Friday, April 2, 2021

There are two different languages spoken in the US today, both in English.

There are two different languages spoken in the US today, both in English.  One is the language of Coercion and the other is the language of Incentives.  Incentive speakers are generally bilingual and understand Coercion but also generally refuse to use it on principled grounds.  Coercion speakers do not understand Incentives and are constantly perplexed.

Incentive speakers tend to be Libertarians, classical liberals (now known as conservatives), traditionalists, most varieties of Christians, blue collar Democrats, economists, project managers, merchants and manufacturers, etc.  Anyone who has to work collaboratively to achieve outcomes.

Coercion speakers tend to be adherents of social justice theory and critical race theory, strong government union members, any governmental agency with weak oversight, academia, mainstream media, Big City administrations, puritanical religions, people with strong grievances and little education, the privileged and educationally certified (who imagine themselves to be the deciders and not the coerced), politicians with electorally secure positions, etc.  Anyone who customarily achieves their desired outcomes through force, pain or punishment or the threat of force, pain or punishment.

You can see this mix of languages on this CNN clip.  Whoever is the guest speaking, she is speaking the language of incentives.  From his perplexed expression, you can see Chris Cuomo is monolingual in coercion.  

The interviewee is empirical, logical and rational.  Once a state is 100% open, then there is no incentive for people to become vaccinated other than their own decision-making and sense of risks.  If you want maximum vaccination, that is an undesirable outcome.

But there is a window between closed economies and open economies, whether it is a week or a couple of months.  If, by getting the vaccine, you personally are freed from the shackles and restrictions of the past year or so, then you have a strong incentive towards becoming vaccinated.  In that window of time, between coercively closed and freely open, there is that window of opportunity when people can and will choose to become vaccinated through their own self-interest.

The interviewee has centuries of evidence backing up the proposition that well-crafted incentives work when nothing else will.  She speaks Incentive.

Those who speak only Coercion, such as her interviewer, almost certainly do not understand this and hear it only as gibberish.

 

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