In Behavioral Economics or Game Theory there’s this thing called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. If you’re painfully aware of this Dilemma please bear with me and the following description. Basically two conspirators are sequestered in separate interrogation rooms and the D.A. tells each one in turn that if they snitch they’ll get a reduced sentence, but if they play hard-ball they’ll go to trial and the D.A. will ask for the maximum sentence (though there’s some small probability of acquittal). The D.A. also tells each prisoner there’s only room for one deal, so it’s first come, first serve. If prisoner 1 accepts the plea deal, prisoner 2 will almost certainly get convicted and it’s off to prison for him. The probabilities of acquittal, terms of the plea deal, and so on, are all variables that make the prisoners more or less likely to snitch or stonewall the D.A.
This isn’t just an academic thought-experiment, it has analogies to all kinds of situations in politics and business. It’s one of the more famous idealized human behavioral “experiments” and if you’re like most people I haven’t told you anything new.
You want to stand up for your rights and exercise them within the well-known bounds of how they’ve been understood for a long time… you better be prepared for prison.
But what about an inverse sort of problem? In the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) the prisoner is incentivized by the setup to be the first to squeal (depending on the factors). What about situations where the system is set up to disincentivize you to be the first? This is called the Trust Game, or as I call it, the ‘You First’ Game. More concretely this is a situation where you definitely don’t want to be the first person to try something because (unlike the PD where there’s only guaranteed benefit for the first-mover) there’s only benefit in mutual action - and even then it’s not guaranteed.
If something is starting to sound familiar perhaps it’s because you’ve seen this dilemma quite frequently if you’re on X/Twitter. We’re both bombarded by posts calling for violent reprisals against some on the Left while counter-signalers reprimand the do-nothing reprisalists for idle talk and moral cowardice.
If we’re to start a revolution, if we’re to throw away our careers, families, material comfort then “YOU FIRST!” they’ll say. “I’ll just wait here on the sidelines until the risk to me and mine is lower.”
In the age of the Deep State, and where Intelligence Community efforts are clandestinely directed at Americans, the wages of such dissent are prison time. Of course, notions of the Deep State and CIA surveillance might be dismissed by Normies (and J6 actually was a collective action - chilling even the most courageous of dissenter), yet the conundrum remains. He who sticks his neck out first risks it being cut off. It’s a herd instinct, built for survival even though humans aren’t herd animals. Perhaps it’s evolutionary cynicism: we aren’t so stupid as to be the first (and only) to take the plunge into shark infested waters.
I’m not interested in discussing the justifications for violence (you can do that yourself) but for a while now the Right has been suffocating under an impotent discourse of “I dare you to/we need to…” vs. “You first!” with no end in sight. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to surmise that agents provocateurs on the Left and Fake Right (are they different?) have an interest in egging on anyone who might actually dare to be first - better to make an example of! Under a Rule of Law system, he who draws first blood gets crucified.
Too bad we don’t live under such a system. If we did the Left wouldn’t be able to encourage its own paramilitaries to violence and semi-violence. Antifa janissaries would be cowed into retreat, NGO-paid protesters would fold at the sight of ICE and we wouldn’t have senior State representatives saying this:
While I’m sure that these upstanding members of the Federal legislature, “elected” by who knows who and designated as the permanent bureaucracy’s representatives, are merely exercising their First Amendment rights (with no intention of fomenting a coup) the form and substance of their missive was unmistakable:
Well, golly-gee how beneficent of Ares to bestow upon his martial order the “right” to “refuse” an “illegal” order! I’m sure this makes a lot of sense if your commander orders you to, say, erect a concentration camp on the Upper East Side and “commit genocide”. Sounds pretty illegal to me. Except, of course, no commanding officer (even in Nazi Germany) was that stupid. Illegal orders are much more nuanced. Anyone who’s worked in corporate America (or on a Wall Street trading desk). Naturally this puts a soldier in a dilemma of their own: if you refuse then you better be damn sure that your refusal will pass muster with a Court Martial! As Chris Bray points out, this doesn’t happen that often … because it doesn’t happen that often. This isn’t just because it would force every soldier to be their own legal counsel. Unless an entire battalion followed along it would be career suicide (and worse). Of course if an entire battalion identically stood up and refused an order it might send a political message - not to say individuals wouldn’t be singled out pour encourager les autres.
Okay, but they’re also saying something else:
Whoa! Wait. What? That’s right, these aren’t marching suggestions… they’re marching orders - fiat law by Democratic legislators. Now every soldier, service-member, officer, “and the intelligence community” have a positive obligation to act as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and decide for themselves, every time they receive an order, if it’s legal or not. Of course since I’ve never served in the Armed Forces I’m sure they only get like one or two orders per career, right? Well, anyway, they’re not asking any more.
Nonetheless this is quite a dilemma for any “service” member, which includes the brave men and women in the Central Intelligence Agency, wink-wink. It means that you have to play ‘You First’ Game, whether you like it or not. Which, again, begs the question, why are Leftists (as in this video) unafraid to ask this of service-men, who’s job is to (just like them, if you believe their breathless cheerleading) “uphold” the “constitution” not second-guess it and judge it’s application for themselves.
Ah. I see. Now I get it. Leftists know that they can signal to their paramilitaries that in the very unlikely event they’d let you get court-martialed (or worse) you won’t have to face repercussions. Scouts honor. You sentences will be commuted, pardons will be granted. Hell, the autopen is primed already.
Now harken this back to what the Right faces.
Of course there are hundreds of similar examples. Thousands, really.
Trump could level the playing field, of course, by using an autopen of his own, but then we’d be “just like them… gasp”. He could enact pardons for all those who expressed support of his populist, “America First” priorities. This would send a very strong message to the hesitant that someone might have their backs too. Sadly we live in a land of glass houses where one side doesn’t want to cast stones, while the other has gathered a pile of rocks.
I don’t know what’s worse. The fact this is already happening or the fact that “ostensible” conservatives think that fighting without a blind-fold and straight-jacket is a bad thing.1 Either way it’s a recipe for defeat (unless you’re talking about the war for donor cash).
Compounding this problem is the fact that many Federal Court judges don’t even bother to pay the remotest lip-service to the rule of law. TDS has taken hold and legal arguments have been substituted with “because reasons”. To be fair, this sort of mush-brained, non-rigorous argumentation arose from the matrix of “legal scholarship” - also patient zero of “Critical Theory”. But if you’re a dissident on the Right and want to take the plunge towards activism you can’t expect a fair shake in a court of first instance (ie. trial court).
So back to the question of what do you do if you feel your country is being pulled out from under you by “other side”, without the slightest pretense of hiding it. Of course in this case the “other side” also happens to control nearly every societal institution. You want to do something. You want to stand up for your rights and exercise them within the well-known bounds of how they’ve been understood for a long time. You also know that if you engage in some form of activism you better either be rich and lawyer up (still no guarantee) or be part of a large group (also no guarantee, but at least better odds). All of which means if you want to take action you better be prepared for prison.
For most of polite society this isn’t an option. People with families and careers (ie. most of us wage slaves) are effectively foresworn from being on the vanguard . So it’s hopeless right? One giant fucking blackpill.
Not quite.
There are two reasons. First, you don’t need to lawyer-up in the age of ChatGPT, in fact lawyers are almost obsolete now when it comes to providing legal advice. As a former attorney I’ve even done some work training AI on legal matters and let me tell you, if you have a legal question the AI answer will be almost totally accurate.2 You now have at your disposal cutting-edge $1000/hr legal counsel. You don’t need to have the resources of Joel Salatin to confront “the authorities”, you just need a pair of balls. For decades professional protesters like Antifa and BLM have had the advantage of legal counsel paid for by billionaires to compensate for their testicular paucity. Now this professional/resourece asymmetry is eroding and the Right ought to take advantage of it and level the playing field.
The second reason is that the playing field is changing on it’s own, and not necessarily to the Left’s advantage. As demonstrated by the not-so-subtle dog whistling of Intelligence Community’s representatives in Congress, the pump is being primed on their end too. The invocation of such shibboleths as “we’ve got your back” is a direct call to action for someone on their side to take the first step. If their jaded rhetoric can convince even one rogue agent, trantifa cell or flag officer to be that first mover then maybe the cascade will start. If not, they still have their jobs and gold-plated pensions (bereft of insider-trading bans!).
This push changes everything. Now there are two competing groups playing the Trust Game and that radically changes the pay-off calculus. Think about it in the limit that more and more competing groups would join the fray (realistically there will probably only be two or three groups ever competing). The more groups, the more you’d expect the barrier to the pay-off to drop because there’s now a fear that some other group will beat you to the punch. In other words, sure you might risk going to prison by being the “first”, but with other groups playing the odds are now higher your complement from the opposing side will “go first”, eliciting the cascade and winning the spoils for their side. Better reconsider your reticence of going first!
This will slowly evolve to become a competition to be the first, and then reach a tipping point. This dynamic favors the Right because there are more organic actors willing to make sacrifices. If they see more players about to enter the game then the trade-off between the motivation to act and the sacrifice for doing so becomes smaller. Think of it like heating up wax: it’s solid at room temperature but heat it up and it will start to run. Heat it up enough and will spontaneously combust. By having the Left push their partisans into the game they’re adding heat.
The Democrats’ strategy is the opposite. There is little they can do to motivate their demoralized base more than they already have. Meanwhile centrists and normies are starting to pay attention to their lack of humanity and fleeing the party.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way from the Forum
It’s been just two days since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, and the Left wasted no time in showing its true colors. The reels and posts of progressives cheering and celebrating the patent murder of a right-wing pro-free-speech advocate have been dissected and denounced by right-wing influencers in a stentorian eruption of anger. The mainstream media (…
Orange Man Bad Theory and TDS are deployed in constant crisis mode. If even Trump’s most tedious statement is a new “threat to democracy” then everything is. They are a chorus all singing the same shrill note at terminal volume. All they can do is lower the barrier itself - something only possible if you control all the organs of the State, hence the ham-fisted “wink, wink” that they’ll “have” your back.
I know this isn’t quite the slam-dunk you were hoping for. I think some of the voices calling for courage still harp on the right prognosis, one that is not yet within reach for most. I’m not a professional game theorist (see here for someone who actually is) so there are likely further complications to consider. The issue of Escalation Dominance also factors in, and here the Left has a big proximate advantage (though they’re at a disadvantage at the highest levels: SCOTUS and POTUS). But the addition of Leftist “You Firsters” into the arena actually bodes well for the endgame. Fear not and stay tuned.
A.J.R. Klopp
I have an upcoming essay on this called “Instrumentalism”
Of course you still need a lawyer to attend you and advocate on your behalf in court. Larger corporations working on complex transactions (for now) will still need them to advise clients and work out deal documents. But I expect the latter will change soon enough. The “white collar blood-bath”, warned of by Dario Amodei will happen. Where the real rub lies is in asking the right legal questions - and that still requires some knowledge, not of the law, but of the stratagems that lawyers employ.
It is the old problem of belling the cat. I have some personal experience here as on three separate occasions, I was a central conspirator in getting my boss fired. No prison or execution for that but failure and discovery meant getting fired and perhaps being unemployable. Lots of stress involved. On all occasions, I was successful in activating a powerful ally while operating clandestinely and thus prevailed. Since we all operate in some sort of hierarchy, the powerful ally is key.