Political Niches
In the startup world when starting a business you are asked to find a niche and exploit it for growth. This is because niche users will have unaddressed issues that are too fringe for the mainstream to build for.
If 100,000 people have an issue why would Microsoft build for them? What difference would an additional million dollars make to their P&L. They would be scouting the next multi-billion dollar opportunity because that is what is going to move the needle.
In the hyper-financialised world that we live in, everything is measured in terms of percentage growth. And it is not that a million is not a lot of money it is just that as a percentage of 100 billion it is nothing.
But then political operatives took this same thinking and dove into creating voter blocks or niches.
I think this is responsible for creating identity groups based on anything and everything including who somebody is sleeping with.
It was first gay and lesbian. Then it became lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual. Now it has become an alphabet soup.
They are referred to as LGBTQIA+; they have themselves given up and just added + because a new category seems to emerge every few months.
According to the Gallup poll in the US, 7.1% identify as LGBT.
In the United States, poverty has both social and political implications. In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty.
Source: Wikipedia
That is more than 11% of the US population. But you see they are poor!
They don’t go out to vote in large numbers.
Politicians go where capitalism goes. You cannot raise any money from them. You can’t even sell them flags, hoodies and t-shirts. Are you planning to sell them T-shirts that say “Poor Despair”?
People will be like there is homophobia, they are differently treated by society. Well so are the poor. It is just that it serves political ends to talk about homophobia rather than Aporaphobia; you have not even heard of that word, have you? I just found out right now, myself! As I was typing, it got autocorrected to agoraphobia.
There is nothing changed societally. People who were disgusted by those who are gay, continue to be. Those who did not have a group to identify with — align. The rest did not care before and don’t care now.
But, a voting block was created that will swing in one direction.
