There are two ways to use economics to analyze political activity (actually, there are more than two, but this article will cover only two of them). First, what do we mean by political activity? Attending rallies and protests, signing petitions, voting in elections, frequently trying to persuade people to support certain views or political policies, and things of that nature.
One way to think about activism is to see it as a form of production. In this model, activists engage in activism to produce some outcome. So, activists who are unhappy with the justice system protest in the streets, sign petitions, vote, and raise issues to produce a better justice system. Environmental activists engage in these activities to produce the outcome of better environmental health (however you define that). Viewed as a form of production, activism aims to secure or improve production. Public GoodsFor example, in the case of the environment, improving air quality is a public good, which is non-rivalrous and non-excludable.
The second perspective is to see activism as a form of consumption rather than a form of production. What does it mean to be a consumer of activism? It means that activists engage in activism in order to enjoy private benefits. These benefits can include a sense of community and belonging with fellow activists, gaining social status, and a sense of purpose and meaning. Activism as production is centered on the production of public goods, while activism as consumption is about the acquisition of private goods. When engaged in as a form of consumption, the broader consequences of activism are Externalities.
In the same way education While activism is both a form of human capital accumulation and social signaling, it is also a form of both production and consumption. Activists are motivated by one or the other or both to varying degrees. But different forms of activism have very different implications for what we should expect.
If we view activism as a form of production, we expect activists to have deep knowledge of environmental science, criminal justice, and other subjects. Activists have clear end goals, and a clear point at which they can say “mission accomplished,” and their activities end when they have completed that mission. Activists will closely monitor how their activities move them closer to or further from their desired goals. This motivates them to engage in self-analysis and course correction if their approaches seem ineffective or counterproductive.
When activism is undertaken as a form of consumption, none of the above conditions apply. Because activists seek personal psychological and emotional gratification, as well as social validation, they do not particularly need to have deep knowledge of the topic. It is expected to find people who protest passionately about an issue, yet at the same time cannot answer even the most basic questions about that same issue. Activists also cannot clearly identify and define what the desired outcome is, nor know how they will know it has been achieved except in the vaguest and hardest to define ways. Activists do not say “mission accomplished” at any point, but rather move the goalposts all the time. Activists do not scrutinize how effectively their activities achieve their stated goals, nor do they take on new approaches when certain methods of activism seem ineffective or clearly counterproductive. Activists are motivated by the most prevalent issues and the issues that make them feel the most good, rather than focusing on the most pressing issues and using the most effective methods. Their activism is centered on activities that send the strongest signal and increase their social status, rather than on effectively achieving their stated objectives.
Activism as production has some potentially socially beneficial features that activism as consumption does not. The course correction mechanisms we expect from activism as production are of course imperfect, but they can at least help tilt the movement in a direction that leads to the production or improvement of some public good. But activism as consumption lacks these mechanisms, so it is purely by chance that the externalities of this consumption will be positive rather than negative. There is also a high prior probability that the externalities will be negative. Because there are more ways to make things worse than better, activism without a way to evaluate and correct is much more likely to do more harm than good.
It seems to me that most political activity today is the consumption of private goods with high negative externalities, with relatively little productive activity that truly contributes to the creation or improvement of public goods. Those who treat activism and political activity as consumer goods can best be explained by a line from a play by T. S. Eliot: Cocktail Party:
Half of the harm in the world comes from people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to harm, but they’re not interested in harm, or they don’t notice it, or they justify it because they’re so caught up in the never-ending struggle to make others think well of them.
