The classic interrogation trope involves a suspect who is being interrogated by two police officers—one who is friendly and tries to offer to help the suspect, and one who is aggressive and threatens them with the consequences of not cooperating. We can think of the two cops as components of the Police Agent, and they are pursuing two goals: Trust and Fear. Both Trust and Fear are sub-goals for the ultimate goal which is likely a confession, plea deal or something of that nature, but the officers have uncertainty about how much Trust or Fear might motivate the suspect towards this ultimate goal, so they want to maximize both. Here, Trust is built by the “Good Cop” while Fear is built by the “Bad Cop”. Imagine both cops start out pretty evenly split between pursuing Trust and Fear, but the the first cop is naturally a bit more aggressive (this is the “Bad Cop”) and so he is following a slightly aggressive strategy (i.e. geared towards Fear). Vice versa for the second cop (“Good Cop”). Now because the suspect is already afraid of the Bad Cop, the Bad Cop gets more Fear from increasing their aggression than the Good Cop would, as it’s taken more seriously. Similarly, because the suspect is already slightly friendly towards the Good Cop, the Good Cop gets more Trust from increasing their friendliness than the Bad Cop would, because they’ve built rapport and it’s seen as more genuine. Thus, in order to maximize the total amount of Trust and Fear, the Good Cop should completely specialize in friendliness and the Bad Cop should completely specialize in aggression, due to their comparative advantages.
Example Two: Multi-Party Systems
In a multi-party system, you might have three political parties that are all broadly on the same side of the spectrum, with little doubt they’d form a governing coalition if they could. Let’s say there are n groups that these three parties can possible draw votes from, with each group representing a certain policy goal that all three parties would be happy or indifferent towards implementing (example for the left: unions, immigrants, students, renters). So we have three subsystems (each party) and n goals they are try to maximize. Now note that rhetoric / messaging is generally tied to what goals you focus on, and that a given voter may find different rhetoric more or less persuasive for a given political goal. If all three parties attempt to solve all n goals equally, they will likely have very similar rhetoric / messaging due to similar goal focus and composition of their political coalition. This means any given voter will likely be hearing only one version of a message, but hearing it from three different sources, which minimizes the chance of the message landing and maximizes confusion & conflict. If instead, each of the three parties focuses on a different subset of groups and policy goals (based on whatever they are randomly currently inclined towards) , any given voter will hear three distinct messages on similar goals and so will be likelier to be persuaded by one of them—furthermore the messaging is likelier to be more direct and less confused. So to maximize the likelihood of achieving any of the n goals—by maximizing the likelihood of these three parties winning a majority of seats—these parties should specialize in different types of rhetoric. The key aspect of comparative advantage here is that there’s a negative interaction term between all the different groups/goals (representing confusion of rhetoric and wasted messaging) so parties can achieve Pareto-optimal gains by focusing on a specific group/goal and leaving another to a different party. This may seem like a poor explanation for party specialization given the historical ways in which parties have formed, but parties are a revolving door of new members and a system where each party pulls in members from a subset of the n groups and those members then push that party towards advocating for that subset of n groups is stable and maximizes any one group’s chances of success. Friendly party leaders can also talk to each other to achieve some version of this coordination—I’ve seen this in practice in my own country. Note: this idea is not novel to me but the framing of it as comparative advantage is.
Example Three: Student Debt
Here the two sub-systems are you and future you. The multiple goals are money and time. As a student you might be able to get a $15/hr part-time job whereas in the future you could get a job where you expect to be paid twice that. Clearly to maximize money and time in a pareto-optimal way, you’ll refrain from working while being a student, and instead work slightly more when you’re older. This would generally entail taking on a lot of student debt. In this example there are costs since money is not fungible through time and taking on debt incurs interest, but if the comparative advantage is big enough, those can be overcome.
Example One: Good Cop / Bad Cop
The classic interrogation trope involves a suspect who is being interrogated by two police officers—one who is friendly and tries to offer to help the suspect, and one who is aggressive and threatens them with the consequences of not cooperating. We can think of the two cops as components of the Police Agent, and they are pursuing two goals: Trust and Fear. Both Trust and Fear are sub-goals for the ultimate goal which is likely a confession, plea deal or something of that nature, but the officers have uncertainty about how much Trust or Fear might motivate the suspect towards this ultimate goal, so they want to maximize both. Here, Trust is built by the “Good Cop” while Fear is built by the “Bad Cop”. Imagine both cops start out pretty evenly split between pursuing Trust and Fear, but the the first cop is naturally a bit more aggressive (this is the “Bad Cop”) and so he is following a slightly aggressive strategy (i.e. geared towards Fear). Vice versa for the second cop (“Good Cop”). Now because the suspect is already afraid of the Bad Cop, the Bad Cop gets more Fear from increasing their aggression than the Good Cop would, as it’s taken more seriously. Similarly, because the suspect is already slightly friendly towards the Good Cop, the Good Cop gets more Trust from increasing their friendliness than the Bad Cop would, because they’ve built rapport and it’s seen as more genuine. Thus, in order to maximize the total amount of Trust and Fear, the Good Cop should completely specialize in friendliness and the Bad Cop should completely specialize in aggression, due to their comparative advantages.
Example Two: Multi-Party Systems
In a multi-party system, you might have three political parties that are all broadly on the same side of the spectrum, with little doubt they’d form a governing coalition if they could. Let’s say there are n groups that these three parties can possible draw votes from, with each group representing a certain policy goal that all three parties would be happy or indifferent towards implementing (example for the left: unions, immigrants, students, renters). So we have three subsystems (each party) and n goals they are try to maximize. Now note that rhetoric / messaging is generally tied to what goals you focus on, and that a given voter may find different rhetoric more or less persuasive for a given political goal. If all three parties attempt to solve all n goals equally, they will likely have very similar rhetoric / messaging due to similar goal focus and composition of their political coalition. This means any given voter will likely be hearing only one version of a message, but hearing it from three different sources, which minimizes the chance of the message landing and maximizes confusion & conflict. If instead, each of the three parties focuses on a different subset of groups and policy goals (based on whatever they are randomly currently inclined towards) , any given voter will hear three distinct messages on similar goals and so will be likelier to be persuaded by one of them—furthermore the messaging is likelier to be more direct and less confused. So to maximize the likelihood of achieving any of the n goals—by maximizing the likelihood of these three parties winning a majority of seats—these parties should specialize in different types of rhetoric. The key aspect of comparative advantage here is that there’s a negative interaction term between all the different groups/goals (representing confusion of rhetoric and wasted messaging) so parties can achieve Pareto-optimal gains by focusing on a specific group/goal and leaving another to a different party. This may seem like a poor explanation for party specialization given the historical ways in which parties have formed, but parties are a revolving door of new members and a system where each party pulls in members from a subset of the n groups and those members then push that party towards advocating for that subset of n groups is stable and maximizes any one group’s chances of success. Friendly party leaders can also talk to each other to achieve some version of this coordination—I’ve seen this in practice in my own country. Note: this idea is not novel to me but the framing of it as comparative advantage is.
Example Three: Student Debt
Here the two sub-systems are you and future you. The multiple goals are money and time. As a student you might be able to get a $15/hr part-time job whereas in the future you could get a job where you expect to be paid twice that. Clearly to maximize money and time in a pareto-optimal way, you’ll refrain from working while being a student, and instead work slightly more when you’re older. This would generally entail taking on a lot of student debt. In this example there are costs since money is not fungible through time and taking on debt incurs interest, but if the comparative advantage is big enough, those can be overcome.