[afarrell]

What would help me is more illustration of the line between kayfabe and decency.

It seems like the line is "The audience is misled about the actual social norms". When olympic wrestlers refuse to stab each other, it is not kayfabe because the audience doesn't expect that. The Christmas Truce and various anti-latrine-bombing truces were kayfabe because the audience was British and German high command and these were done behind their backs.

If thats the right interpretation, then in this example:

> Perhaps confusing battles between "freshwater" Chicago macro economists and Ivy league "Saltwater" theorists could be best understood as happening within a single "orthodox promotion" given that both groups suffered no injury from failing (equally) to predict the recent financial crisis.

What injury would the audience expect?

Who even is "the audience"?

[Talanes]

I think you're a little too hung up on the audience metaphor.

> Perhaps confusing battles between "freshwater" Chicago macro economists and Ivy league "Saltwater" theorists could be best understood as happening within a single "orthodox promotion" given that both groups suffered no injury from failing (equally) to predict the recent financial crisis.

The Kayfabe element is that two "competing" schools of thought are primarily concerned with protecting the shared status of "orthodox" economics over outside theories.