Understanding Intellectualist Strategy
There Actually is a Method to the Madness
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and other racist dogma has been largely jettisoned from the American federal government by President Trump and his cabinet. The President is attempting to return the federal government to a merit based organization, from a one based on job-irrelevant categorical hiring and promotion. During the Biden Administration, DEI consultants roamed freely among the agencies, conducting seminars on racism and diversity, while getting paid handsomely. Arguably, the federal government lowered standards, particularly in the military, in order to comply with presidential buy-in to DEI initiatives.
One question that should be asked is why intellectuals like Ibram X Kendi, Robin DiAngelo and others advocated programs that effectively kept racism alive, something that has steadily been reduced over the past 100 years? Another question - why would intellectuals implement ideas that degrade our institutions? An intellectual in this context are those whose final products are primarily ideas. They predominately are found in academia, think tanks, the media and other similar organizations. They advocate for socialism communism, DEI, racist “anti racism”, welfare, broad government censorship in response to the elusive “hate speech” and a host of other freedom degrading policies.
The strategic landscape for the intellectual is similar to that of businesses, in so far as the intellectual desires to make a substantial living from their ideas. The problem with standing out from the intellectual crowd is nearly impossible, with around 3 million new book titles published every year. In order to get and sustain a customer base for ideas, an intellectual must be able to stand out from the crowd, something that is crucial if an intellectual wants to get the two currencies sought: credibility and wealth.
Michael Porter, the Harvard business strategy professor offers insight. He argues that there are 3 categories of business strategy - approaches that business use to compete with each other for customers.
Cost Leadership: businesses utilize economies of scale to lower the per unit price of items sold. Implementors of this strategy are WalMart and Home Depot.
Differentiation: product and service innovators improve the functionality, quality or delivery of their service beyond the capability of competitors. They charge a premium price for delivering excellent value. Apple and Nvidia are among the world’s differentiators.
Niche: some firms compete for a specific type of customer and have a narrow product line. The goal is to “own” a specific, smaller market and be the top (or only) company to serve it. Clio is an example of a niche strategy as it specializes in the development of billing and time keeping software for law firms, a very unique market.
Cost Leadership and Niche strategies don’t fit with ideas. There are no fixed costs to amortize over a vast number of products (Cost Leadership) and ideas that appeal to small idea markets are not profitable.
Why do some intellectuals move to the fringe? Within in this context, Porter is clear: intellectuals must continuously differentiate themselves from the other intellectuals to gain readership, sell more books, initiate consulting gigs and gain followers. Given the choice between rigorous research that illuminates significant human problems and the thoughtful solutions, or simply targeting a different market for ideas that are unlikely to work, an intellectual who is lazy will choose the latter. Moreover, simply targeting a different market pays sooner and with more reliability.
Consider two scenarios: how much would one get paid if they developed a pill that would prevent cancer? The payoff would be great, but consider the effort and timeline. How long would this entrepreneur have to invest her 100 hours per week creating this drug? The entrepreneur would wait 40 to 50 years for a payoff, assuming it paid off at all.
Compare and contrast against the intellectual who authors a well written book, develops 50 Power Point slides, coins some new terms and advances his ideas on YouTube. How much does that pay? Some estimates for Ibram X. Kendi (pictured above) are that he earned over $75 million for his anti-racist crusade. Of course, compared to curing cancer, this is a drop in the bucket. However, the reliability of being paid and the timeline of being paid, perhaps over a 5 - 10 year span, $75 million is quite a lot.
Woke intellectuals are prevented by dogma and the market from moving right; their ideas would be unbelievable. They move left incrementally to find a customer base that will compensate and validate their credibility. They coin new terminology so that they sound intellectual to their target market. Terms such as “white fragility” and “anti-racist” or the infamous “equity” (definitely not to be confused with “equality”) embedded in the middle of the DEI acronym are coined and marketed to develop credibility, even though either they have no real meaning or are not descriptive of reality.
The question that should be asked is not why suppliers of woke ideology become purveyors of normalizing questionable ideas. The real question is around the demand for these ideas. While the genesis of demand may indeed come from the academy, why aren’t these ideas scrutinized and refuted more often? Well, they are in the world of real life. The market has a way of correcting for nonsense.. The strategy underlying the woke madness is to get paid in the short run via a target market on the left, before the cash dries up when the adults come home in the form of a new administration focused on normalcy.