Civilization is premised upon coordination. In each of our interactions, the possibility is to either cooperate or defect with another. The more cooperation that persists, the easier and more likely it is that cooperation will reign. However, in the event of defection, those who have been defected on – or others observing others being defected on – realize there is greater risk to cooperation, and so become more likely to defect against another themselves. The more defection reigns, the more difficult it is to coordinate actors, even to ends that are mutually beneficial to themselves.

Defection, in other words, is the entropy of social systems, a feature inherent to any system predicated on the transfer and exchange of energy. Civilization is, in other words, a dyamic equilibrium of sufficiently agreed contracts, formal and informal, to cooperate. The process of socialization humans undergo as part of their maturation is meant to expose them to a sufficient number of examples of cooperation that, as creatures which default to mimesis, we engage in cooperation with others. Often our learned reflexes to cooperate are so deeply ingrained we cannot even articulate why certain behaviors are important for us to repeat in our interactions, but we can still sense when something is off.

Basically, the more cooperation reigns, the nicer civilization is to live in. When cooperation is less costly, we can form more agreements with more people and coordinate more people to greater collective purposes. It also costs time and energy to assimilate individuals not already acquainted with a given collective’s norms, whether that collective is a nation, a corporation, a religion, a political party, or what have you. Depending on the nature of the collective and the conditions under which it exists, the process of assimilation may depend on a process of differentiated socialization (e.g. school or training) or selection (potentially even self-selection, as in the case of religions and political parties). Typically, the more responsibility over the lives of others one possesses, the more stringent this process of assimilation will be, with some candidates being rejected in favor of those demonstrating superior qualities.

A collective imposing strict assimilation standards, albeit informally, is the elite. “The elite” are those exercising a powerful influence over millions, if not billions, making decisions about policy, culture, and business from an executive position where there exist no others to oversee them. Often they are responsible for decisions that only have consequential feedback for people like themselves generations down the line, and who are otherwise shielded from the direct feedback of the millions they influence. An overwhelming number of elites could trash the populations they have authority over, extorting billions by leveraging statecraft or even military power, but this would generally be bad for other elites. In general, regimes of cooperation create better circumstances for everyone, including not only the mass of the people but elites as well. Even if they otherwise care little for the people they oversee, elites usually have children who are left to inherit their wealth and capital resources, wealth and capital resources that in turn only have their power to confer benefits on the premise of a functional, high-cooperation society.

Cooperation among elites is even more important than among the mass of the people. For one, an elite in which defection reigns makes it harder to secure the benefits of wealth. A billion dollars matter very little if all your extra resources must be dedicated to securing yourself from the predation of other elites. It is better for elites to cooperate with one another, as it allows them greater opportunity to enjoy their extra wealth. Likewise, the mass of the people tend to imitate the behaviors they observe among the elite, so an elite in which defection reigns is more likely to become a society where it, again, becomes difficult to enjoy the benefits of wealth. Further, the dynamics of a high cooperation society are easier to predict, which makes it easier to rule, and so on. Cooperation is in the interest of the elites.

Those with the most power over who shall become elite are the elite themselves. There are some who can attain an elite status even without the help of other elites, but typically individuals are vetted extensively, with more sensitive positions requiring more careful standards of assimilation. The most sensitive positions are in politics, where elites have a direct lever on the propositions dictating how our society is constructed. Law is really the formal codification of cooperation, and it impacts elites who, even if they may not personally follow its dictates, still reign over a mass of people who must typically follow the law. The maintenance of law requires the careful deliberation by elites, who often have access to the best information informing how laws will affect them. In a democracy, the maintenance of law is performed by individuals selected to their position by the mass of the people, which makes the translation of elite preferences into law – preferences that are usually aligned with the mass of the people, assuming a well-constructed social system – a step more difficult. That is because, in order to exert influence over government, not only the aspirations of elites must be coordinated, but those of the democratic mass as well.

Coordination of the democratic mass is easier with cooperation among elites, who can use their control over institutions such as media to promote individuals to the visibility required to garner democratic support. Functional government requires continuity, continuity that is more difficult to achieve with a finicky democratic mass that switches its support between parties, which would normally stall elite agendas that take multi-term time horizons to roll out. Democracy has a notorious problem with time preference, in that democratic voters typically have higher time preferences (lower time horizons) than elites (who are often elite in part due to their knack for long term planning). However, if certain aspects of the democratic process can be superseded, than one can lower time preferences.

The elite have more in common with each other than they do with the mass of the people. Their interests are aligned differently, especially with regards to politics. Where the mass of the people are left to seek shelter in the political structure, to the elite politics is a means of doing business. “Left” and “right” have less bearing except as those can appeal to the democratic mass to coordinate support for the policies the elite prefer. What you often find is the progressive and conservative wings being balanced against each other with a mixture of policies in each that guarantees, whichever party is in power at a time, their agenda still advances the interests of the elites. Where the party’s platform coincides with the interests of the elite, its members will be elevated premised on their support of those policies – and where the party’s platform opposes elite interests, then it’s capacity to effectively impose those policies will be systematically hamstrung. Especially in a democracy, where passing legislation also requires coordinating democratically elected representatives, breaking coalitions is easy, especially given the level of influence elites already have over the selection and promotion of those representatives.

In either case, whether to promote a policy by promoting its proponents or to prevent a policy by muddling its proponents, blackmail is a useful tool. As a tool, it is a way to ensure any given individual’s overt allegiance to their elite supporters. It can also be used to guarantee the balance of opposed factions in government, by forcing otherwise powerful politicians to fail to coordinate when it would be in their interest to do so. A politician who senses the political opportunity to pass some preferred legislation might be told to forego the opportunity lest blackmail is released. Typically, blackmail will be used to destructive purposes – but it can also be used to form a pact to forward some agenda. However, the former is much easier, and blackmail can be secured by simply requiring the provision of blackmail material to elite handlers as a requirement of gaining elite support. In that way, separate parties might be controlled by even more powerful elites from above, who have such a preference for control that they only provide their resources to those they can effectively control through blackmail. There might be others who gain entry to government through the democratic process without the support of elites, but they will be easy to isolate by requiring the corrupted politicians to close ranks against them.

In that way, almost the entire body of federal legislators might be controlled by an elite who could otherwise only be reined in by that legislative body. Individuals with elite support are also more likely to gain democratic support, as they have considerable resources on their side to gain influence, resources provided by an elite because they can control their puppets. The network is apt to include influencers in media and entertainment, who can be relied upon to promote the elite’s preferred “democratic” representatives and policies. Individuals who attempt to enter politics honestly will be regularly derogated by the same and, if they do find democratic support, they will still find it difficult to find rapport with their fellow representatives, who per the blackmail network will be required to refuse cooperation with them.

How might an elite blackmail network be detected? First, it might be expected at the highest levels of power and finance. Elites can be expected to secure their own power and wealth from others, and the cultivation of elite blackmail networks are a means to that end. If forwarding elite agendas requires multi-term coordination, then it becomes even more necessary to utilize blackmail as a means of securing cooperation between parties that might otherwise appeal to their constituents by refusing to cooperate with the other party when it is popular to do so. If an elite puppeteer controls representatives from both parties, it will be easier for them to push those representatives together to craft democratically unpopular legislation requiring bipartisan support.

Members of a blackmail network will support each other over others, even those who might otherwise be in their same party. They will be able to form coalitions of support for unpopular legislation while simultaneously backing down from opportunities in their power to actualize. They will be loathe to call out each other’s misdeeds, as that threatens the blackmail network and themselves by extension. In general they will look out for each other, cooperating as necessary to ensure power for their own network. They will isolate upstarts in their own party, even when it might seem politically opportune for them to cooperate.

Competing blackmail networks will generally cooperate with one another, as anything threatening the existence of one threatens the existence of all. At present, the public is not wise to the operation of blackmail in their political structures, but if it became common knowledge blackmail networks would be required to operate more discreetly. An individual being blackmailed by one party cannot be successfully blackmailed by another party at cross-odds with the first party, which suggests the elites of one country might blackmail their own politicians more frequently than the politicians of other countries. Likewise, capture of a political elite by the elites of another country typically invalidate the preferences of the captured political elite’s democratic mass more than when those politicians are captured by elites of their own country. This suggests that more powerful countries tend to have political elites captured by their own elites rather than that of other countries.

The ultimate goal of these blackmail networks is to ensure that political elites will cooperate with even more powerful elites over the interests of their democratic constituents. Whereas the executives of corporations are legally obligated to act in the interests of their shareholders, blackmailed politicians are obligated to act in the interests of their controllers. In this way, the elites ensure that the democratic process continues to unfold in a manner suiting their interests, even – and often – when it is at odds with the interests of the democratic mass.