The groundswell of neighborly compassion we witness today in response to the coronavirus crisis, as well as the apparent end to the presidential primary season, has me thinking about an experience from a few short weeks ago.
On the left side of the bumper of the car in front of us was a sticker supporting a 2020 presidential candidate. On the other side, a sticker with a matching background said, “Hate Rich People.” It was Sunday morning, and my wife Dot and I were on the way to church in our small town. Given the time of day and the way the family with small children was dressed in the car ahead of us, they likely were too.
We stared at the bumper stickers as we waited for a traffic light to turn green. I turned toward Dot and said, “What a pity that politics can fall to the point of promoting hatred.” It’s as if political forces are encouraging the formation of two tribes of people, rich and poor, and the poor (and perhaps the middle class) are encouraged to hate the rich. I could not stop thinking about the children in the car and what they might be learning from the bumper sticker.
I thought about it later while listening to a summary of good things people were doing to help each other to deal with the severe hardships posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Yes, it’s clear that cataclysmic struggles can bring out some of the best that is in us. It’s also still the case that tribal differences can cause us to question the motivation and sincerity of folks who happen to be members of a competing political tribe. Sometimes, it seems, hatred gets embedded and just won’t go away.
Not long before noticing the bumper sticker, I was invited to give a lecture on the economics of hatred. I turned it down, saying that so far as I knew, economics provided no rational framework to apply to the topic. But now, I realize that I was wrong. Economics does have something of a framework for this.
Indeed, two colleagues and I published a paper in The Journal of Socio-Economics several years ago that could directly relate. No, we had not focused on hatred — just the reverse. Our piece was about those in the Arab world who are accorded a privileged status, in a sense the opposite of hatred, but something which may through unintended consequence generate jealousy or hatred.
The article was titled “Regulation, trust, and cronyism in Middle Eastern societies: The simple economics of ‘wasta.’” In the Arab world, the word “wasta” is used to signal that one is entitled to special treatment. For example, someone seeking a driver’s license can tell the clerk, “I have wasta,” and by doing so, move to the head of the line. This means, of course, that those without wasta are in an inferior position. Those lacking wasta may, in some cases, be looked down upon or even hated. And, of course, hatred sent from one direction generates hatred in return.
Our economic analysis discussed how tribalism can bring major benefits to tribe members who trade with each other, obtain better service in restaurants, have access to superior healthcare, and can rely on tribal support in the event of injury and any other hardship. But tribalism also imposes a serious cost on the tribe: lost contact with the skills, ideas, and services that could be obtained in nontribal markets.
Blind loyalty to a tribe and its customs and ways can lead to weak economic growth, lower levels of prosperity, and (though we did not say this then) being viewed as inferior by the nontribal world. All this suggests that tribalism leads to the separation of people into distinct communities where children are taught to recognize who is good and who may be bad, thereby raising invisible walls that divide people and spread hatred.
Sometimes, of course, there are things other than kinship and tribal membership that define who we are and how we should live. As the Sunday bumper sticker suggests, differences in income and wealth can be viewed as distinguishing traits. Some children can be taught that rich people are selfish, dishonest, in control of government, and never to be trusted. Offspring of the rich can be instructed to believe that people of lesser means are lazy, dumb, always on welfare, and also never to be trusted.
This is problem enough. We don’t need special interest politics to feed on these unfortunate distinctions and even, as the bumper sticker put it, promote the hatred of people who happen to be members of the other tribe.
This will be doubly true whenever this public health crisis fades. The temptation to return to our tribal ways will again grow stronger, and yet we must still face a tricky economic recovery — together. Let’s hope that after this challenging time, any crisis-driven uptick in goodwill lingers a little longer than usual.
On further reflection, I remember another bumper sticker that caught my eye a while back: “Engage in Random Acts of Kindness.” Thankfully, there is more than one voice in this wilderness. I hope our politicians are listening.
Bruce Yandle is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and dean emeritus of the Clemson University College of Business & Behavioral Science. He developed the “Bootleggers and Baptists” political model.
