onto that super-committee, does putting their family in the car change their minds that they still aren't playing a game of chicken, that the cars are indeed made of rubber? Will it always be that simple to scuttle a political debate?
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