I used to believe that, but realistically the problem goes much deeper. Game theory is at most a small part of the problem, a lot of the issue has to come down to the Ingroup-Outgroup dichotomy. With one ingroup and one outgroup, there will only ever be two real types of person, politically speaking. Be they split among two parties or twenty, the coalitions will never be unclear.

The us/then dynamic is an artifact of the human condition. It worked when we were tiny groups of individuals with no global influence or presence. Which is precisely the sort of thing we should be designing modern social systems to mitigate.

The only way a social system could mitigate that is to imitate the time that it worked; self determination for as many small communities as possible. Whether or not that's worth the price is up for debate.

That’s the opposite of what I said. We need people to think of themselves as all part of the same people at some level requiring them to have basic civility and respect toward one another.

It is indeed the opposite, one might even say we disagree. As swell as it would be for people to be essentially decent, they aren't and they won't be ever. But hey, it would be awesome if I'm wrong! No doubt we need better.

I think you're both right, but if I had to pick one thing to fix it would be the first past the post. Encouraging the in-group/out-group mentality is an act of self-perptuation by the two dominate parties. Without a clear "enemy" the party risks fracturing and demonizing the other side, as well as being demonized by the otherside is something that both parties want because it keeps them in power.

But that's exactly the thing, no one has ever needed a party to tell them who their enemy is. With more parties, there would just be clear coalitions, one conservative and one liberal. To the extent that parties switch allegiance, it will be because different people are members, not because existing members changed their political tribe.

> With more parties, there would just be clear coalitions, one conservative and one liberal.

Multi party coalitions don’t line up this way when considering individual issues, which is the problem we’re discussing here: the paralysis of the US Congress.

Imagine if the Libertarian Party, the Ds, and the Rs each held a third of Congress. On things like finance and gun laws, the Ls would vote with the Rs. But on things like abortion and drug laws, the Ls would vote with the Ds.

The meaningful representation of a single third party thus already throws a wrench in the “conservative vs liberal” ideology. “Us versus them” might still exist, sure, but it shifts per issue instead of being a polarized dichotomy. It’s a step in the right direction.

My suspicion is that such a situation wouldn't come about for two reasons:

- People's desire to have a defined in and out group would prevent any party that changes coalition by issue from ever existing in the first place

- Even if such a party came about, shifts in the local overton window (if that's not an oxymoron) of the Rs or the Ds would push the newly formed Ls away until they wound up effectively a part of the other. They wouldn't even give an advantage to the party they wound up with, they'd just compete for the same naturally occurring 50% of people.

On the other hand, I'm in kind of a leftist bubble. I find our typical factiousness endearing most of the time, but it probably skews my view.

I'd like to posit that if we had something other than first past the post we wouldn't have had Trump. And Trump definitely fueled the us vs them mindset.