When the supply of something vastly outstrips the demand for it many things happen. The number of possible choices for a buyer become unmanageable, even among items of equal quality. Prices tend to compress down against cost limits so that variations in price are small and cannot be used as a major factor in selection. Differences in availability also tend to disappear so that speed of delivery ceases to be a factor. The only basis left for a buyer’s decisions is the buyer’s desires and feelings. Selling into such a market requires the use of politics.
The job of a politician is to influence feelings and beliefs thereby influencing people’s actions. There are many specialized politicians. If the group of people being influenced forms a sports team, we call that politician a coach. If it forms a church, the politician is a preacher. If it forms a fighting force, the politician is a military officer. If the politicians entertain us and we can’t quite tell what action they are promoting, we can them artists. If the politician holds an office in government, we just call them politicians. Government politicians have a history of conducting their politics in ways that most of us find distasteful or even down right disgusting. As a result it is difficult to think of people that we respect as doing the same kind of work. None-the-less it is all politics.
Where the law of supply and demand can offer insight into the behavior of a market, the law of supply demand and politics offers guidance on how to react to a down market. If, for example, you are unemployed in today’s job market, the law of supply and demand tells you that it will be difficult to find a job and that when you do find one you may have to accept less money than you hoped for. The law of supply, demand and politics lays out the same scenario and then points the way towards what to do about it; apply politics. The self-help materials on career search agree. They encourage you to word your resume carefully. They tell you to cultivate a professional appearance. They coach you on how to speak with confidence. They guide you in the methods for researching a company’s culture and language so that you can appear to be one of them. They insist that you nurture your network so that you can reach out to people inside the company and gain their support for picking you as the chosen candidate. These techniques are nothing more than the art of politics.
Art is in fact the primary tool of politics. Feelings are most readily influenced by well chosen words, images, behaviors and related arts. The coach’s pep talk, the preacher’s sermon and the politician’s rhetoric all serve the same purpose; they inspire the listeners to take the actions promoted by the speaker. Appearance, gestures, postures and relationships all come into play in the art of politics. In most respects, politics is simply applied art, and that is the practical reason that the arts are in school curricula. There are of course teachers of the arts that would protest that the arts have inherent value on their own terms without reference to their applications. That, however, is a foolish stance and one that has enabled the claim that the arts are of no practical value and has caused the reduction of arts budgets in schools. The arts are an essential survival skill in an increasingly political world. If they were understood as such, they would be on an equal footing with technology and the sciences without having to appeal to abstract concepts.
Elite colleges have understood this for some time. Their application process selects students with political ability. Part of the reason for this criteria is that the demand for entrance into elite colleges has been increasing and they are as subject to the law of supply, demand and politics as anyone. Rather than allow the political aspects of their admissions process to slide under the table, they have made it explicit and have turned political training into an educational goal of the secondary schools, all without ever mentioning the word politics. They have done it by first making it known that good grades are not enough. They then insisted that students be well rounded which when translated implies that they have been active in every opportunity imaginable. They then require evidence of civic engagement as evidence of support of causes that the college has deemed important. Often they also require glowing letters of recommendation as evidence of ability to form supportive relationships. While there are certainly students that meet all these standards, in my experience there are not very many. The majority of students are therefore required to stretch their political abilities towards instilling a belief that they are close enough to the ideal to be admitted. In most respects this has been a brilliant strategy. They have redirected an influence that could have corrupted their admissions process. They have quietly forced secondary schools to include political training in their curricula. They have encouraged students to develop skills that they will need to prosper and in doing so have created the potential for generous contributions to their endowments in the future. Moreover, they have managed this without making it known that they are engaging in and supporting politics since that would be unseemly.
In summary, when the supply of something far exceeds the demand, the selections are based on politics. This may sound like a bad thing, but politics is not a dirty word; it is just the process that controls how people behave in groups. When supply and demand are badly out of balance, life works better if you have a little politics on your side.