Game Theory and the Transactional Nature of Violence

1,565 words

A revelation which I had in prison (in some ways a relatively high-strung, low-trust, violent environment) is that violence is transactional. This lesson from prison politics is especially relevant to real world politics. A transaction means two or more entities exchange items which the other side wants. When violence is in play, one of these “items” is the lack of physical pain, lack of injury, or even the continuation of your existence. Make no mistake though, this is still an exchange, albeit by compulsion. In prison politics, which is much more realpolitik than modern politics in the West, the transactional cost-benefit analysis is much more relevant. General Clausewitz’s famous statement that “war is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means” is especially pertinent in this subject. It is important to understand the transactional nature of politics if we are to fully understand politics itself.

Before we can relate violence to politics, let us play some game theory. Person A wishes to be left alone. Person B wants something that person A has. Person B threatens person A. Person A has two choices: fight or flight (talking it out in “the marketplace of ideas,” is an apolitical option which we will simply ignore). In one scenario, A has less to lose than B. In the other, vice versa. In the first scenario, person A will fight, even if weaker than person B. He might lose or person B might give up or even have been bluffing the whole time. Either way, B might think twice next time and pick an easier target. In the second scenario, person A gives up the cheese to person B as he has more to lose and can recoup the loss, whereas for person B the theft may have been a big gain. Clearly station in society has a major effect in rational action.

Unfortunately for person A, while flight may work a few times, eventually he will be whittled down to the bone and no longer have much to lose, at which point the whole point of flight has been lost. And as we have seen in many tragedies across the West, as this hypothetical person B is often not even rational, he may simply execute his victim for no reason after following through with the robbery. So what can person A do in a semi-anarchic or anarcho-tyrannical world where incentive structures against victimizers are eroding? The politics of prisons can lend us some wisdom.

Obviously, prisons segregate themselves by races and gangs. The reason for this is clear enough – communal protection. The risk of being victimized is distributed among the group in a sort of insurance network and, furthermore, the repercussion for victimization is heightened. A gang member who victimizes others too frequently may end up excommunicated or face corporal punishment by the insurance network. Typically, this is not done by a rival group but surprisingly by one’s own group. However, this is only possible if a rival group exists. If an individual from group B victimizes an individual from group A, either group B will punish its own member or group A will attack the individual. The former outcome is preferred as when the group attacks a rival individual, the rival group now is forced to get involved, jeopardizing the security of two collectives rather than one individual. Therefore, an arms race of bodies is the rational action to create mutually assured destruction, thereby ensuring peace.

To understand how sinister the individualization of white populations is, let us look at a different scenario where an individual B from group B victimizes individual A who has no group A. While the group B may or may not find the actions of one of their members distasteful, there is no incentive to punish him as the chances of facing consequences from a rival group are nil. Sociopathic members of group B may even make a habit of victimizing A until it is seen as normal behavior and actually copied by those in the group who in a different scenario may not have been violent at all. This is essentially the scenario that the-powers-that-be are purposefully fostering when they encourage racial solidarity in nonwhite races but make it taboo amongst whites. There are countless instances in which we can see this with our very eyes. If a minority is attacked by another race, all of his brethren jump into the fray. They shoot first and ask questions later. When a white is attacked by another race, typically people look around awkwardly and embarrassedly wander off camera.

Part of this is a result of individualist propaganda targeting whites but much of it is also a factor of what I call “wishful white supremacy.” This is the idea that white people have control of a certain proportion of society, the economy, politics, the globe, etc. and therefore it is fine that this proportion is shrinking to some degree because in the grand scheme of things it is a drop in the bucket, and whites will always be in control of white societies. This is the basically the upper-middle class centrist version of the more laughable white privilege farce. It is a sort of toxic smugness that, rather than being utilized to increase white power in society, is actually being twisted into apathy and furthers white dispossession. In a word, it is a cope. Obviously, if trends continue, whites will have little power even in their own societies, let alone globally.

But it is a cope coming from a certain place of high standing. Recall the importance of station in society to our game theory experiment. Whites still have it good in most of the West which explains why the most tribal of whites are the ones who live in horrifically inferior conditions to the smug upper-middle class whites who have often defected to the left, the faction of the new normal. South Africa, the gutted remnants of much of middle America, and the rougher (still white) areas of Western Europe are prime examples of this. As the saying goes, they have nothing to lose but their chains.

This is why the elite fears this class of people. Those who are willing to fight back against the victimizer in the game theory scenario cannot simply be whittled down. If minorities could be organized by rogue elites to take over societies of the West, imagine how easily it would be for majorities to do the same, especially considering the superiority of human capital of the right. The left is able to mobilize those who have no reason to feel that their backs are against the wall. It has long been observed that the left maintains the frame of the underdog long past what logically makes sense – but humans are not logical. If we were purely logical and wished the best life for an individual, we would condemn the “victim mentality” that leftist types promote.

But where has this led to on a non-individual level? Game theory would predict that said individuals might indeed live a better life than others, as whites generally do even in contemporary American society, but that quality of life would be slowly whittled away by those with less to lose. Eventually, it would sink below average. At this point, devoid of solidarity or prestige, the future would not look very bright for this individual, and especially for the group to which he belonged. As a group, they would be forced to form solidarity to keep their heads above the water, but only just. This group would have a very hard time getting back to a level of existence that would be considered liveable, let alone its original state. No wonder white flight is the norm! Flight and continuing down the same mistaken road is much easier than multigenerational reconquista, especially considering that modern white family values are having a hard time reconquering the family dinner table, let alone entire regions of the West.

Game theory, and especially understanding violence as transactional in nature, is critical to changing the white zeitgeist. It makes sense why people say that it needs to get worse before it gets better, but even this is not completely necessary. What matters is perception, which is changed by metapolitics. White people don’t need to allow themselves to be debased to the level that whites in Brazil and South Africa live in if they believe that this is imminent in the same way that Jews believe that the Holocaust 2.0 is just around the corner or how that libtards believe in the imminent Trumpenreich. If you judge them by what they do and not what they say, instead of believing in imminent, anti-white totalitarianism, white conservatives apparently believe that it won’t be so bad and that getting Waco’d is inevitable if you get involved in any politics which actually matter. Again, perception is key and it is Team Evil that is using an event from 30 years ago to make sure that, more than just defeating their political rivals, these rivals never even appear in the arena in the first place. The implications for conservatism as such should be obvious. Without understanding these trends, it is impossible to guide a truly revolutionary movement to victory as a revolutionary movement and not merely as a conservative one.