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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Should I be concerned that this spending bill is too long for anyone to realistically read it before voting on it? Even if that's the norm, it still sounds like a bad thing.

It’s probably not a good thing that the government is funded by a series of last minute deals.

Why do they wait so long to pass the budget?

From "Fiscal Cliff Notes" by Scott Alexander:

Every time there is a Big Deadline, the two sides are unable to make progress until Right Before The Big Deadline. And then every time, they push through the obvious compromise deal at the last second.

And every time, people complain about how immature and incompetent Congress is to spend months deadlocked over the issue and not be able to solve it until the night before, like a schoolchild throwing together a book report ten minutes before class. The Internet tells me:

The Fiscal Cliff deal that was struck last night is one that my Toyota salesman could have put together in 10 minutes. Yet, it took months and months and months of back and forth dancing and massaging and grandstanding and who knows what, to get what we got.

One thing I wish we could put in every school and courtroom on those stone tablets where they were going to stick the Ten Commandments before they had to cancel that for First Amendment reasons is some version of "WHEN YOU SEE PEOPLE WHO SHOW EVERY SIGN OF BEING SMART GUYS - LIKE GETTING ELECTED TO LEAD THE MOST POWERFUL COUNTRY IN THE WORLD - APPEARING OBVIOUSLY SPECTACULARLY INCOMPETENT, AT LEAST CONSIDER THAT THEY'RE DOING SOMETHING THAT MAKES SENSE FROM WITHIN THEIR OWN INCENTIVE SYSTEM. ALSO, LEARN SOME GAME THEORY."

The particular game theory concept involved here is called "brinksmanship". Wikipedia says:

"Brinkmanship is the practice of pushing dangerous events to the verge of—or to the brink of—disaster in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome. It occurs in international politics, foreign policy, labour relations, and (in contemporary settings) military strategy involving the threatened use of nuclear weapons."

Suppose there is a pie to be divided up, plus some disastrous outcome if no agreement is reached. For example, you and I must split a pot of $10,000 between us, and unless we can both agree on the same split by midnight, we both die horribly. If we are both good people, we can agree to split it 50-50 and that's that.

Suppose I am greedy. I can say "Actually, I will only accept a 90-10 split in my favor. So either agree to that, or I guess we'll both die horribly at midnight." If you believe me, your choice is to settle for a smaller amount of money, or to die horribly. It would seem reasonable to agree to the smaller amount of money.

However, you might also be tempted to call my bluff. "Okay," you say. "I guess we'll both die horribly at midnight."

And maybe I say "Oh, no, just kidding, I'll accept 50-50." Or maybe I decide to call your bluff and say "Okay then, see you in Hell."

And if I do the latter, maybe you think "Oh, he wasn't bluffing after all, I'll just agree to the 90-10 split then." Or maybe you say "I bet that's another bluff. I'm just going to sit here until 11:59 and see if he starts sweating."

If both players are at least a little bit greedy, and there's no disincentive for waiting, the game ends with both players saying "Okay then, I guess we'll both die horribly at midnight," whistling in the most deliberately carefree-seeming manner possible until then, and simultaneously saying "No, wait, changed my mind, I'll accept 50-50!" at 11:59 and 59 seconds.