Never worked on a market then? In the old days traders would make two piles of the same produce (cauliflowers, say) and price one pile dearer than the other. There were always people who bought the dearer caulis, for whatever reasons, and if the stallholder sold out of the cheaper ones he just made two smaller piles out of the remaining dear ones — and so on… Irrational? I don’t know. Profitable, certainly. ”

As it happens, I ran a market stall for a few weeks. It wasn’t very successful, partly because we were quite bad at pricing our goods. That example does sound particularly daft (same product, same stall, different prices) but it still sounds like in general, people go for the cheaper option. In other words, you don’t need EVERYONE in the market to behave perfectly rationally in every decision they take, just for most people to be behaving quite or moderately rationally for most of the time. That is enough to have the correct incentives feed into the system.

Or Blair?

I’m not saying that emotional engagement is the only option available to a politician. But it does matter and the Republicans have been great at using that than the Democrats. The latter have a problem with new ideas, as New Labour does.

But the advantage New Labour has, I feel, is that the Tories have been rubbish at aping the Republicans…. so Labour have managed to be superior tacticians.

Not unlike “We’re spending more on the NHS, so it must be better”.

Sunny: everyone engages in positioning, weasel words etc. But I get suspicious when people implicitly or explicitly claim that only the other lot do it.

Never worked on a market then? In the old days traders would make two piles of the same produce (cauliflowers, say) and price one pile dearer than the other. There were always people who bought the dearer caulis, for whatever reasons, and if the stallholder sold out of the cheaper ones he just made two smaller piles out of the remaining dear ones — and so on… Irrational? I don’t know. Profitable, certainly.

ad, on the subject of abortion I would make this point. Both the terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life” tell their own side’s story in the debate and leave out the story the other side would like to tell. However, I think that in terms of pure practicality attempting to discuss issues and giving each issue time appropritate to it’s importance and using language that is completely neutral. Since bias is pretty much inherent in use of language by politicians, it seems logical that a politican should tell their story and leave it to his or her opponent to point out the holes.

In part doesn’t this come back to Blair during the Iraq war. Blair said he was sincere about there being weapons of mass destruction there- as if just sincerely holding a belief was enough. But it isn’t enough to just hold a view with conviction, you also have to be right- ie your view has to be close to the truth. Blair in Iraq wasn’t right- he hadn’t taken the time to check his convictions against the evidence, against the facts. That betrays I think his mental bias towards this kind of thinking- ie that what matters is that you are sincere and act according to your conscience whereas what matters is that you are those things, and that more importantly you’re right.

Which is just another kind of positioning.

Of course, but I don’t have a problem with that positioning. Positioning is necessary precisely because people don’t make political decisions on rational evaluations, but on emotional instinct. Which is also one of the reasons why Cameron has tried so hard (and still found it difficult) to throw off the ‘Tory-toff’ image.

Remember that every single one of the biases Westen described exists in your mind as well.

I’m not denying I’m biased. Neither am I denying that one should position themselves. I think politics is a dirty game and it will never be a nice game as such. If you have convictions in your ideas then you have to sell them to the electorate. If you can’t, then you’re rubbish.

That is of course only half the problem. The other half – that the Democrats (and New Labour) have is that they don’t have ideas to sell.

I think it is more about excusing ones own defeat. No one ever wrote a book explaining how their own side won because the people were irrational.

And another part is excusing one’s own attempt to manipulate the electorate.

For example: Left-wing Americans have made similar points to a certain extent – particularly around the language used to deny the choice of abortion (”pro-life”) and cutting welfare (”tax-relief”) that it automatically puts them at a disadvantage.

And you don’t think the term “pro-choice” is manipulative? Pro-choice about what? Heroin? Conscription? Income tax? Wife-beating? Sex-selective abortion?

I don’t have a problem with abortion. But the whole point about talking about being “pro-choice” is to avoid drawing attention to what you are talking about.

Which is just another kind of positioning.

Remember that every single one of the biases Westen described exists in your mind as well. In fact, if you are interested in politics, they are probably far stronger in your mind than in the mind of the average voter. Most of them are connected to feelings of loyalty after all. And we are all loyal to our own side, are we not?

A few thoughts occur to me. I’m reading Matt Bai’s book: ‘The Argument’ right now, which briefly looks at the Democratic party’s own navel-gazing at why they lost the election.

“What’s the matter with Kansas” is mentioned in there too.

ad says: If your ideas have been rejected by the electorate, claiming that the electorate is irrational and wrong is a lot more comforting than considering that you might have been wrong yourself. Which is what lead to the theories of false consciousness.

I don’t think this is necessarily about blaming the electorate. I think this is about positioning yourself and your message. The point I would take from here is that the mainstream left is sometimes too afraid to aggressively position their message emotionally as opposed to rationally.

Left-wing Americans have made similar points to a certain extent – particularly around the language used to deny the choice of abortion (”pro-life”) and cutting welfare (”tax-relief”) that it automatically puts them at a disadvantage.

Language and emotions are much more important in politics than we would like to admit. More recently, we saw Nadine Dorries use the phrase “The abortion industry” here to try and make out like there were vested financial interests in giving women that option etc etc.
Why the liberal-left doesn’t get down and dirty on those terms really annoys me.

That piece of pedantry aside, two thoughts occur to me.

The first is that the idea that voters are irrational is hardly new to the left. Think of all those theories of “false consciousness”.

The second is that this complaint about irrational voters has been made before by left wing Americans over the last decade. “What’s the matter with Kansas” etc. Probably the Republicans will start writing the same sort of book after they lose the next election (which seems likely).

If your ideas have been rejected by the electorate, claiming that the electorate is irrational and wrong is a lot more comforting than considering that you might have been wrong yourself. Which is what lead to the theories of false consciousness.

The Tories have not been so analytic over the last decade, but they have clearly been influenced by similar thoughts.

Of course, consumers make little mistakes all the time (mistaking good packaging or framing for a sign of higher quality for example) but in general, all the little decisions tend to add up to generate better and better products in the market.

The problem with political parties is that what they are selling rarely has a very accurate price tag on it. If it does, it might not be the voter that has (or thinks they have) to pay the price upon voting for it. Someone else will be forced to pay and it will be down to one’s personal affiliations and inclinations over whether you believe this other group ought to pay for your policies. So the rational voter is indeed a myth, and this piece reminds me somewhat of this fascinating article from a few months ago: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8262

Also, incidently reminds me of this which is hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M-cmNdiFuI