True commitment is hard to spot when we’re awash in low-cost signals
Costly signals are necessary to differentiate ingroups from outgroups, a designation that’s needed if we’re going to have, well, groups. But such signals are in perilously short supply at the moment.
For example, it used to be that if one wanted to be a candidate of a political party, it was necessary to signal affiliation with that political party by being a member. This was not a particularly costly signal: All one had to do was change one’s voter registration or perhaps pay a nominal fee to join a local party chapter.
By doing so, one foreclosed signaling either nonpartisanship or support for another party. The primary cost of being, say, a Democrat was the opportunity cost of being a Republican, a Libertarian, a Green, a non-inscrit. It was a clear way of differentiating who was, say, a Republican from those who were Not-Republicans, which is necessary if being a Republican is to mean anything. You could not simultaneously be a Democrat and a Libertarian, or an independent and a Republican.
