I occasionally play a board game called Seven Wonders. Over three rounds of gameplay, players construct buildings of different categories, all of which provide victory points in different ways, and at the end of the game, the player with the most victory points wins.
One of those categories is the “Military” building. At the end of each round, each player tallies the total number of their Military points, compares them with the player on their immediate left and right and then gets a score. If they have more than a given neighbour, they get points. If they have less than a given neighbour, they take a negative one-point token.
Thus, the way to avoid a negative one-point token is to either have the same as or a greater number of Military points than your neighbour. If no player built a Military building, no player would get a negative one-point token, but neither would they score a positive point. But, as anyone who has learned introductory game theory — or, really, anyone who plays any kind of game — would know, it is in your own incentive to build a Military building to capitalise on the possibility that your neighbours will not.
And, so, you would build one. But, as you build a Military building, your neighbours can observe that you built one.
They do not want to give you “free” positive points, and neither do they want to be on the receiving end of a negative one-point token. So, what do they do? They, too, build a Military building, at the expense of some other building that could have scored them more points. Now, if you know your neighbours have matched your Military points, we’re back to square one. Which then triggers another round of incentives to build the next Military building.
And so on.
Now, spending a turn to build a Military building is costly. There are other buildings to be constructed. But what this game mechanic has done is essentially trigger an arms race. It is in each player’s interest to continue erecting Military buildings but, for the group as a whole, the proliferation of Military buildings is inefficient and welfare-reducing.
This is very similar to an argument by Cornell University economist Robert Frank in his book, The Darwin Economy. In it, he describes the same mechanism, but using the antlers of an elk (instead of Military buildings). Elks with bigger antlers get to win fights against other (male) elks, which in turn gives them the opportunity to mate with more female elks. However, bigger antlers are also heavier antlers, slowing the elk down and increasing the probability of the antlers getting caught in low-lying tree branches, thus making the elk more vulnerable to predators such as wolves.
As Frank argues, elks as a whole would be better off if their antlers were four to five times smaller; the elks with the (relatively) largest antlers would still find their mates and the herd as a whole would be less susceptible to being a wolf pack’s dinner.
Frank then uses this analogy of how an individual arms race might be overall welfare-reducing to society to describe many instances of real-life situations. For instance, an actual nuclear arms race. Putting more and more capital into nuclear weapons, just for deterrence, is overall wasteful. That capital could have gone into investing in healthcare, education, public transport and whatever else, but instead goes into what is, essentially, well, a rocket-measuring contest.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, in Malaysia, we have seen an arms race of sorts in recent times that has, frankly, bordered on pure absurdity. In particular, I am referring to a coffee chain that has had to come out in defence of its own name and logo against accusations that it’s based on some Greek God (look, I play Dota, too — it’s difficult to convince me it’s not based on the Greek God). And then there’s the other case where a pizza chain has had to explain that its name means “us” as opposed to some North American country with a serious military complex, despite the fact that its prior branding on its website and advertisements clearly referred to that North American country.
It’s ridiculous that such performative things are considered news. But, such is the state of the arms race in Malaysia today — an arms race to show purity of spirit relative to others in society. Look, the coffee and pizza companies are just the unfortunate victims of this arms race; if we weren’t so hung up on trying to out-sanctify one another, we could devote precious human attention and media resources to real issues.
But an important question to ask remains — why are we so eager to showcase our purity relative to one another? Well, for one, we do know that, at least from electoral results, the country isn’t as united as we might want it or need it to be. And so, supporters on either side need to show not just their economic or social superiority over the other, but also that it has the moral high ground. And, in particular, the moral high ground with relations to “purity”.
According to the Moral Foundations theory by New York University professor Jonathan Haidt, there are six original moral foundations: Care (ability to feel and dislike the pain of others); Liberty (resentment and rejection of oppression); Fairness (equality and proportionality of justice); Loyalty (“one for all and all for one” but for my in-group); Authority (deference to prestigious figures in authority and respect for traditions); and Purity (striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble and more “natural” way).
In Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind, he shows that Democrats and Republicans in the US differ in terms of the moral foundations that they care about. In surveys carried out across a wide range of demographics, Haidt consistently finds that Democrats care most about Harm, Oppression and Fairness, but care much less about Authority, Loyalty and Purity. On the other hand, Republicans care equally across all six moral foundations. As such, by this theory, Republicans actually have a broader spectrum of morality than Democrats.
I don’t have the numbers for Malaysia, but I suspect that more Malaysians are closer to Republicans in caring about Authority, Loyalty and Purity, relative to Democrats.
And, in particular, the moral foundation of Purity is what is being bandied about now, in an arms race to show who has the higher moral ground. And if this purity arms race remains unchecked, it isn’t just coffee or pizza chains that will be harmed — it could be entire communities in Malaysia where resources for societal support are instead channelled towards this absurd arms race.
So, maybe, we should take to heart what all religions tell us — that humankind is imperfect in the first place — and try to see that, rather than get worked up over performative displays of purity, we should instead channel our efforts towards resolving real issues, helping others rather than judging them. As Taylor Swift advises, we all need to calm down.