No Tax on Tips: Democrats Believe They Are in the Lead
No Tax on Tips: Democrats Believe They Are in the Lead
Knowing game theory will tell you why people do what they do
After the entire corporate media complex panned (or worse) Donald Trump’s now famous proposal to eliminate federal income tax on tips, Kamala Harris on Saturday copied Trump’s policy word for word. Not even the Washington Post denies this is anything but policy theft.
This wasn’t the first Trump policy Kamala has stolen. She’s also promised (unconvincingly) that she will seal the border and reduce inflation. Kamala is basically reading Trump’s stump speech without all the genius ad libs.
I’m not going to go all political on this. Instead, I’m going to explain why Kamala is copying all of Trump’s moves.
The answer is game theory.
In a competition where a player’s moves are immediately visible to other players, the best strategy—the unbeatable strategy—is for the leader to copy the moves of the trailer.
To explain why this works, let’s looke at one of my favorite strategy books, Thinking Strategically by mathematicians Dixit and Nalebuff.
The authors tell us the story of Dennis Connor’s famous collapse at the 1983 America’s Cup finals. Connor’s boat Liberty was wildly in the lead going into the final races against Australia. All he head to do to win was to jump out into the lead in the next race (which he did) and then imitate whatever the Aussies did.
Connor had another idea.
At the start, Liberty got off to a 37-second lead when Australia II jumped the gun and had to recross the starting line. The Australian skipper, John Bertrand, tried to catch up by sailing way over to the left of the course in the hopes of catching a wind shift. Dennis Conner chose to keep Liberty on the right-hand side of the course. Bertrand’s gamble paid off. The wind shifted five degrees in Australia II’s favor and she won the race by one minute and forty-seven seconds. Conner was criticized for his strategic failure to follow Australia II’s path. Two races later, Australia II won the series.1
Why was Connor’s error so obvious? Because this strategy of game theory is widely known among sailboat racers—and racers of all stripes, frankly.
Sailboat racing offers the chance to observe an interesting reversal of a “follow the leader” strategy. The leading sailboat usually copies the strategy of the trailing boat. When the follower tacks, so does the leader. The leader imitates the follower even when the follower is clearly pursuing a poor strategy. Why? Because in sailboat racing (unlike ballroom dancing) close doesn’t count: only winning matters. If you have the lead, the surest way to stay ahead is to play monkey see, monkey do.2
We can expect Harris to continue stealing Trump’s moves unless her campaign becomes convinced she is behind. Even though copying the opponent’s positions on everything is crass and fake, it works. Scott Adams pointed out today that, regardless of whether you believe Harris is sincere about eliminating taxes on tips, millions of hospitality workers who might have begrudgingly voted for Trump because of the no-tax pledge have a “fake because” to vote for Harris, instead.
Aside: “Fake because” is a Scott Adams concept that offers a plausible excuse for a behavior that is logically inconsistent with one’s interests. It gives women, in particular, cover to vote for consensus rather than for actual results. I discussed this phenomenon here:
The potential good new for America: if Kamala is not in the lead, this strategy will steer her boat right into a rocky shoal.
One way or another, Kamala’s team believes its candidate is in the lead. Her team will continue to imitate Trump until it is convinced otherwise through internal polling.
Now, it’s up to Trump to do something Kamala will not imitate. And foreign policy is the one place Kamala cannot deviate from her charted course.
Dixit, Avinash K.; Barry J. Nalebuff. Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life (Norton Paperback) (p. 10). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
Ibid.