The blueprint for today’s Conservative Party can be found in
Tom Flanagan’s work Game Theory and
Canadian Politics (1998). The
discovery that Harper’s erstwhile mentor has written a book on Game Theory -
not a very interesting one, mind you (a selective read is recommended) - makes the
evidence of the proverbial smoking gun become clear. Game Theory explains the
so-called Fair Elections Act.
This blog first broached Game Theory in my review of
Lawrence Martin’s Harperland, and I
returned to the matter more philosophically with my discussion of “Harper and
Hobbes”. Rather than repeat myself excessively I invite the reader to consult
the aforementioned entries, but allow me to point out that Game Theory began in 1944 with the publication of The Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour,
the joint work of John von Neumann (a mathematical genius) and Oskar
Morgenstern (an economist). It was also later
developed by Princeton’s John Nash (“A Beautiful Mind”), for which he won a
Nobel Prize.
Stephen Harper would have encountered Game Theory in his
study of economics, and this fact has been missed by his many observers – and
critics. Game Theory is also rooted in
the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, particularly his Leviathan (1651), published in the wake of England’s Puritan
Revolution – and the execution of King Charles I in 1649. Central to both Hobbes and Game Theory is
what Flanagan describes as its “Methodological Individualism” which is inherent
in “Rational Choice”: “… rational choice is sceptical about speaking of vague
aggregates such as ‘society’ or ‘the nation’ because such terms are often used
to disguise very real differences among the people who make up the
collectivity.”[1] Game theory argues from the premise of
“rational actors seeking to maximize their own self interest”[2]
(two questionable assumptions, indeed), and Flanagan twists himself into knots (indicating
shallow imagination) over the altruism of Mother Teresa.
According to Game Theory there is essentially nothing but rational
self-interest, a rather paranoid vision of the world, which helps to explain Harper’s
penchant for secrecy (and John Nash’s bout with schizophrenia). Game theory also argues that is rational not to
cooperate, which implies – logically speaking, of course - that a Game Theorist
would never trust his or her Doctor, who must have an ulterior motive. True to form, Game Theory flouts public health
concerns and gives legitimacy to those who avoid vaccinations, dubiously
described by Flanagan as “a rational exercise in pursuit of self-interest.”[3] Apparently Flanagan – and Game Theory - forget
David Hume’s famous contention in A
Treatise of Human Nature (1739) that “reason is, and ought only to be the slave
of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and
obey them.”[4]
As discussed, Game Theory also has no sense of collective
values: Medicare can be privatized and the CBC slashed, raising the question of
what is Canada, outside of Harper’s symbolic esteem for the military and (of
course) the “cult” surrounding our Prime Minister’s excessive “leadership” (thus
tearing a page from Hobbes’s Leviathan). Because Game Theorists have no sense of the
public, how is it that the “Harper Government” deigns to speak in terms of elected
“public service” – surely a relic from a bygone age. Conservative “parliamentarians” are actually living
a public lie at the public’s expense by acting only in their self-interest:
hence the so-called Fair Elections Act.
It is important to note that Pierre Poilievre, the
Democratic Reform Minister who is responsible for the “Fair” Election agenda,
attacks our Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand in vitriolic terms derived
from Flanagan’s book: “he wants more power, a bigger budget and less
accountability” as quoted by the Globe
and Mail in their record eighth
editorial opposing the Fair Elections Act.[5] Compare this with Flanagan’s text who writes
in his conclusion of Game Theory and
Canadian Politics: “Nevertheless, the evidence of self- interest is all
around us … [for example] public servants seeking bigger budgets and career
advancement.”[6] In
other words, Poilievre’s speech writers are dipping into Flanagan to justify
their case.
Meanwhile Flanagan laments in his forthcoming book Persona Non Grata that Harper is “Nixonian”
and treats people as “disposable”, surely one of the hazards of Game Theory
when only the “individual” counts – society be damned.[7] Allow me to recommend by way of conclusion some
folk wisdom, which comes from an observation of nature (Game Theory is also big
in biology today): a tree does not grow in solitude; trees need other trees
around them to survive and flourish. In
other words, we as people cannot thrive as self-interested individuals alone, a
fact which indicates that the asocial and atomized model behind Game Theory as
it applies to Canadian politics should be jettisoned lest it poison the public
any further.
[1] Thomas
Flanagan, Game Theory and Canadian
Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), p. 5.
[2] Ibid., p. 164.
[3] Ibid., p. 73.
[4]
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature,
ed. Ernest G. Mossner (Toronto: Penguin, 1985), p. 462 (Book II, Section 3 “Of
the influencing motives of the will.”)
[5] Globe
and Mail, “If only evidence could vote,” Saturday April 12, 2014, p. F9.
[6] Flanagan, Game
Theory and Canadian Politics, p. 164.
[7] Globe
and Mail, Thursday April 10, pp.A1,A4.
