Luke Ford

I’ve noticed that when I start publicly advocating something, I rarely set off an inevitable chain reaction in furtherance of my stated goals. Instead, I usually force people to react to me, and just as often as not, they’re going to oppose what I’m supporting, and the more I argue for my side, the more they hate what I’m saying.

As often as I turn people’s latent support to explicit support, I turn people’s latent opposition into explicit opposition. Many times I would be better off letting sleeping dogs lie.

For example, the more I talk about the glories of the Dallas Cowboys, the more people around me will feel incentivized to knock the Dallas Cowboys. When I push one type of politics, many people around me will either tune me out or push back. So I’ve learned to minimize my full-steam-ahead in-your-face attempts to change people because these maladaptive habits of mine don’t help me and they don’t help the world.

Usually, I am better suited to the role of observer rather than activist, though I usually feel happier when I’m in the dance as opposed to sitting on the sidelines.

In his 2010 book, Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One, Tom Sowell wrote:

Political thinking tends to conceive of policies, institutions, or programs in terms of their hoped – for results — “drug prevention” programs, “gun control” laws, “environmental protection” policies, “public interest” law firms, “profit – making” businesses, and so forth. But for purposes of economic analysis, what matters is not what goals are being sought but what incentives and constraints are being created in pursuit of those goals…

The point here is not simply that various policies may fail to achieve their purposes. The more fundamental point is that we need to know the actual characteristics of the processes set in motion — and the incentives and constraints inherent in such characteristics — rather than judging these processes by their goals. Many of the much discussed “unintended consequences” of policies and programs would have been foreseeable from the outset if these processes had been analyzed in terms of the incentives and constraints they created, instead of in terms of the desirability of the goals they proclaimed. Once we start thinking in terms of the chain of events set in motion by particular policies — and following the chain of events beyond stage one — the world begins to look very different.

The New York Times had a great article about unintended consequences on Nov. 21, 2023:

Did a Cafe’s Pro-Israel Stance Cause a Staff Revolt? It’s Complicated.

When the owner of a New York City coffee shop said his workers had quit over his support of Israel, customers and Instagram influencers flocked to it.

For several days this month, New Yorkers stood in a line that snaked down Lexington Avenue and around the corner of East 71st Street, waiting up to 90 minutes to order a drink at Caffè Aronne. Members of the city’s Jewish community, spurred by messages on social media, turned out in droves to support a coffee shop owner who had said that his employees had walked out to protest the company’s support for Israel during the war with Hamas.

The cafe’s owner, Aaron Dahan, 25, stood on the sidewalk on Nov. 7, reflecting on the spectacle that had unfolded. “Our morning shift decided to come in, unlock the store, open up and leave,” he said. “Put us in a bit of a pickle.”

The story was two things at once: a display of solidarity but also an illustration of the current divide in a city that is shaped by both its progressive ideals and its Jewish culture. It was irresistible fodder for Instagram and beyond. The Daily Mail wrote about it, as did The Jerusalem Post. A few days later, a first-person essay under Mr. Dahan’s byline was published in The New York Post with the headline: “All of N.Y.C. helped when my pro-Hamas staff quit Caffe Aronne.”

But the initial accounts of what happened between the staff and the owner of the Upper East Side coffee shop were not the whole story. On the day that the conflict burst into public view, just one of two scheduled morning-shift workers walked out. The other stayed and made espresso drinks for hours. As the situation went viral on social media, other staffers resigned.

Interviews with five former employees, and a review of text and email messages, indicate that employees were uncomfortable with the way that their boss, who lost a family member in the violent Hamas incursion on Oct. 7, had turned their workplace into what they described as a “political space.” Suddenly, just by showing up for work, they said they were being forced to align with one side of a divisive conflict that some of them knew little about.

They said the owner was insensitive to the safety concerns that followed his displaying fund-raising fliers, Israeli flags and posters of kidnapped Israelis. At least one woman, working alone at night, said she was harassed by customers angered by the display; others reported a variety of uncomfortable interactions with customers about the war.

Now, the cafe’s former employees say they are stunned to be accused of supporting Hamas and terrorism. They said they are worried about being recognized in the neighborhood and are disappointed by their dramatic break from an employer whom most of them had liked and respected.

I would expect that most American Jews felt visceral horror at what Hamas did on Oct. 7 and as a result of the massacre in southern Israel, many increased their in-group identity, including in their work place. This in turn forced non-Jews around them to react and many of them began saying something that would never have previously occurred to them, “Free Palestine!”

If you discover your employer is passionately pro-Israel, and you have some ambivalence or even negative feelings about your employer, you’re likely to oppose Israel. There’s no action without a reaction. Most people go to work to get a pay check. They want to enjoy themselves as much as possible at work and to feel at ease. Pushing hot button issues such as the Middle East conflict that provoke customers is not a way to help your workers have a nice time at work.

When I see posters of Israelis held hostage, they are sacred objects to me because I have a strong in-group Jewish identity. I often touch these posters to connect with their holiness. For someone with different views from me on the Arab-Israeli conflict, however, these posters are likely to be hateful reminders of a vicious Jewish oppressor who bears ultimate responsibility for all lives lost in Gaza.

Different people have different gifts, different interests, and different experiences of the world.