The Intention Trap (NatCon Series 1)

Ask What Elites Do, Not What They Want

Last week I attended the National Conservatism Conference in Miami, Florida. This article is the first in a series of my impressions.

A frequent debate I overheard (probably more than twenty times at least) was over the intentions of failing elites and institutions. It seems to be an area of hot disagreement within the broad tent of populism. There are two camps with their own faults.

• The conspiratorial camp clumps together too many events and has an extreme overestimate of the ability for liberals to coordinate. A line I used often is “If you think Elon Musk couldn’t do it, don’t expect liberals to be able to”. This doesn’t mean that some low-n (read: easier to accomplish) conspiracy theories can’t be true, such as COINTELPRO or lying about WMDs in Iraq. Nonetheless, this camp leads to paranoia and general pessimism which is unwarranted and inconsistent with the multitude of Democratic political failures on foreign policy, abortion, immigration, and much more. 

• The forgiving camp attributes too much agency to ‘democracy’ or ‘the free marketplace of ideas’ despite a lack of results from those avenues. Many desired societal changes are off limits from democratic governments and many individuals cannot be convinced. In general, the consequence of this view is an unwillingness to use power: to fire government officials, delegitimize media, or influence corporations. I should remark that this type of centrism is consistent if someone simply doesn’t want things to change, but many people advocated drastic change while holding to this position! 

To summarize, the failure modes are paranoid pessimism and ineffective ambition. Changing institutions requires the willingness of the former and the pensiveness of the latter to use power in a targeted, strategic way. So how can that gap be bridged? 

The answer is not to ask the question at all. As said in the subtitle, “Ask What Elites Do, Not What They Want”. There’s this strange psychological effect in conservative media where the case for Anthony Fauci to be removed had to be because of the intentions deep in his heart to harm the American public that only he could know. But those intentions don’t matter all that much. The case for Anthony Fauci being fired was simple: he failed to contain Covid-19 and advocated for policies which inflicted catastrophic economic and personal damage. To reach a broader audience, you don’t need any stronger rhetoric than that. It’s also objectively and measurable true.

In many cases, truth and motivation are not in tension. Even for committed partisans making a maximalist case, they would do a better job of convincing people of their policies without allegations that are impossible to prove one way or the other. The same can be said for most public bureaucracies, media, academics, et cetera.

Tyler Cowen suggested on my podcast that this urge to attribute intentions comes from Protestant Christianity. Intentions are an important component of individual forgiveness and redemption. However, they quickly become impossible to evaluate in circumstances of complex power, institutions, incentives, and selection mechanisms. In the end, the fastest way out is to see elites as they are, not as they wish to be.