Virgil Storr is a brilliant graduate from GMU who we see on a regular basis thanks to the fact that his private sector job keeps him close by. If you don’t know Virgil here’s a bit of background; in addition to being a free market economist he is also a vegetarian. Once I heard him comment about how difficult it is to maintain a balance between these two identities because there are large portions of people in each group who are not enjoyable to be around. I thought about a similar situation I feel myself a few weeks ago when I attended a concert in Baltimore.

In addition to being interested in free market theory I’m also a huge fan of independent, and underground rock music. Rarely do my two tribes overlap, so I often find myself in positions similar to Virgil’s. I’m either in agreement on fiscal issues with fellow economists but bored in their social interests. Or I like the same music and films as someone but couldn’t possibly agree on any sort of political or policy stance.
So this all came to mind when I went to Baltimore to check out the Rapture a few weeks ago. The club was packed and people were crammed in like sardines. At one point, I overheard some guy ranting on about how evil corporate sponsorship had cheapened the true meaning of the super bowl. I don’t even like football so I’m certainly not going to write a post defending corporate sponsorship. But I did get surprised about how hateful my visceral response was to overhearing this blow-hard’s opinion. As hateful as it was, I kept it to myself and walked back to my group of friends, looked out at the crowd and smiled.
People were bumping into each other, spilling drinks on each other, blowing smoke in one another faces, standing in each other’s ways, and just generally being rude and inconsiderate to one another. Under many a circumstance this many petty and contrasting personalities and preferences in the same place would be a recipe for disaster, but other than a few minor scuffles the evening went off without a hitch.
Seabright has commented about how shockingly high the rates are of cooperation and trust are and how shockingly low the rates of violent aggression and attack are amongst humans compared to other animals. I don’t think it’s all that shocking and further I don’t think the peace achieved at this concert or other crowded atmospheres is the result of the institutions that we typically think it is like law, courts, rules, etc. Instead I think the peace is maintained by the common preference for the commercial product; the concert. Everyone at that club liked the Rapture’s music, and that simple shared interest was enough to maintain peace and order amongst a group of rude hateful people for several hours. Everyone there went to see a show and that would be more difficult if there was fighting and conflict in the crowd. Even though individuals in the group didn’t get along or would like to draw out conflict with one another, they’d rather just ignore the passers-by and enjoy the show.