Most people do not reason from first principles when developing their political views. Rather, they develop a set of views based on their life experiences and retrofit facts and narratives to conform with that worldview (myself included). How else do you explain something like the backfire effect?
David McRaney of You Are Not So Smart writes:
Geoffrey Munro at the University of California and Peter Ditto at Kent State University concocted a series of fake scientific studies in 1997. One set of studies said homosexuality was probably a mental illness. The other set suggested homosexuality was normal and natural. They then separated subjects into two groups; one group said they believed homosexuality was a mental illness and one did not. Each group then read the fake studies full of pretend facts and figures suggesting their worldview was wrong. On either side of the issue, after reading studies which did not support their beliefs, most people didn’t report an epiphany, a realization they’ve been wrong all these years. Instead, they said the issue was something science couldn’t understand. When asked about other topics later on, like spanking or astrology, these same people said they no longer trusted research to determine the truth. Rather than shed their belief and face facts, they rejected science altogether.
In my view most people are “conditioned” to a set of political beliefs over time. The conditioning happens through the interaction of individual effort and experience and external stimuli. The process is path dependent.
If I am an entrepreneur, and I labor diligently for years to build my business and become wealthy and successful, I am conditioned to believe market systems work and are fair in allocating resources. I am more likely to support light regulation and promote individual accountability.
Likewise if I grow up in a community where financial institutions operate with predatory business models, I am conditioned to believe market systems are broken, and that a wealthy few (say, 1% of the population) manipulate markets to strip assets and wealth from communities like mine. I am more likely to support tight regulation and institutional accountability.
These are overly simplistic examples but I find them instructive. For someone like me who believes most individuals act based on incentive structures and not based on rational analysis, this is a powerful idea. It is consistent with the historical institutionalist approach to history, but on an individual level.
A related crux of historical institutionalism is that temporal sequences matter: outcomes depend upon the timing of exogenous factors (such as inter-state competition or economic crisis) in relation to particular institutional configurations (such as the level of bureaucratic professionalism or degree of state autonomy from class forces).[6] For example, Theda Skocpol suggests that the democratic outcome of the English Civil War was a result of the fact that the comparatively weak English Crown lacked the military capacity to fight the landed upper-class. In contrast, the rise of rapid industrialization and fascism in Prussia when faced with international security threats was because the Prussian state was a “highly bureaucratic and centralized agrarian state” composed by “men closely ties to landed notables”.[7] Thomas Ertman, in his account of state building in medieval and early modern Europe, argues that variations in the type of regime built in Europe during this period can be traced to one macro-international factor and two historical institutional factors. At the macro-structural level, the “timing of the onset of sustained geopolitical competition” created an atmosphere of insecurity that appeared best addressed by consolidating state power. The timing of the onset of competition is critical for Ertman’s explanation. States that faced competitive pressures early had to consolidate through patrimonial structures, since the development of modern bureaucratic techniques had not yet arrived. States faced with competitive pressures later could on the other hand, could take advantage of advancements in training and knowledge to promote a more technical oriented civil service.[8][9]
The obvious takeaway from all of this is shouting at people about politics, either in person or on social media, is a complete waste of time and energy. Beyond that, however, this provides an objective framework for understanding why people believe certain things and why people behave in certain ways. This is of critical importance to investors, who must account for higher order, non-linear effects when making decisions.
Barring an “impact investing” mandate, an investor must set her political beliefs aside when making decisions. Rather the investor must focus on the beliefs of others. It is the beliefs of others that impact the economic and market environment.