The "Preference Cascade"--Today's Essential Read

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, contributing editor of Tech Central Station has an excellent piece which explains the cultural phenomenon of Preference Cascades. He actually wrote about the subject three years ago, but it seems more descriptive of what might be called the present zeitgeist culturally and politically here and what appears to be happening in the Middle East:

Three years ago, I looked at the phenomenon of "preference cascades" -- in which people who have been obliged to conceal their true beliefs by social pressure or sheer force suddenly discover that a lot of other people feel the same way -- and wrote:

"This illustrates, in a mild way, the reason why totalitarian regimes collapse so suddenly. (Click here for a more complex analysis of this and related issues). Such regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don't realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. If the secret police and the censors are doing their job, 99% of the populace can hate the regime and be ready to revolt against it - but no revolt will occur because no one realizes that everyone else feels the same way.

This is precisely what happened to the Mainstream Media. They controlled the flow of information but even though vast numbers of people disagreed with the content, there was nothing they could do but tune them out. The advent of Talk Radio and the Internet took away their monopolistic role and in a relatively short amount of time, they have been rendered obsolete.

But that's not the thrust of the article. It has more to do with totalitarian governments and why they stifle free speech. Please read Mr. Reynolds' piece. It's illuminating on many levels.