Published: August 28, 2008 01:43 pm            

CHRISTY: The goal of the game

What I’m about to discuss should shock and even scare you. It’s one of those moments when you realize “I’m not really in control here; some larger force is actually in control and I’m just being allowed to exist in their world.”

I’m reading a book right now about game theory. It’s becoming a staple in business school training, but I was shocked to learn its been in use in politics since the Reagan era.

Game theory by definition is the science of rational behavior in interactive situations. That’s a complicated way to say “if I do this, what will someone else do?” Say I punch you in the nose. You can hit me back, do nothing, hire a lawyer and take my house, or any number of other possible outcomes. People study this seemingly simple logic so that they can predict what might happen in their particular business — if they make a hostile takeover bid for another company, or launch a new product in a competitive market dominated by one major player (think small software company competing against Microsoft).

It’s referred to as game theory because, quite literally, you learn by studying the moves of games as simple as tic-tac-toe and checkers and as complex as chess, with a heavy dose of everything in between. Remember that old movie staring Matthew Broderick where he mistakenly hacked his way into the military computers and nearly set off a nuclear war? The title was War Games, and it was modeled after game theory.

It may seem simple, but most complicated things are really just a series of simple things. And game theory, when expanded to full-force, is complicated. How complicated? Think John Nash, in the movie “A Beautiful Mind.” The real John Nash won the Nobel Prize for his study of game theory, and if you remember nothing else from the movie it should be the image of Nash at a chalkboard filled with mathematical equations, all adding up to one outcome. All non-math majors always cringe at such sights.

The math and science of game theory are deadly accurate, and for those of us that actually play games as a diversion, instead of competitively, its scary stuff. It’s the stuff of obsession, dominance, control and eventually world domination.

And that brings us back to government and politics. Some people vote as their civic duty, others play the game competitively, obsessively, and to gain dominance.

It turns out Ronald Reagan was the first president to actually hire a game theory staff member to help project outcomes of various strategies he was to develop. Remember Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers, who where were members of a union? He did so only after a game theory professional strategist told him the most likely outcome of such a move. Three years later Reagan won in a landslide. Clearly, he understood the cold hard rules of game theory.

The scary part of game theory — as its used in politics or in running governments — is what the goal of the game is. When you punch the variables into scientific models and look for outcomes, what goal are you trying to get to?

What happens if the goal of those in control of a government is to remain in control of the government, not necessarily to better the living conditions of the citizens as a whole?

This brings up the entire panoply of human development issues. We can only focus on one current dominant thought at a time, and we generally achieve what we focus most on, be it success or failure. If a politician is focused on staying in office first and foremost, then they are playing a different game than the public may be asking them to play. But studying game theory, and who is utilizing it, we learn that politicians can be focused on a different game and at the same time utilizing math and science to “win” that game, while you are merely an interested bystander. Factor in the obsessive, dominant and controlling nature of some “game” players, and you can see how our region remains in control of the same few politicians after nearly 40 years of constant decline.

A real question to be asked this campaign season might be more appropriately phrased “what game are you playing?” instead of listening to the campaign rhetoric about job creation or family values. Unfortunately, we’d need more then 30 seconds to ask the question, and more than 30 seconds to listen to an answer. That rules out most forums where the public interacts with their paid employees.

Tom Christy is the founder of FAIR Government, a non-political and non-editorial educational foundation dealing with local government issues. www.fair-government.org. He encourages communication and can be reach via email at aim1986@mac.com.

        

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