The word Economics, which means 'management' or administration of property etc, is closely related to the word 'oikos' which means a household or family. Oikeiosis is the sense of 'natural' belonging to a particular family and sept. It is based on what Maynard Smith called 'uncorrelated asymmetries' of a biological type (e.g being born to, or having been adopted by, a particular family). This dictates 'bourgeois strategies' which turn out to be eusocial, by reducing wasteful conflict, easing coordination, and preventing Society from turning to shit.
Identity is linked to a unique body though for some purposes there may be an 'equivalence class'. Thus, in a thymotic society, if someone of my clan kills a person from your clan, the law of vendetta says you can kill me as, for this purpose, me and others of my clan are interchangeable or identical.
In advanced Market economies, the law generally has a narrow conception of identity. If I am called up for Jury or military service, I can't pay for a substitute to take my place. Equally, I can't be punished for a crime committed by a relative or associate.
When Law & Order break down, people may have multiple identities. Consider what happened in East Bengal when the British left. People like Amartya Sen's families were viewed as part of the equivalence class of Hindus. It didn't matter if they were known to be sweet and nice and secular. They could be killed either on principle or in retaliation for the killing of Muslims somewhere else. Of course, Communists might view Sen's people as having another identity as 'bourgeois class enemies' and might want to kill them for that reason. We may well deplore the killing of Amartya Sen on such multiple grounds. He should be killed only on the narrow grounds that he and only he is Amartya fucking Sen.
I suppose it is only natural that mathematical economists will want to destroy the fundamental basis of our prosperity and progress by condemning 'narrow identity' so as to replace it with a crazy world where rapists can avoid jail by pleading that their other identity is that of the Queen of fucking Engyland who enjoys sovereign immunity.
In a stupid paper titled Narrow Identities, Partha Dasgupta & Sanjeev Goyal argue that A person’s social identity has many facets, involving language, personal interests, customs, religion, and ethnicity, among other attributes.
People have bodies. They may or may not belong to a society or more than one society. This has nothing to do with their language- if I were struck dumb I would not cease to belong to my family, my neighborhood or my community. I can't change my genes- at least not yet- and so my 'ethnicity' could be said to be fixed. But this would still be the case even if I were stranded on a desert isle with only chickens for company.
Yet, all over the world many people seek to define themselves in exclusive terms.
All do so. Partha would not like it if I claimed to have his identity and ran up big credit card debts in his name. Everybody thinks their own liver belongs to themselves alone. They don't take kindly to people who try to cut it out of their bodies.
This paper develops a simple model of personal incentives and group interests to offer one possible explanation for the puzzle.
There is no puzzle. If you aren't uniquely linked to ownership of your own body and that body has no unique claim to certain pieces of property and certain relationships- e.g. being the spouse of a particular person- then your life would be nasty, brutish, and short.
Motivation “Each individual’s identity is made up of a number of elements ... they include allegiance to a religious tradition; to a nationality;
these are predicates of a particular identity which can be changed easily enough. An Indian Hindu is welcome to become an American Christian if he can get naturalized in the US.
... to a profession,
to some extent, members of a profession form an identity class- i.e. they are interchangeable for some purpose. Thus, if my GP is struck off for malpractice and some other qualified Medical Doctor replaces her, I can't complain even though I will miss being raped by her eyes.
an institution, or a particular social milieu
You may be thrown out of an institution and excluded from a social milieu. But your identity will not have changed.
... A person may feel a more or less strong attachment to a province, a village, a neighbourhood, a clan, a professional team or one connected with sport,
My neighbour had a dog which was a Spurs supporter. My point is some animals are very loyal. Some humans aren't.
a group of friends, a union, a company, a parish, a community of people with the same passions, the same sexual preference, the same physical handicaps, or who have to deal with the same pollution or other nuisance... Of course, not all these allegiances are equally strong, at least at any given moment.” Amin Maalouf (2000: 10), On Identity (London: The Harvill Press), translated by Barbara Bray.
Maalouf preserved his identity- i.e. his body- by getting the fuck out of Lebanon back in 1975. Who cares what his 'allegiances' were or are?
It is a near-truism today that identity is multi-dimensional
It is nonsense. People have bodies. That body is what gives them an identity. An infinite number of predicates can be applied to that identity. But identity does not change unless the body is killed.
Although some are inherited (ethnicity, nationality), psychologists observe that there are aspects of a person’s identity that are fluid and built on deliberative choices of the person herself and those of others .
Our choices affect our bodies. Who doesn't know that?
Liberal cosmopolitans say that if we were to recognise identity to be primarily about the unfettered choices of individuals regarding where they belong, people would be seen as having multiple identities.
No. Liberal cosmopolitans say that I don't have the same identity as them and thus I should be put in jail if I run up credit card debt in their name. As for 'unfettered' choices- no such thing exists. Stuff costs money. Also people I want to have sex with would prefer to kick me repeatedly in the balls.
Proponents of liberal cosmopolitanism thereby tell us to recognize humanity whenever and wherever it appears,
because otherwise we might keep mistaking our boss for a potted plant and take a crafty piss on him.
and argue that it is deserving of our allegiance over and above the social identities people may have.
You should commit yourself to recognizing human beings even if you would prefer to mistake them for potted plants so that you can piss upon them.
Sen (2006) in particular has insisted that because people have multiple affiliations, claims for the sanctity of narrow social identities by those having them are unwarranted, even delusionary.
Sen's family was quick enough to run away from East Bengal. This is because they were Hindu, not Muslim. The safer thing to do, obviously, would be to emigrate to a place ruled by White Christian people.
And yet, all over the world we see people defining themselves in narrow, exclusive terms and being so regarded by others.
There are some conmen and schizophrenics who have 'multiple identities'. But they may end up in prison or a padded cell.
Religion, language, more broadly, ethnicity, are salient features.
Unless they aren't which is why the UK could have a Hindu Prime Minister.
But because there are markers for ascribing identity
No. The relevant 'marker' is the body. Predicates may be applied to that identity. But those predicates may change. I was once five foot tall. Now I am over six foot. Sadly, I am also as fat as fuck.
that are not inherited in quite the same way (membership of evangelical churches is a prominent contemporary example),
No. Plenty of people are born into the evangelical faith. In the UK, the term was first used in the Thirties but, for the most part, it represented a return to something much older.
narrowness in the way people often see themselves and are correspondingly seen by others requires explanation.
Why do women think I'm a man just because I have a beard and a dick? Should they not see me as a fluffy bunny rabbit?
In their study of the diversity of human natures, evolutionary biologists have examined why we are disposed toward narrow identities.
No. They have explained why there is so much epigenetic plasticity.
They have explained why our social horizons are often very restricted
No. They know 'social horizons' aren't restricted. We could do even stupider shit and go fucking extinct.
even when we have recognized that the benefits of collective enterprises would be most effectively realized if we admitted others into our group (Ehrlich, 2000).
No. This is a question of looking at the marginal cost versus marginal benefit of adding another member to our group. The problem is that price, wage, service provision discrimination and other such 'restraints on trade' can yield a rent as can 'Identity politics'.
In this paper we develop a model of personal incentives and group interests that offers an explanation that complements the one provided by evolutionary biologists.
We have had such a model since the Marginal Revolution of the second half of the nineteenth century.
Our model is an adaptation of the one prominent in the theory of clubs.
But that theory has nothing to do with 'identity'. I'm a member of my local gym though I'm fat and have no fucking muscles to speak off. Still, my Doctor reckons I have to work-out at least three times a week if I don't want to live into my Seventies.
The adaptation moves us however in a different direction. In constructing our model we deliberately work with a lean notion of identity.
i.e. none at all. The fact is bodies get sick and die. A club which helps people stay healthy and live longer is going to be more economically viable than one where members take a lot of drugs and fuck each other till everybody dies of AIDS.
The formulation neither pre-supposes nor pre-determines any of the many significant features of the notion that have motivated authors of the applied-theoretic works we review below. One can doubt that such a stripped-down model as ours could be of any use in understanding such an elusive notion as human identity. But the very richness of the notion suggests it may pay to distil it into an almost ”pre-societal” form. The wide variety of ways in which people actually express their identity can then be seen as reflecting the constraints people face, the choices they make, and the loyalties they form.
This is silly. For any given predicate applied to an object with human identity- i.e. a body- we can pretty much figure out how and when it first appeared and evolved. We know a great deal about how 'societies' have been formed. Consider Madagascar. Humans only arrived there in historical times- about 1500 years ago.
The view we take here is that the complexity of identity is an emergent feature of the fundamental human need to find a place in the social world.
No. We know that humans are like other primates. Neoteny was an evolutionary strategy which meant that larger social units would outbreed and thus replace smaller ones. There is a human need to stay fucking alive. That's why Society and the Economy and Politics exist.
Our model’s central assumptions, such as that a group’s size brings positive benefits to its members, are based on broad empirical regularities to be found in identity groups (e.g. religious congregations).
They are not 'identity groups'. It isn't the case that every Catholic is the Pope. Religious congregations are hierarchical organizations which provide soteriological services for a fee. We may say 'in Heaven, even the penitent prostitute will be equal to the Pope'. But that assumes our personal identity survives death. But even then, we will only have the one soul.
We then derive conclusions about the workings of our model that are consistent with a number of findings in the empirical literature. We study a stripped-down model of individual incentives and group interests. We imagine that people choose a group (or groups) to join on the basis of the conditions attached to membership.
So this is a story about expected costs and benefits. The problem is that such costs and benefits are idiosyncratic and subject to error. Lots of people continue to pay the membership fee for a club they don't attend. In Germany, the tax man assumes you retain the faith you were born into and takes money from you and gives it to your supposed Church unless you go through some cumbersome process to have yourself registered as an atheist.
Those conditions include the way benefits and burdens would be shared.
Large groups offer 'contracts of adhesion'. A small group may be considered an 'incomplete contract' but then it mightn't really be a group at all.
Although we endogenize membership rules, we do not specify how the rules are reached and implemented. It could be that someone with an idea (an aspiring leader) draws up a constitution and invites people to join his group; or it could be that a group forms without the deliberate intention of its eventual members and only subsequently finds a common cause; and so on. We assume that the net benefit (or payoff) a typical member of a group enjoys is an increasing function of the group’s size.
Sadly nobody knows that 'net benefit'. All we can say is that such and such person has an 'expected net benefit' but that may not be true. The person may be 'regret minimizing' or 'satisficing' or doing 'preference falsification' or just be very lazy.
This is a key feature of our model.
It assumes something which is impossible- viz. that we have omniscience and can calculate net benefits though, because of Knightian Uncertainty, we can't even have a non arbitrary Expectation in that respect.
The justification for the assumption is that it meets a feature common among affiliations. A group could be one seeking funding for cultural activities; it may be an evangelical church offering members the opportunity to connect directly to God (Luhrman, 2008), a national research body aiming to promote fundamental research, a community in conflict with other communities over land; and so on. In each of these examples, size is an advantage.
Unless it isn't. A small secret cabal may be able to take power and impose its agenda. A big coalition may be useless.
A second element in our model is that a group’s payoff depends not only on its own size (positively, as just mentioned), but also on the size of other groups.
Why is there no World Government? The US has only 5 percent of the World's population, whereas the Muslims are about 25 percent. How come it could invade Iraq and Afghanistan with impunity? Size doesn't matter. Guns and money matter. Indians should know this. The Brits ruled India very effectively with just a few thousand white Civil Servants. Unforgivably, they ended famine, protected minorities, and repelled invaders like the Japanese.
Negative inter-group externalities prevail when groups are in conflict over the allocation of such resources as land, public funds, and minerals.
Unless that conflict leads to technological advances which have peace time applications. War can be the mother of invention. Bleating about Social Justice can kill off enterprise and innovation.
The chance of success in seizing the resources depends on the relative sizes of groups.
Which is why India so easily conquered Britain.
In contrast, positive inter-group externalities occur among groups engaged in fundamental research,
as opposed to the sort of worthless shite Bengali mathematical economists get up to.
the externality being the spill-over of knowledge.
Two world wars and then the Cold War greatly accelerated technological progress.
We show below that inter-group externalities create the tensions that influence the choice between narrow and multiple social identities.
Externalities are defined as benefits or costs received outside the market for scarce goods. But there is no scarcity or opportunity cost involved in saying 'everybody can get to heaven' or 'all mammals are deserving of equal respect. Stop eating them for fuck's sake'..
What Partha is getting at is the difference between 'cheap talk' pooling equilibria and 'costly signal' separating equilibria. The latter feature a stronger type of 'cognitive dissonance' arising from not cleaving to a particular set of norms.
We follow Appiah (2006a, 2006b) in keeping other features of groups unspecified and identify a group by its label (X, Y, and so on).
In other words you are pretending that predicates have fixed, well defined, extensions and thus give rise to sets and graphs of functions. But this is just the 'intensional fallacy' all over again. The thing is garbage though for a particular purpose- e.g. marketing a particular product- it may be helpful.
Ours is a minimalist conception of identity formation. For simplicity of exposition we consider two potential groups (a generalization of the model to more than two is easily achieved). We first examine the case where rules of membership in groups are exogenously given. If payoffs increase with the size of one’s group as well as the size of the other group (positive spill-over), multiple identities are in the interest of each group as well as that of society at large.
No. In that case, we say that the two 'clubs' provide 'complementary' goods and services. There is high cross elasticity of demand. It is likely, that they can work together or that 'lateral integration' will occur so s to gain scale and scope economies.
Moreover, if the cost of joining a group is small, multiple identities are in the interest of each individual too.
No. I don't change my name to Viktor Armstrong when I join the Gym though I do use the handle 'Honeytits Cumbucket' for my Netflix subscription.
If, however, the costs of joining more than one group are substantial
then there is a 'costly signal' based 'separating equilibrium'. One can this is a 'discoordination game'. It is likely that there will be arbitrage between this and the 'cheap talk' coordination game. One way this can happen is that the minority in the separating equilibrium gains increasing 'agenda control' in the pooling equilibrium. This is why we have some 'moral entrepreneurs' or 'Identity Politics' practitioners who seek to gain 'obligatory passage point status' and 'interessement' so as to extract a rent. Sadly, stupid Bengali buddhijivis have to pretend they love Muslims and loathe 'Hindutva' in order to gain a little money in this manner.
(learning different sets of rule and acting on them when required may prove difficult), there is a divergence between individual incentives and group interests. That’s because individuals do not take into account the positive effects of group membership on the payoffs of group members.
Why not? The fact is, lots of people go to Church or the Football game just to keep their family or their friends happy or else because they see that the Church, or Football, are good for society.
In that situation identities would be narrower than what is socially efficient.
How do we know? Many people in the Victorian era thought that their servants would go to the bad if they stopped having Family Prayers or attending Church on a Sunday. They they discovered that servants will quit if they can better paid work in a factory.
We next study situations in which a group’s payoff is an increasing function of its own size but a decreasing function of the size of the other group (negative spill-over).
This is just the situation where the two represent 'substitutes'.
If an individual who belongs to one group also joins the other group, she
is irrational or acting strategically.
generates a negative externality;
Not if she acts through the market- e.g. pays to join both groups. This is because if I buy Coke as well as Pepsi, though the guys at Pepsi may be miffed that they are losing a bit of market share, the cost has been incurred through the market. Maybe they need to do more to promote brand loyalty. On the other hand, if no money is involved, and a person becomes an observant Jew while retaining membership of an anti-Zionist organization guilty of purveying anti-Semitic propaganda, then there is no 'externality'. There is only a 'shanda' or scandal. But this would also be the case if a person of our religion or family joins a terrorist cell.
the cost incurred by the former group is shared among its members.
It is not an economic cost. There can be no economic model of the thing.
If membership costs are small, individuals would wish to belong to both groups - thus assuming multiple identities - even though every group would prefer that each individual commits herself to only one group (narrow identity).
Nonsense! The Vicar wants you to join the Samaritans or other such voluntary groups which are 'complementary' to the 'diakonia' of the Church. Where things are strict substitutes, it would be irrational to have multiple membership. Some groups ban membership of a rival group. This is the reason that, though Chief Rabbi or Iyerland, I can't also become the Pope.
We next endogenize membership rules. We imagine there are people (politicians, entrepreneurs, potential founders of mega churches) who are primarily interested in aggregate group payoffs. We may call them group leaders.
They will seek rents arising out of their gaining 'obligatory passage point status' or 'agenda control'. Why the fuck should they be concerned with 'aggregate group payoffs'? Which 'group leader' says 'letus dissolve this group because in aggregate it is a fucking waste of time?
In the presence of negative spill-over the tension between individual incentives and group interests leads group leaders to require that individuals join only one group; that is, they acquire narrow identities.
No. A 'group leader' would want some of his most loyal followers to infiltrate other groups so as to gain control over them. If Partha had studied Econ properly, he'd have known that if there is a perfect substitute for your product but you have some 'market power' then you will aim to takeover or merge with competitors or form a cartel. Good strategy involves keeping this sort of thing as secret as possible.
The welfare consequences of rules requiring narrow identities are significant.
No. The welfare consequence of monopoly power are significant. So are the welfare consequences of the fucking Spanish Inquisition. Still, that stuff can be profitable to the right people.
Whether they are better or worse than the consequences of people assuming multiple identities depends, of course, on the strength of the negative spill-over.
The welfare consequences of permitting multiple identities- e.g. the rapist saying he is actually also the Queen of England and has sovereign immunity- would be fucking catastrophic.
If spill-overs are large, their presence facilitates the attainment of socially efficient outcomes; if they are small, their presence leads to inefficiency.
Economic efficiency pertains only to scarce resources. Narrowing identity down to a particular spatio-temporal body permits 'uncorrelated asymmetries' to dictate 'bourgeois strategies' which are eusocial.
There are no economic 'spillovers' in what Partha is talking about. Either benefits and costs are received through the market, or no scarce goods are involved. One might say 'our Church comes into disrepute if one our priests joins a terrorist cell'. But the solution is not far to seek. Excommunicate the fucker. Issue a strongly worded public statement deploring his actions. Hold a midnight vigil for the victims of terrorist atrocities.
This leads us to examine the nature of membership rules. We show that if leaders of all but one group impose the rule that their members are required to assume a narrow identity,
who will enforce that rule? In Europe, Christians of one sect could kill and exile those of other sects. They couldn't do that in most parts of Asia. How do you stop a Chinese or Indian Christian from also performing ancestral rites?
the rule imposed by the remaining group does not materially alter the possibilities facing individuals.
It could do. The remaining group could kill the leaders of all the other groups.
Thus, each group insisting on a narrow identity constitutes a social equilibrium.
No. Different 'costly signals' give rise to different 'separating equilibria'. Consider a Haredi Jew who is also a qualified actuary. He devotes a lot of time and resources to maintaining his good standing in both fields. But his identity remains uniquely linked to his spatio-temporal body.
The social philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah (2005: 24- 26) observed that identity can be an integral part of the specification of one’s satisfactions and enjoyments.
Because not having a body is no fun at all.
Identity thereby motivates and gives meaning to acts of supererogatory kindness and generosity.
No. These things are just as well done anonymously.
Appiah noted also that the presence of an identity concept in the specification of one’s personhood may be part of what explains why the person has an identity at all.
So, the presence of identity explains why identity is present. What an amazing discovery! Are all darkies utterly stupid? I suppose that is the impression those who hire Appiahs and Sens want to convey.
Identity can therefore involve deeply held self-conceptions.
No it can't. That's why I am not the current holder of the title 'Miss Teen Tamil Nadu'.
We may call that, personal identity.
Which is uniquely linked to a particular body.
But someone’s projects and purposes can often be furthered if she were to assume a social identity,
or steal that of Partha's
involving collective intentions that can range from religious practices requiring the coordinated involvement of fellow worshippers
e.g. if I could have a second identity as the Pope and a third as the Emperor of Japan
to norms of conduct in professional associations.
I have a fourth identity as a brain surgeon. I want to operate on Sir Partha. Will he let me?
No doubt there is no sharp distinction between personal and social identities.
Batman has two identities. But most peeps aint Batman.
Appiah (2006b: 16) offers a stripped-down formulation of social identities by considering the labels, or names, that are attached to them. Taking some arbitrary identity-label, X, he observes that X will have four defining features: (i) X has criteria of ascription; that is, X possesses the properties on the basis of which we are able to sort people into those we do and those we don’t call X’s.
A 'defining feature' is a 'unique and essential characteristic'. Appiah's 'identity labels' don't have any 'defining features'. Anyone can come up with any arbitrary label of Appiah's type and there is no non-arbitrary way of saying who does or not belong under it.
(ii) Some people identify as X’s; that is, they think like and feel like X’s and act as X’s in relevant ways.
Some people identify as cats. So what? People do the darnedest things. Nowt as queer as folk. Etc., etc.
(iii) Some people treat others as X’s.
Some people allege that others are treating them as X's even if this isn't the case.
(iv) X has norms of identification; that is, we can often make predictions of someone’s intentions and behaviour on the basis that the person is an X.
We can tell stupid lies. That's true enough.
Appiah’s formulation is overarching because it includes the idea of social identity not only when it serves as an end in itself (as in the case of deeply-held religious beliefs) but also when it has a purely instrumental value (as with membership in a professional association).
Appiah is saying 'I iz bleck. Gimme intellectual affirmative action!'
By extension it includes the multitude of cases where social identity serves both purposes. The formulation is overarching also because it is lean: it neither pre-supposes nor pre-determines any of the many characteristics social identity can take.
It is nonsense. The fact is in any given Society there are indeed important 'equivalence classes' (which is what 'identity' is about) . Some kids are capable of becoming Doctors or Mathematicians. Most are as stupid as me. Society benefits if it can spot those kids who could be just as good as Doctors or as Mathematicians and gives them the training they need. Educating me much beyond eighth grade was a waste of resources. Much of the progress countries made by countries which fought 'total wars' has to do with identifying the traits which can give rise to 'equivalence classes'- e.g. training to become Army officers or Research Scientists or whatever.
Sadly 'Identity Politics' which at one time looked as though it could help get rid of bias and promote efficiency turned toxic and paranoid long ago.
It does not say whether X is inherited or acquired; whether once someone is an X it is hard for her to shake the label off (because others make it hard for her to do so or because psychologically she becomes tethered to it); whether a person can simultaneously have more than one X; whether X is imposed by others or is acquired willingly; whether social and cultural differences give rise to different X’s or whether they are the other way round; whether narrow identities are less costly for those having them (psychologically or otherwise) than multiple ones; or whether being an X incurs the disdain of those who are not X’s or whether it elicits admiration.
This is because Appiah was writing nonsense. He hadn't actually mentioned any 'defining features'. It is useful to know about existing 'equivalence classes'- e.g. all those capable of performing a particular job at a given time- and potential 'equivalence classes'- i.e. all those capable of being just as good at that job. This also holds for customers or clients of a given firm. As far as the enterprise is concerned, customers are interchangeable. They form an equivalence or identity class. It may be worthwhile to find out the characteristics of the 'representative' agent, or typical member so as to improve marketing, customer retention etc.
The social historian David Hollinger has identified features of identity that can be viewed as ”solidarity.”
No. He says 'solidarity' is 'willed affiliation'. But 'affiliation' is not identity. Hollinger could be said to critiquing 'identity politics' of a toxic type- stuff like Biden committing to choose a female of color as his Veep. With hindsight, he needed someone who could handle the Senate and take some of the burden off him in terms of foreign policy.
He writes: ”To share an identity with other people is to feel solidarity with them; we owe them something special, and we believe we can count on them in ways that we cannot count on the rest of the population.” (Hollinger, 2006: 23).
He writes that this is a popular, but wrong, view prevalent in some circles in America.
By way of illustration Hollinger observes, ”Feminism is a solidarity, but womanhood is not.”
No. A lot of Feminism is about scratching the eyes out of other Feminists because they iz White. Whitey be debil.
Previously Sunstein and Ullmann-Margalit (2001) had noted that there are cases where people may not even care for some of the activities their solidarity groups are engaged in (taking part in protest marches, choice of clothing, adopting particular eating habits, and so on), but nevertheless join them so as to express solidarity.
Or because they have no fucking friends or are hoping to get laid.
Reasonably, the authors had named the goods people use to express solidarity, ”solidarity goods.”
Till they just become a 'must have' fashion accessory. At my first year at the LSE I met a guy from Hendon who was wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. Turned, out his name was Cohen. He had no idea why the Arabs looked askance at his attempt to look cool and maybe a bit 'ethnic' (the LSE was the most multi-racial campus in the UK at that time).
A simple but instructive way to study the effects of solidarity on resource allocation is to
see if boycotts etc. actually hit the bottom line of the enterprises concerned.
postulate people as having social preferences.
Did you know people have a social preference not to live in a shithole? If you didn't, you might consider postulating it.
The reciprocity that is practised within a group could be intrinsic.
It could be wholly absent.
Alternatively, it could be that a person’s social preferences represent a reduced form, embodying (instrumental) motives familiar in the theory of repeated games.
sadly, since preferences are epistemic, impredicative, and subject to mimetic effects, they can have no mathematical representation. The theory of repeated games is like the fundamental theorems of Welfare Economics. It says anything a Dictator can do can also be done without coercion- which isn't true. Killing people creates a threat point which is unmatchable. Also dictators can cull off a section of the population and breed up a servile population which however may be very good at scientific research and fighting battles.
In their well-known work on the economics of identity, Akerlof and Kranton (2000) offered an explanation for a number of widely held social assumptions and beliefs by postulating that a person’s well-being is a function not only of her consumption of goods and services but also her identity.
Because it is difficult to consume stuff if you don't have a body. The fact is, knowing you belong to a particular 'equivalence class' can raise well being if it is known this correlates to better outcomes. Obviously, there is a chance you could be wrong. You get a PhD from Cambridge and think 'I must be smart'. Then you discover your PhD was in something stupid and useless like Social Choice and realize you are doomed to write stupid, ignorant, bollocks.
In turn a person’s identity was taken to be a function of (a) the social category to which she has been assigned (her caste or class),
Akerlof had lived in India and had a theory of caste as an 'equivalence class'. Indians thought this very funny. Sens are Baidyas and make good Doctors and Scientists. But Amartya Sen, unlike his dad whose PhD was in soil science, was and is as stupid as shit.
(b) her personal characteristics (her human capital, preferences, and so on), (c) the specification of norms of behaviour in different social categories (who is expected to do what under which circumstances), and (d) the choices made by all (purchase of goods, acts of generosity and so forth), including her own.
The truth was and is that a person's identity is based on her spatio-temporal body. If that body happens to be in front of a speeding car, her identity may soon turn into a smear of blood and guts on the tarmac. As Professor Mukherjee has proved using algebraic topology, this could adversely affect her welfare.
An individual’s identity was thus taken to be a socially constructed reference point.
Because Society constructed my dick. Fuck you Society! Couldn't you have made it a bit bigger?
In Akerlof and Kranton (2010) the authors used their formulation to explain a variety of otherwise puzzling features of the education sector and the work place.
These had already been explained by Schelling and others before I got to Collidge.
Sobel (2005) is a comprehensive guide to the way social preferences (he calls them ”interdependent preferences”)
all preferences have this feature. Moreover, there are strong mimetic effects.
explain the reciprocity and a sense of the self that have been displayed by subjects in laboratory experiments such as the ultimatum game.
People have a 'sense of the self'. Who knew?
The formulation of social preferences he has proposed has a wide reach,
No. It is meaningless.
including the Akerlof-Kranton model of identity.
which merely has to do with expectations arising from assumed membership of an 'equivalence class'. Thus the reason I went to Collidge was because my parents and I assumed I was similar to the other kids in our community. It is only with hindsight that it is obvious I display traits more commonly associated with drunken chimpanzees rather than workaholic Tambrams.
More particularly, it includes cases where people desire to engage in communal activities and coordinate on goods that serve as the basis for those activities.
I bought a Chelsea football strip and turned up for their big match. Sadly, they wouldn't let me play even though my Mummy had given me a lot of nice sandwiches and orange squash to hand round during half time.
Donati (2011) calls the latter, ”relational goods.”
Which, as I discovered, don't actually have any such magical property.
Religious expenditures are built around relational goods (Iannaccone, 1990, 1998; Olson and Perl, 2005; Ysseldyk, Matheson, and Anisman, 2010).
No. They are built around wanting to get to Heaven. On the other hand, I suppose some women convert to Sikhism because they want to have long beards.
Food, clothing, and even reading practice would appear to be driven at least in part by the human desire to belong (Sahlins, 1968; Bourdieu, 1984; Douglas and Isherwood, 1996; Warde, 1997; Pratt and Rafaeli, 1997; Warde and Martens, 2000).
Though people who don't want to belong still eat and wear clothes and read Anais Nin.
The conformity that emerges when members of a group have social preferences would seem to play a role in reproductive behaviour as well
Dasgupta, being Bengali, only had sex with his wife because being an Englishwoman she had a social preference for such filthy practices.
(Dasgupta, 1993; Bongaarts and Watkins, 1996; Jensen and Oster, 2009). Social preferences include cases where people join in activities so as to show solidarity with their group (Sunstein and Ullmann-Margalit, 2001).
Till they are told that a donation would suffice. Also, could you please put your clothes back on?
In a pioneering work Schelling (1978) showed that if the domain of one’s social preferences is limited to the activities of neighbours, society can fragment into groups.
No. He showed that there could be 'self-segregation' on the basis of quite small preference diversity. But this is like Tibeout sorting. It has nothing to do with the fact that if you are identified as Black you will want to rape and kill White peeps due to peer pressure.
And although deeply felt solidarity is compatible with cosmopolitanism (Hollinger, 2006),
it is also compatible with schizophrenia. Free the Tibetan Whales being held captive by Taliban panda bears! I have taken off all my clothes to show solidarity with those magnificent winged beasts.
scholars have given particular attention to the social conflicts that narrow social identities can give rise to. For example, Alesina and La Ferrara (2005) have found evidence of a lower supply of public goods in more fragmented societies.
Wokeness is toxic. Watch Undercover Brother II. The 'Man' is pumping that shite into the ghetto and turning our soul sisters into feminist harridans.
Previously Easterly and Levine (1997) had found ethnic fragmentation to be a factor in political instability
or the reverse after ethnic cleansing takes place.
and the prevalence of economic policies that hinder development.
Which can occur if you listen to stupid Bengali mathematical economists rather than turbaned Sikhs even if they talk posh- like Montek.
The authors identified rent-seeking activities among contending groups as a source of bad governance.
Though it also has been the source of greatly improved governance. If there is an existential threat, there won't be no fucking rents to extract unless the Government kicks ass and takes names.
In view of the costs people have to bear in engaging in conflicts, ethnic fragmentation per se isn’t enough to precipitate them.
There are benefits from ethnic cleansing or apartheid policies if you are on the winning side.
Extreme fragmentation could render the chance of success by any one group to be so low that no group finds it in its interests to start a conflict (Horowitz, 1985).
Conflicts can start because the intentions of a rival are incorrectly perceived. If there is a Third World War which leads to extinction of all life on the planet, chances are this is what will have happened.
Moreover, the presence of a dominant group could, and there is evidence that it does, forestall conflict even if the group were exploitative of others.
Conflict is more easily forestalled if you kill people who look like they might start acting up sometime in the future.
The possibility of violence, even armed conflict, arises when large groups compete for scarce resources.
Or when a very fucking small group is much better at killing members of large groups occupying valuable real estate. Genghis Khan's Mongols were numerically much inferior to the Chinese and the Russians and so on. India was spared because the place is just too fucking hot. Still, it later came under the rule of descendants of Genghis who had been chased out of places with a nicer climate.
In a study of civil wars fought between 1945 and 1999, Fearon and Laitin (2003) found that the main factors determining both secular trends and cross-national variations are not ethnic or religious diversity per se, but conditions that favour insurgency.
i.e. the Government failing to kill peeps who might possibly take it into their heads to rebel.
Factors that make for those conditions include poverty,
India was very fucking poor. The Brits had no problem putting down 'insurgency' because plenty of Indians were so fucking poor they longed to get a job killing other Indians.
political instability, rough geographical terrain (which make it possible for insurgents to hide),
which it makes it impossible to rule the fucking place.
and large populations.
India has a fucking huge population. You don't see Modi losing sleep over the Naxals or Khalistanis or whatever.
Because the authors sought to identify conditions favourable for groups to express their grievances, their finding doesn’t deny that when circumstances enable them to do so, the avenue through which people express their grievances is their ethnicity.
Gandhi started taking more and more of his clothes off to show he wasn't White. That was a major grievance a lot of brown folk still have. Also, how come I iz bleck but don't have a ginormous cock? Is it because I show solidarity with Tibetan Whales?
When governance is weak, groups are able to fan hatred against rival groups by spreading false rumours (Glaeser, 2005).
Telling the truth can be equally effective. Did you know many White peeps have dicks? Dicks cause RAPE! Ban White peeps.
Looting and the destruction of capital follow. In an important and interesting research programme,
important and interesting to shitheads
Esteban and Ray (2008a-b, 2011a-b) have explored the idea that the existence of a small number of large-sized groups with opposing interests is a favourable pre-condition for conflict, other things being equal of course.
Very true. Did you know that there are only two large-sized groups- viz men and women- in all societies which have experienced conflict? The solution is obvious. Ban dicks immediately!
The authors interpret ”polarization” to be the extent to which a population is clustered round a small number of distant poles.
Like having or lacking a dick.
The ”extent” is the greater the more homogeneous is each contending group and the more different the groups happen to be.
I suppose vaginas are more homogenous than dicks. That's why all women think I am ugly and stupid whereas most men think I'm just an average sort of bloke.
Esteban and Ray (1994) had 8 previously constructed a numerical measure of polarization which they then used to uncover the salience of ethnicity and religion, rather than class, in civil conflicts.
Sadly, 'civil conflicts' are what you get when a Dictator goes loopy or an Empire falls for fiscal reasons.
In Esteban and Ray (2008a) the authors studied a world in which groups that form compete for a share of public resources.
So, not the real world then. The fact is, the Government decides what mechanism will be used to allocate public resources. Only if the Government turns to shit will there be 'competing' groups trying to seize power.
They showed that the individual desire for resources leads to the formation of polarized groups (or coalitions).
Animals desire resources. They can act in a coordinated fashion to occupy a given territory- till we fucking kill them or raise them for meat or keep them as pets.
In their model people have multiple identities ex-ante, but find having to choose between two mutually exclusive identities.
Like having or not having a dick. Apparently Feminists aren't down with chicks with dicks. This is because they are peeved that they have to sit down to pee. Also, did you know a lot of women bleed from their kooch once a month? That's totes gross.
The authors constructed a model in which it is more attractive for the rich and the poor in a community, rather than the rich in two communities, to form a group. The famous Robbers Cave experiment - on the social construction of identity - exposed the way identities can be created ab initio and then give rise, if circumstances call for it, to cultural differences and conflict (Sherif et al, 1988).
Nonsense! 12 year old boys like being in teams and fighting with each other on that basis. Unless their penises were socially constructed, their behavior arises from biology.
The experiment revealed also that, again if circumstances call for it, groups that were previously hostile toward one another can change stances and cooperate.
Also, if circumstances call for it, kids can knife 'social psychologists' and steal their cool, shiny, stuff.
We draw on that work to imagine that people ex ante are not tied to any group.
But they are tied to their bodies and those bodies are tied to families or may be subject to violence from the police or gangsters or whatever.
A simple model Suppose that there are N = {1, 2, ...n}, n ≥ 2 individuals and they each choose to belong to any subset of groups M = {A, B}.
Suppose that subset is a group dedicated to knifing each other. The number of individuals will fall.
The payoff to a group depends on its own size as well as the size of the other group.
There is no way of assuring this outcome. One might as well say 'suppose I am God. Then, whatever I say is True because I'm fucking omniscient and omnipotent and can destroy any universe which doesn't obey my rules'.
We will also assume that, within a group, the group payoff is equally divided among all the members.
In which case, some will slack off. You have a free rider problem. But before that can kick in the existing members will severely ration enrollment.
All players simultaneously choose their membership strategy. For player i let her strategy si ∈ S = {{A}, {B}, {A, B}}.
Fuck off! If some silly cunt says your options are what I say they are, your strategy should be to set his head on fire and then laugh your arse off. Only if the cunt has a gun should you pretend to go along with his game. Wait for your moment and then set his head on fire.
Let s = {s1, s2, ..., sn} be the strategy profile and let S = Q i∈N S, be the set of all strategy profiles. Define KA(s) as the number of players who choose A and KB(s) as the number of players who choose B in profile s. The membership of each group ranges from 0 to n. For any allocation of individuals between the two groups {x, y}, R(x, y) is the aggregate surplus of a group with x members when the other group has y members. We turn next to a player’s payoffs.
Why play a rigged game? Why not stick a knife in the Gamemaster and steal all his cool stuff?
Given a strategy profile s a player i’s payoffs are given by: Πi(si , s−i) = 1si(A) F(KA(s))R(KA(s), KB(s)) + 1si(B) F(KB(s))R(KB(s), KA(s)) (1) where 1si(A) is the indicator function for membership in group A under strategy si , and 1si(B) is the indicator function for membership in group B. The function F(.) reflects the rules of 9 payoff division within a group. We will focus on two polar cases: one, equal division within the group, F(Ki(s)) = Ki(s), and two, pure public good, F(Ki(s)) = 1. A strategy profile s ∗ is a Nash equilibrium if for each player i, Πi(s ∗ i , s∗ −i ) ≥ Πi(si , s∗ −i ), for all si ∈ S.
There are no 'Nash equilibriums' unless the Gamemaster can kill the players and can't himself be killed. Even then, it is foolish to speak of 'strategy' when all you can do is play a rigged game for fear of death.
An outcome is said to exhibit narrow identities if all individuals join a single group, while it is said to exhibit multiple identities if some individuals join both groups.
This is an arbitrary stipulation. One might as well say 'If all individuals join a single group, we say that outcome causes them to have a Tibetan Whale identity. If some join more than one group, we say they are also Tibetan porpoises.'
1 Assume that R(., .) is (weakly) increasing in the first argument. Also assume that R(0, y) = 0, for all y ∈ Z, where Z is the set of integers. A strategy profile s yields a configuration (x, y). Define the total social surplus as S(x, y) = R(x, y) + R(y, x). A configuration (x, y) is said to be efficient if it yields the highest social surplus, S(x, y) ≥ S(x 0 , y0 ), for all (x, y) ∈ Z∈ . Observe that in our formulation
we have rigged the game. But everybody thinks we are stupid wankers. We end up teaching cretins who will end up teaching drooling imbeciles. Meanwhile, Purnendu Chatterjee has become a fucking billionaire! Should have done O.R innit?
individuals can seamlessly belong to one or multiple groups.
Because groups are always willing to share and share alike with some useless tosser. After much hard work, I was accepted as a trained janitor entitled to the going rate for janitors. Immediately, the Royal Society of Surgeons offered me free membership and the right to operate on patients and get paid the rate for qualified surgeons.
Moreover, we are abstracting from the issue of level of individual effort or loyalty.
You are talking nonsense. Which group invites beggars to come and have an equal share of some tangible economic benefit? If there is no benefit, the thing is 'anti-congestible', then the thing is not economic. There is no economic theory of it. Moreover, 'identity' here means 'fantasy'. I may identify as a Tibetan Whale, but I am no such thing. No doubt, if a sufficient number of people, for the pure fun of it, insist that they are Tibetan Whales then some unscrupulous politician will claim that Tibetan Whales are being subject to discrimination. Why has their contribution to Quantum Mechanics not been recognized? How many Tibetan Whales have received a Nobel Prize in Physics?
This is an important simplification; loyalty will be compromised in multiple membership situations.
No. Loyalty will be compromised by disloyal or lazy or sociopathic people. If a person has dual citizenship of two countries which go to war, he chooses one side and gives up the other citizenship.
We do not give due weight to it in the current formulation. Turning to the issue of efforts, in some settings, such as example 2 below, efforts across groups will be strategic complements and introducing efforts will probably reinforce our results. But it is also clear that in other settings, such as Example 3, introducing effort will bring in offsetting factors and that this will significantly complicate the analysis.
What analysis? This is just a bunch of arbitrary stipulations dressed up with a bit of fake math.
From the view of applications with conflict, therefore our formulation is perhaps more appropriate in a context where the level of effort is not a central issue: an instance where this is plausible is when membership takes the form of ‘voting’.
Because countries and clubs and public limited companies give votes to anybody who wants them- right?
This application is further discussed in the extension to the basic model developed in section 6. 3.1 Examples The following examples illustrate the range of situations which are covered by our model. Example 1 Independent groups When R(x, y) = R(x) for x, y ∈ Z, the payoffs to a group are independent of the membership in the other group.
Nobody can know if this is the case. Consider the actuary who is also an Arsenal fan. It turns out that the head of a big insurance company is also an arsenal fan. She picks him to be her Chief Actuary. All that Partha has done is say 'Because I've rigged the game, I know the outcome'. The problem is that Partha is too stupid even to rig a game. He has shit for brains.
1 In Section 7, we present a slight variation on the model of identity choice: individuals possess two traits, one trait is shared with all other members of society, while a second trait has two types, and every individual has one of these two types.
e.g having a dick rather than a vag.
We study identity choice and equilibrium and develop conditions under which there is a pressure toward narrow identities (that are socially inefficient).
It is socially inefficient that men don't give birth to cute little babies.
10 Example 2 Positive spillovers: Promotion of Fundamental Research A group is a research organization promoting fundamental research, e.g., a scientific laboratory or a science foundation. Each member who joins the group brings a special skill to the group and the combination of the skills gives rise to inventions.
This may be how things start out. But, as its funding becomes more secure, the group should recruit promising young people without special skills who can be trained up quickly. This is because special skills come with special blind-spots and, in any case, are more expensive.
Suppose that there is knowledge spillover across groups.
If they are significant, there will be sub-groups which are the intersection of the two sets. Thus, once there were mathematicians and there were economists. By and by, there were mathematical economists. Sadly, they were shit.
The payoffs to a group A faced with memberships (KA, KB) are given by: R(KA, KB) = ( [D+KA+βKB] 2 4 if KA > 0 0 ifKA = 0. where D > 0 is a positive parameter and β > 0 reflects the magnitude of spillover.
The pay-offs are unknown and unknowable. Because I was at the football match, I wasn't at home when a homicidal maniac broke in. I don't enjoy football and only attend such matches because people might think I was gay if I didn't. Still, the payoff of pretending to be a Chelsea supporter saved my life. That's a huge fucking payoff.
Clearly, a group’s payoff is increasing in own as well as other group’s membership.
Because you said so? But your head is full of shit. One reason we join 'groups' is because of Knightian Uncertainty. Pay-offs are unknown. Group membership could be a type of 're-insurance'. But then again, it might not.
Moreover, marginal payoffs increase are also increasing in own group as well as other group size.
Because this cunt says so. Who believes him?
In this setting, an individual gains by joining a second group, his current groups gains by dual membership due to positive spillovers and so social, group and individual interests all point toward universal multiple membership.
No. An individual gains by doing turns out, with hindsight, to be the best thing he could have done. But, if this were known, there would be no need for groups or equivalence classes.
Notice that in this example, there is no cost to joining a group.
There is an opportunity cost in terms of time. Also, some crazy guy might get a kick out of killing people who joined a particular group.
If joining a group entails personal costs while the returns are shared with the group then we face a familiar situation of positive externalities and individuals will typically provide too little membership.
Unless that's what they want to do or they gain a reputational benefit in that manner.
Example 3 Negative spillovers: conflict over land, minerals and public money There is a fixed resource and groups compete for a share of this resource.
No. Groups compete to for the right to allocate the resource. The bunch of guys who control the allocation mechanism get paid off one way or another by those who want the resource.
The resource may be land or minerals and the groups are tribes, ethnicities or religions.
What they are competing for is control of the territory- i.e. the ability to govern it.
Alternatively the resource may be public funds for cultural activities, while the groups are language groups.
In which case, the 'language groups' are either bribing or threatening those with the power to allocate those funds. But, threats can be quashed by judicious beating and killing.
The resource may be market share
No. Market share is not a 'resource'. It is the outcome of a market process. Partha has shit for brains.
and the group may be an alliance of firms seeking an innovation.
All sorts of people may be 'seeking' that innovation. Alliances are about raising the probability that particular people get it first.
Individuals provide ideas and labor; so a larger group is at an advantage while a larger opponent group is a disadvantage.
Not necessarily. There can be diseconomies of scope and scale.
The value of the resource is 1 and conflict entails a cost c > 0. We use the Tullock (1980) contest functionTullock contest success function (CSF) that determines the likelihood of success for an agent as a function of their effort. They are not suitable for situations where an existential threat exists. Sometimes a larger but less efficient group may want to 'front load' pain on the rival in the hope of wiping it out while it is still small. There are other problems to do with uncorrelated asymmetries such that this solution concept is virtually useless.
.The payoffs are increasing in own members
not if there is 'attrition' more particularly if it is not wholly stochastic. That's where 'uncorrelated asymmetries' gain salience.
and decreasing in membership of other group. We will refer to α as the technology of conflict parameter. Observe that when α = 0 the group sizes do not matter for the probability of winning, while if α is very large then the large group wins almost for sure.
Unless it collectively goes down the wrong rabbit hole. Still, there can be no question that Xerox and IBM will easily crush this 'Apple' computer and that weird kid running Microsoft. Also the American CDC would very quickly solve the so called COVID problem which probably only affects East Asians who don't eat enough steak and who drink green tea instead of beer with a Tequila chaser.
Recall, the payoff to player i under a strategy profile s = (si , s−i) are given by: Πi(si , s−i) = 1si(A) KA R(KA, KB) + 1si(B) KB R(KB, KA)
meaningless pseudo-mathsy shite. There is no well defined 'extension' corresponding to the 'intension'.
(2) What are the incentives of an individual player?
Whatever she wants them to be.
Let us start with the case where all players join group A, and we now ask if player i would gain by also joining group B.
That's up to her. There is a pleasure in being antagonomic, indeed, the thing may be 'regret minimizing' under Knightian uncertainty. FOMO is an example.
The payoff to player i from being in a group with n players, while the other group is empty is: Πi(si , s−i) = 1 n (3)
Which is unknowable. If it weren't there would be no need for groups or, indeed, for language or education or enterprise. We would be windowless monads synchronized in perfect harmony.
In this situation, the payoff to player i if he joins group B, in addition to A is: Πi(si , s−i) = 1 − c n n α nα + 1 + (1 − c) 1 nα + 1
It is unknowable.
(4) The incentives to join two groups thus depend on the value of α and c.
No. The incentive is purely idiosyncratic. No doubt, by the law of large numbers, there may be an equation governing relevant data which features such parameters. However, if those parameters were 'common knowledge', they may cease to work. This is like Goodhart's law.
It follows that for large α, there is no incentive to join a second group.
Unless there is. The fact is, if you have a 'pooling equilibrium', there is also likely to be a discoordination game and a separating equilibrium on which hedging and income effects arise.
On the other hand, for small α there is a strict gain in payoffs from joining the second group. More generally, there is a threshold α ∗ > 1 such that for α < α∗ , it is profitable to join both groups, while for α > α∗ it is better to stay with one group.
Groups are more plastic than that. Within a large group there will be small groups vying for agenda control. These may split off and merge with sub-groups from rivals.
Thus for α > α∗ a single group with universal membership is an equilibrium outcome.
Which is why all women are actually men.
Next consider the situation in which all players have joined both groups. The payoffs to a player are: Πi(si , s−i) = 21 − c n 1 2 (5) Exiting from one group and remaining member of only one group leads to the following individual payoff: Πi(si , s−i) = 1 − c n n α nα + (n − 1)α (6) 12 Thus, if everyone is a member of both groups then it is always strictly better to remain in both groups (so long as α < ∞).
Unless quitting one group gives you a better threat point with respect to the other group. Did you hear about Smith? He quit the Church. Now, he's asking for a raise from the Archdiocese. What cheek! Oh. I hadn't thought of that. A guy who ready to risk his immortal soul by quitting the Church will have no compunction of quitting his ill paid job as Treasurer. Where are going to find a qualified Accountant willing to work such long hours? I suppose he will get the raise and a bigger office. The nuns will have strict orders not to sit on his face. Sad.
Thus universal membership of both groups is always an equilibrium!
Because Partha thinks he has rigged the game and that he is smart. But he is a fool and there is no game here.
Social welfare exhibits the following ranking: S(n, 0) = S(0, n) = 1 > 1 − c = S(x, y), for x, y > 0. From above, we know that for α < α∗ the single group outcome cannot be sustained in equilibrium.
If there's a single group, there isn't a fucking group. Us placental mammals don't go around hugging each other because our mummies had titties.
When an individual becomes a member of a second group there is a loss due to conflict that is shared with current members of the current group.
This is why 'uncorrelated asymmetries' matter. They reduce conflict. What happens if you have 'preference falsification' or 'virtue signalling'? Iraq. Afghanistan. That's what. Pretending you lurve Muslims and want them to have Human Rights and Democracy and Lesbians in the military is what leads to your losing not just the oil or other resources those Muslims have but also making a fucking present of that vast wealth to turbaned Ayatollahs or the Taliban.
Had America contented itself with a 'war of revenge' on ragheads, rather than claimed a multiple identity as Lesbian Muslim Santa fucking Claus, its foreign policy would not, as Obama confessed, turned into 'doing stupid shit.'
On the other hand, the gain to joining a new group accrues fully to this player.
Which group hands out largesse to any mercenary little cunt who shows up? It is a different matter that good people may look after the indigent and make them feel equal members of the group. But there is a psychological, ethical or soteriological, pay off. That shite aint 'economic' coz there is no scarcity or opportunity cost.
So this player underestimates the costs of dual membership.
Why does the American army not let its soldiers also join the Russian Army and thus get two salary checks? Is it because Generals aren't as fucking stupid as mathematical economists?
This gives rise to excessive membership in equilibrium.
There is no fucking equilibrium, even if, by stipulation, there must be a 'fixed point'. This is because, if dual membership is permitted, then, no algebraic group exists nor is there a 'dynamical system'. There is just some nutter applying arbitrary labels to things. But those 'intensions' have no well defined 'extensions'.
Take 'Bourbaki', the French mathematical collective. No doubt, Cartan or Andre Weil could have done Bourbaki style work while also collaborating with Brouwer or Godel and doing a different type of math. But, qua Bourbaki, there would be no question of 'dual membership' or 'dual identity' because of the very rigorous standards maintained by Bourbaki.
However, for α > α∗ , social optimum is compatible with equilibrium.
No. This is because α∗ is not well defined. Look at the 'intension'. It is epistemic. You are bound to get the 'intensional fallacy' and impredicativity and other such shit.
Example 4 Indirect negative spillovers: private provision of local public goods A group consists of individuals who provide time and effort for a group specific local public good.
We can't know the membership of that group. There can only be arbitrary stipulations. The fact is, suppose my drunken advances to a young woman causes her to learn karate so as to break more than my nose should such a situation recur, and if she becomes a black belt and devotes herself to teaching karate to vulnerable people in my community with the result that all the bullies and muggers and drunken scum, like me, get so badly beaten that we turn over a new leaf, then, the fact is, my attempt to pinch a particular lady's bum was the biggest contributor to the provision of a 'local public good'. On the other hand, some fully paid up 'woke' virtue signaller who tried to dissuade the lady from learning karate on the grounds that aikido is way cooler- because it is useless unless you are as fat as Steven Segal- would have made a negative contribution.
Individuals have a fixed budget and allocate resources equally across the groups they join.
No. Individuals who join stupid groups end up with a much smaller budget.
Let nA be the number of individuals who join group A solely, nB be the number of individuals who join group B solely, and nAB be the number of individuals who join both groups. The payoffs to group A are: Rˆ(s) = f(nA + 1 2 nAB) (7) where f(.) is increasing. The payoff to player i under a strategy profile s = (si , s−i) is: Πi(si , s−i) = Rˆ A(s)1si(A) + Rˆ B(s)1si(B) . (8) So when a person switches to the other group the group loses 1 unit of contribution, while if a person moves from sole membership to dual membership then the group loses 1/2.
Because this cunt says so. Let 'group A' be guys who beat each other to death. Let 'group B' be guys eat their own shit till they fucking die'. How is the budget constraint supposed to remain fixed? Dead peeps can't fucking allocate resources though, no doubt, they can stink up the place but good.
Thus the payoff of a group is negatively affected by the size of the other group. This model is similar to the model of religious sects developed in Iannaconi (1992).
Whose first degrees were in Math. Had he been smart, Mathematicians would know his name. The cunt was so stupid he has to slum it in a wholly worthless branch of Econ.
13 Finally observe that this example corresponds to the case where F(Ki(s)) = 1, and the payoff takes the form of a pure local public good, i.e., there is no congestion.
In which case it isn't economic. There can be no economic model of it because there is no fucking opportunity cost.
4 Identity: multiple vs narrow This section studies the relation between socially efficient and Nash equilibrium construction of social identity.
We can't know what is 'socially efficient'. Nash eqbm is meaningless shite. Essentially it is the notion that if a guy has fixed a game he may think he has fixed that fucking game but he hasn't because he is as stupid as shit.
We focus on the case where F(Ki(s)) = Ki(s).2 It is useful to start with the benchmark case in which one group’s payoffs are independent of the size of the other group.
In which case there is either no scarcity or no 'Society'. Thus there can be no 'economic model'.
In this case R(x, y) = R(x), for all y; recall that payoffs are increasing in own membership R(x + 1) ≥ R(x), for all x ∈ {0, 1, ..., n}. The following result is then immediate. Proposition 1 Suppose R(x, y) = R(x) and R(x + 1) ≥ R(x). Then universal multiple identities is socially optimal.
Only because there is no fucking society and any fucking outcome can be arbitrarily called 'optimal'.
This group formation is also an equilibrium.
No. For there to be an equilibrium there has to be a dynamical system. But, there is no fucking ergodicity here. You just have ipse dixit arbitrary stipulations of an utterly foolish kind.
If R(x) is strictly increasing in x then universal multiple identities is uniquely efficient and also the unique equilibrium.
Fuck off! There is no mathematical structure because there is no mathematical representation with well defined extensions or graphs of functions. How can there be existence or uniqueness proofs?
Skipping over more such pseudo-mathsy masturbation we come to Partha's
Concluding remarks Personal identity has many facets, as it involves race, language, personal interests, religion, and ethnicity, among other attributes.
These are predicates merely. They have nothing to do with identity. It is not the case that I am interchangeable for all legal or economic purposes with some other guy who speaks English and is very very fucking flatulent.
Yet all over the world we see individuals defining themselves in narrow and exclusive terms.
Because the 'bourgeois strategy' of asserting, on the basis of an 'uncorrelated asymmetry' that your body is yours not that of some guy who claims to be you and who wants to cut your liver out of your body, is eusocial and the one Darwinian evolution is based on.
Cunts like Partha and Amartya may prefer to live in a La La land where they are actually White, Lesbian, Muslims rather than heterosexual Hindu Males who may have to run yet farther away from soon to be Muslim majority areas.
In this paper, our aim is to provide an explanation for this puzzle using a simple model of individual incentives and collective interests.
You failed. You are senile. Just fucking die already.
We take the view that, in day to day life, the different aspects of an individual personality remain latent and retain the feature of “perpetual possibilities”.
Which is why Partha isn't scissoring Amartya though that possibility must remain perpetually open. Still, this justifies my assertion that buddhijivis eat only dog turds even if they do no such thing. After all, who is to say that a 'perpetual possibility' is not the true essence of an individual personality?
Social and economic context present a background against which individuals choose to retain these different possibilities or to commit to one of these possibilities and to renounce the others.
Given the right socio-economic context, Partha and Amartya would be scissoring each other while devouring only dog turds.
In a context of inter-group conflict, a larger opponent group lowers the payoffs.
Which is why India ended up colonising Britain. Shame Rishi didn't understand this. He should have had Keir Starmer shot rather than meekly moving out of Number 10.
So a group gains strictly by prohibiting its current members from joining the other group.
Not necessarily. Our group may gain by infiltrating that of our enemy.
On the other hand, individual choice creates a negative externality: when a player joins a second group his ‘original’ group incurs a cost in terms of lost competitiveness, but the individual shares this cost with other group members.
No. If there is a cost to membership, then there is no externality. The thing is received through the market, not outside it. The situation is analogous to my having had to buy Pepsi yesterday because Coke's local distributor had fallen down on ensuring supplies to late-night convenience stores in my area.
Thus individuals prefer to have rich/multiple identities in excess of what groups desire.
Individuals may prefer to run up credit card debt in the name of Sir Partha Dasgupta. Come to think of it, that fucker is slim and handsome and probably much physically fitter than me. Why am I not allowed to trade bodies with him? Is it coz I iz Tamil?
This tension is a reason for widely observed narrow and exclusive personal identities.
No. It is the reason Partha pays taxes so that there is a Police force which will fucking arrest me and send me to jail if I try to steal Partha's identity to run up credit card debt.
John Maynard Smith explained long ago that 'uncorrelated asymmetries' give rise to the unique solution concept at work in Evolutionary Game Theory. Incidentally, Maynard Smith was a student of JBS Haldane who took Indian citizenship and joined Mahalanobis. Yet Bengalis like Partha ignore the guy completely. Why? How fucking stupid are they?
Oh. The joke is on me. Amartya and Partha and other such imbeciles have made money writing nonsense to befuddle Whitey. This is a case of 'the Empire strikes back'. Fuck you Whitey! Why were you so cruel and callous as to save Bengal from Famine and enslavement to the Japanese? Why could you not have had a nice multiple identity as a geisha who enjoys sucking off Samurai confiscating rice from starving Bengali Mathematical Economists?
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