The Primary Cultural Factor Making Our Government So Incompetent
We've become obsessed with status games
I like vacationing in San Francisco. It has a great climate, beautiful scenery, lots of fun things for tourists to do, and the food is AMAZING. The last time I went, there were a few small restaurants across the street from my hotel and I decided to try the small, rundown-looking sandwich shop. It was the best sandwich I had eaten in years. A couple of nights later, I decided I wanted a burger and there was a “gourmet” burger shop across the street. It was the best burger I had eaten in years. Another night, I decided to order a pizza from one of the random pizza places the hotel had given me. It was one of the best pizzas I had eaten in years. So, how is it that the same city that apparently insists every hole-in-the-wall restaurant be up to celebrity chef standards, is fine with also being famous for the number of homeless people that @%^& in the street? Here’s an article where they’re happy and excited that only 13,856 humans and animals splattered their feces all over the sidewalks for people to walk in during the first half of this year. It’s also worth noting that San Francisco’s Congressional representative is Nancy Pelosi, our ancient and monstrous Speaker of the House. This is what Pelosi, one of the most powerful people in our government, said the day before the Taliban took Kabul:
"Any political settlement that the Afghans pursue to avert bloodshed must include having women at the table."
You have to wonder what planet that press release came from because everyone should understand that a bunch of misogynistic terrorists and cavemen aren’t going to be interested in hearing about “musts” from the country that ran away from Afghanistan in the middle of the night.
So, how is it that the people of San Francisco are okay with walking through human feces on the street and being represented by a woman who is either so drunk, senile, or just out-of-touch that she could put out a statement like that? Doesn’t it seem odd that the same people that live in a beautiful, wealthy city full of highly competent tech executives and billionaires are simultaneously okay with this kind of rank incompetence?
Even after Joe Biden created “Saigon Part 2” with his incompetence in Afghanistan, it’s worth noting that the State Department (!!!!) still issued a similarly ludicrous statement.
Yes, it’s true this collapse might have been fated when we left, but it’s also true that we’ve only lost 96 soldiers there since 2014 and had no problem keeping the Taliban in check. Additionally, had Biden waited until the summer “fighting season” was over to pull out, the Afghan government might have had months to prepare before the Taliban could mount an offensive. At a minimum, even if you set all that aside, Biden could have at least gotten our people out and set things up so we didn’t have poor bastards falling off of our planes while we ran away.
Americans regularly tolerate a level of gross incompetence from our government that we would never accept from our bank, our barber or even Wal-Mart. Even if we start with the presumption that government is far less competent than the free market, it wasn’t always this incompetent. It’s also not this incompetent everywhere. There are nations with balanced budgets. South Korea had drive-thru testing for COVID in MARCH of 2020. There was a time when America consistently had smart, hard-headed realists in charge of everything. That time is OVER. So, how have we gotten to this position?
There are so many intertwining reasons for it that you could do a whole book on it. We could talk about tribalism, partisan media outfits that won’t criticize “their side,” hyper-individualists that only care about themselves - not society, social media, political parties deciding to play to their base, not the middle, our nation’s complacency, decadence, and this Ayn Rand quote along with many other things:
However, I think if you got all the way down to the root of it, I think the real problem is that over the last decade in particular, people in our social media driven political culture have become obsessed with what Naval Ravikant called, “Playing status games”:
Status is an old zero-sum game. Those attacking wealth creation are often just seeking status. Status is a zero-sum game. It’s a very old game. We’ve been playing it since monkey tribes. It’s hierarchical. Who’s number one? Who’s number two? Who’s number three? And for number three to move to number two, number two has to move out of that slot. So, status is a zero-sum game. Politics is an example of a status game. Even sports are an example of a status game. To be the winner, there must be a loser. I don’t fundamentally love status games. They play an important role in our society, so we can figure out who’s in charge. But fundamentally, you play them because they’re a necessary evil. The problem is, to win at a status game, you have to put somebody else down. That’s why you should avoid status games in your life—they make you into an angry, combative person. You’re always fighting to put other people down, to put yourself and the people you like up. Status games are always going to exist. There’s no way around it, but realize most of the time, when you’re trying to create wealth and you’re getting attacked by someone else, they’re trying to increase their own status at your expense. They’re playing a different game. And it’s a worse game. It’s a zero-sum game instead of a positive-sum game.
People play this game all the time in politics, and they usually play the game within their tribe. Someone like AOC does not care if people like me like her. In fact, she’d probably prefer that I hate her guts because my hatred would be evidence she could use within her tribe that conservatives think she’s “dangerous.” Oftentimes, people trying to win the status games they’re playing feel like they need to go further than other people in their tribe or support people that do. Why is “The Squad” more popular with a lot of activist Democrats than Schumer, Leahy, Durbin, and Feinstein? Because they’re willing to publicly proclaim that they’ll go further to the Left than those Democrats. Incidentally, although liberals are by far the group that plays this game the most, all political groups play it to one extent or another.
For example, I still remember one conversation I had many years ago with a Libertarian that was an example of this type of status game. I am big on closing the borders and was discussing this with him on an online forum. He said something like, “We should have open borders! Anyone should be free to go anywhere they want.” When I noted that was impossible because open borders and a welfare state don’t mix, he quickly said something like, “Well that’s not a problem. We’ll just get rid of the welfare state.” Of course, it’s very easy to SAY we should get rid of the welfare state, just as it’s easy to say we should get rid of poverty, homelessness, war, and the police, but there is NO PRACTICAL WAY to do any of those things. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do those things. For example, we could fix homelessness tomorrow by shooting all the homeless. I’m guessing if I asked for a show of hands-on who thinks that’s a good idea, there wouldn’t be a lot of hands raised. Of course, it didn’t matter to him that it was impractical or what I thought, it mattered to him that he was taking a maximalist position that allowed him to claim he was “more Libertarian” than other Libertarians.
You see this all over the place now. For example, think about kneeling when the National Anthem plays. Are the people doing that playing a status game or attempting to actually achieve something? Well, pretty clearly it’s the former because the only thing they’ve really achieved is aggravating the other half of the country that sees them as unpatriotic (thus increasing their status with their tribe). Remember all the talk about “liberal tears” when Trump was President? It’s the same kind of status game, just on the other side. Then, look at ANTIFA in Portland – they’re doing the same thing. They are willing to protest and riot every night if that’s what it takes to… do what exactly? Get rid of the fascists? In @%$^&*# PORTLAND? Really? Are they really trying to achieve something or are they trying to play a status game in their liberal tribe?
So, who are people playing status games drawn to in politics? Is it the obviously competent, sane, reasonable people with a sound record of governance who are interested in making the country functional or the sort of people Eric Hoffer described like so:
“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”
You might say, “Well, that doesn’t sound like Joe Biden,” but doesn’t it? Hasn’t he consistently taken positions that would have been considered lunacy even a decade or two ago even though those positions are universally opposed by Republicans? Biden, like Obama and Trump before him, has sensed the changing landscape and responded to it. All three of them recognized a truth that many of us have missed.
Americans in politics have become completely obsessed with signaling their virtue to their tribe. It’s not that they’re opposed to fixing problems per se, it’s that it’s no longer their top priority. Their top priority is pushing a maximalist agenda that allows them to show their virtue to their tribe and ideally pokes the other tribe in the eye at the same time. Of course, when both tribes think that way, it becomes nearly impossible to accomplish anything other than wasting more money, which both parties always seem to find a way to come together on.
There is a solution to this. It’s for people across the ideological spectrum to start focusing on competence-based traits again instead of status-based traits. Republicans could be convinced to do this relatively easily, but it’s just as necessary that Democrats adopt this mentality because if one half of the country simply doesn’t care if the policies they support work or not, then that country has no long-term future. Both parties need to get back to asking the important questions. For example, “So where was this tried, and did it work? If it worked, then show me the results. Give me the numbers. Show me the dropping crime rate, the balanced budget, the higher graduation rate. Show me that we can afford it and give me a realistic plan that explains how it will be paid for.” It’s holding people accountable, which means firing people who do the wrong thing. It means refusing to vote for politicians that lie to you. It means primarying them when they deserve it. It’s judging people not on what they promise, but what they’ve achieved. It’s insisting that tackling basic problems is more important than pie-in-sky-initiatives.
If the American people don’t start moving beyond proving their virtue to their tribe to solving the problems that confront us as a nation, there’s not going to be a nation left for us to show our virtue in.