Red Queen's race

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[[File:%27Now!_Now!%27_cried_the_queen._%27Faster!_Faster!%27.jpg|right|thumb|165px|If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast .]]
{{sociology}}A '''Red Queen's race''' is a conflict situation where the ''absolute'' advances are equal on all sides, so that the ''relative'' advantages stay constant, despite significant changes from the initial state. The name references [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''Through the Looking Glass'', wherein the Red Queen comments to Alice that "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place" after she takes Alice on a long run in which they cover no actual distance. 

The Red Queen's race is a universal phenomenon, found in many [[culture]]s and many periods of [[history]], and also in many [[academic]] disciplines and other areas of society, such as [[economics]], [[media]], technology, [[politics]], [[psychology]], [[history]], and [[evolutionary biology]]. Some examples of Red Queen's races are:

*Economic development during the [[Industrial Revolution]], which saw many countries racing to out-compete each other economically.
*[[Free market|Market]] economics generally, since staying in [[business]] requires businesses to stay roughly as efficient as competitors.
*[[MIC|Arms races]], in particular the [[Cold War]] nuclear arms race, during which countries built up [[nuclear weapons|nuclear arsenals]] for no other reason than that the enemy was also building up theirs. Despite huge technological advances in the destructive power of weapons, the relative advantages between countries has not changed much since sticks and rocks were common instruments of [[war]]. 
*The [[Citizens United|massive uptick in spending in political campaigns]], where half a billion dollars and a massive coordinated [[Internet]] campaign buys modern candidates the same vote advantages as a thousand dollars and a fast horse bought 150 years ago.
*Increases in [[government]] spending (or promising more [[tax cut]]s) as part of a "[[bread and circuses]]"-style attempt to [[Pork|buy voters]]. Alexis de Tocqueville was misattributed as saying, "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money"; the public purse is known to have been used in that way to finance political machines in many American cities.
*The increased incidence of [[bullshit]]ting in politics; as bullshit can sound much more pleasant to many more voters' ears than a [[rational]] exposition of some political program, the first political groups to use bullshit met with success, and their opponents were forced to imitate it or be eliminated from the political sphere.<ref group=note>See our page on [[Logical fallacy|logical fallacies]] for more information.</ref>
*The technological advances in memory and processing speed are usually exploited by software with greater memory and CPU requirements, so that to the average [[computer]] user, computers do not subjectively seem to run any faster today than 20 years ago. 
*In evolutionary biology, the Red Queen's race is an important concept when explaining why some traits appear to grow exponentially even to the point of being costly to the organism. Particularly when combined with [[sexual selection]], certain traits that appear to be deleterious to an organism can readily [[evolve]]. One of the most famous examples is the [[The Ant and the Peacock|peacock's tail]].
*[[Bitcoin]] mining has a fixed payout across the entire network, but the application of more computing power can increase the size of one's slice of the pie. This has led to the equivalent of the entire electrical capacity of Ireland being used to run a distributed computing system that could effectively fit on your phone unchanged. This is considered good for Bitcoin, somehow.

As can be seen in these examples, the "advancements" in a Red Queen's race can just as easily be something negative (increased resource consumption, decreased integrity, increased collateral damage potential, etc.) as something positive (enhanced standard of living, improved efficiency, stronger economy, etc.). Unfortunately, as no single player can scale back to a reasonable level without putting themselves at a severe disadvantage (if not dropping out of the race entirely), and it is highly unlikely for all the parties to come to an agreement to limit themselves without some stronger, external, neutral entity<ref group=note>Like, say, the [[government]], the [[United Nations]], or [[God]], with the level of power and influence needed to keep a potential Red Queen's race under control varying depending on the scale of the players; a government could regulate a conflict between corporations within a single nation, but a conflict between nations would require something greater than a nation to mediate, like the United Nations or God. Unfortunately, in practice, it is very rare for an outside agency to be up to the task of stopping a negative Red Queen's race from becoming catastrophic; governments are prone to {{wpl|corruption}} and/or [[:Category:Government incompetence|bungling]], the United Nations is notoriously ineffective at enforcing its judgments, and God apparently either [[Arguments against the existence of God|doesn't exist]] or [[Problem of evil|isn't able or willing to intervene in the material world]] for reasons only He knows.</ref> ''forcing'' them all to behave themselves, odds are quite good that the situation will continue to escalate until further escalation somehow becomes physically impossible<ref group=note>Probably because the resources necessary for continued growth ran out and/or the costs of continued progression outweighed the benefits, at which point everyone has new problems to deal with.</ref> and/or everyone involved drops dead from exhaustion.

==See also==
*[[Game theory]]
*[[Negative externality]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}
[[Category:Culture]]
[[Category:Articles needing RWification]]

Categories: Culture, Articles needing RWification