Does Class Warfare Have A Free-Rider Problem?

A short, sharp essay applying collective-action theory to the 'the rich capture government' thesis. Scott notes that pro-rich political coordination faces a free-rider problem: any single rich person's donation is a drop in the bucket, and they get the tax cut whether or not they chip in, so rational self-interest says don't contribute (except for the rare Koch/Exxon-scale actor big enough to internalize the benefit). So how DO the rich coordinate? His 'spooky' hypothesis, building on his 'Plutocracy Isn't About Money' piece: a value system 'springs up' that convinces rich people to support pro-rich policies for sincerely ALTRUISTIC/moral reasons (libertarianism, Objectivism, prosperity gospel) -- genuinely self-sacrificing at the individual level (they attend the fundraisers, buy the plates) yet class-beneficial when universalized, with the contractarian logic never made consciously. The striking suggestion is that 'in the presence of a useful selfish goal to coordinate around, a value system will spring up' to solve the coordination problem invisibly. He flags it's underdeveloped and raises the obvious puzzle (why don't the poor coordinate as well?). A genuine proto-version of Elephant-in-the-Brain / ideology-as-signaling thinking.

Quality 72 · Strong. Strong (72): an original, memorable, and thought-provoking hypothesis (ideology as an unconsciously-generated solution to class coordination problems) cleanly argued from a free-rider framing, and a clear precursor to later motivated-cognition/signaling work. Upper-Strong rather than higher because it's short and Scott explicitly leaves it underdeveloped ('haven't really thought this through too much').

Claude’s paradigm shift 52 · Moderate. Notable (52): the free-rider framing of class politics plus the 'self-sacrificing morality springs up to serve coordination' idea is a genuinely fresh, non-obvious synthesis, though it draws on standard collective-action theory and his own prior plutocracy post.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A sharp application of collective-action theory to the 'rich capture government' thesis, yielding an original hypothesis (ideology as an unconsciously-generated solution to the rich's free-rider problem) — a precursor to his later signaling work. Conceptual influence within rationalist discourse, short and underdeveloped, no material change — low RWI.