Binary and Marginal Games: The Socialist Flaw

On a recent podcast with Theo Von, New York mayor Zohran Mamdani defined socialism as “everyone having access to the things necessary for a dignified life.” Theo Von seemed to empathize with him, talking about how at a certain point economic issues are bigger than politics, and that incumbents can be challenged by longshot socialist candidates when they have created a situation that is not preferable for most people. Socialism has gained incredible traction by appearing to be a common sense solution to the allocative resource problems of a capitalist society. Zohran conveniently pointed out that democracy is the basis of socialism. The ability of the people to vote themselves the resources of the few is the core temptation of democracy and must be vigorously defended against or it will naturally arise. Socialist candidates of all kinds are gaining traction in statewide and local elections this year and they threatened to be extremely successful. Socialism is able to appeal to the public so strongly because they play a binary game rather than a marginal one. 

Socialism promises to provide people with a vaguely defined set of benefits. Resource constraints do not seem to be a limiting factor as they point to the untapped wealth of billionaires and millionaires. They plan to give people everything that they need to live a dignified life, but fail to define this precisely or even to explain who will define this. They believe that allocative issues are not fundamental to humanity, but rather an artificial constraint caused by market capitalism. They want everyone to have it all. This is a good thing to want, but their method of doing so plays a very dangerous binary game. Rather than trying to find some middle ground between long-term stability and short-term benefits, they simply focus on the end state of widespread benefits for all. They will promote this high level of spending and economic disincentives as long as it works, and when it fails to work, they will blame the failure on something else. They do not see their ideology as a binary game, they simply refuse to acknowledge the “zero” outcome. While a socialist government is in power, believing that reality is not constrained, they will spend as much as they want to until they no longer can. They prioritize present consumption over stable institutions because they think long-term instability is a myth created by free market advocates to scare people. They forget the entire arc of human history, full of poverty, pain, war, and suffering, and believe that they can construct a new order of human life that somehow contradicts this

The conservative ideology sees the world as a marginal game. Rather than believing we can have everything at once, conservatives advocate for an approach that recognizes the real risks to national stability and sovereignty, and attempts to provide the best outcomes possible. Rather than asking about how to make the world perfect today, conservatives play a marginal game. They look at the cheapest opportunities with the greatest impact for positive change in legislation, business, and government action. While many conservatives do this poorly, they’re at least beginning from a vision of the world that is more similar to this than the binary game created by socialists. Rather than trying to destroy current institutional structures and social norms, conservatives ask how they can be slightly shifted so that they can more effectively promote human flourishing. They recognize that all good change takes time and that to try to do anything else often leads to far worse outcomes than we could have anticipated. The story of Icarus provides a beautiful example of the risk of socialism. Flying too close to the sun is a central fear of true conservatives, whether in establishing regulation or foreign policy.

Socialists play a binary game, pursuing the optimal outcome at the risk of losing it all. Conservatives play an unpopular game of marginal improvement that takes a long time to see any success in. One of the games allows experimentation, creativity, and failure; the binary game does not have space for failure. Either the socialist gambit is right, or it is wrong. If the socialist bet is right then conservatives have been holding back the world for no reason and the radical changes will have been justified. However, throughout all of human history from late-stage Athens to imperial Rome, those who tried to have everything at once inevitably flew too close to the sun and ended the one chance they had at success and survival.