Excess Loyalty Signals
We tend to think of coalitions and conspiracies failing via betrayal. But in fact, I’d guess, they usually fail by excess loyalty signaling: members prefer to do what other members think is good for the group, rather than what private info could suggest is actually good for their group. Even in business. Karl Smith:
I see the back rooms of opposing lobbyists all the time. Here at the state level I can safely say that virtually no one has any idea what they are doing. That is, for the most part the lobbyist do not know and indeed are not particularly interested in what is in the best interest of their clients.
Further, this seems to stem from the fact that the clients are not particularly interested in what is in their best interests. What they are very interested in is whether legislation is pro them or anti them. However, if you begin to talk about the economy as a complex system full of unintended consequences where anti legislation could be in their best interests their eyes glaze over.
Moreover, a very large number of business lobbyists are not even that interested in efforts that are pro or anti their business. They are more interested in legislation that is pro-business in general and that they perceive as being fair. (more; HT Tyler)
A business group that used decision markets to estimate what would actually help them most might profit greatly thereby. But suggesting this change might signal disloyalty, at it suggests mismanagement by current group leaders.
I doubt that AGW are showing tribal loyalty to the petroleum industry. Most likely, they realize that so much of our economic activity is petroleum based, and that it would be political suicide to ask Americans to lower their standard of living to address a long-term problem that won't become a crisis until their political careers have ended (and most likely, they are dead). They have decided that serious global climate change in the future is an acceptable trade for easy prosperity (and thus re-election) today. It would be politically unacceptable to openly admit that they are willing to make such a trade, so instead they pretend AGW doesn't exist. It isn't signaling loyalty about anything, it is pure political pragmatism.
I think the real signaling of loyalty is the politicians who have made fighting AGW a significant plank of their platform, while not really doing anything significant to fight AGW. Obama isn't really that different from AGW-denying Republicans, except that Republicans pretend that AGW doesn't exist, while Obama pretends that token subsidies to political cronies is a significant effort to fight global climate change.
Krugman has a good example today on pollution controls. Every time pollution controls are proposed, there are claims that the sky will fall. Then pollution controls are implemented and the sky doesn’t fall and we end up with a cleaner and better environment.
Except that pollution controls have lead to off-shoring much of our manufacturing overseas to places with even less pollution controls... it has killed entire domestic industries, while increasing pollution (we reduce 50 tons of CO2 in the U.S. and replace it with 100 tons of CO2 in China). Krugman's claims are highly dubious.
But of course, mentioning Krugman is itself social signalling. Krugman doesn't produce articles designed to win people over to his viewpoint, he writes articles that make people who share his views feel good, at the cost of actually winning over other people. Krugman is telling you what you want to hear (i.e. that pollution controls never have any negative consequences), and uses his prestige to help validate your pre-existing bias toward pollution controls, rather than win over people like me that aren't implicitly supportive of pollution controls.