No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Game

“Imagine there’s no countries it isn’t hard to do.” Unfortunately for John Lennon, a poignant piece of mathematics laced with a hearty dose of enlightenment philosophy quickly dismembers such wishful thinking. However, the very same concoction also suggests that we are not consigned to forever wars if we are willing to change the name of the game.  

Game theory is an interesting proposition. As long as you know the rules, there is a good chance you can figure out a definite best course of action. For instance, take a game between two players where both are vying for a gold, and each can choose between sharing and stealing. If they both decide on sharing, they each end up with three golden ingots while deciding to steal will result in both only gaining one. However, if one plays nice and the other does not, the thief will happily walk away with all 5 of the honest player’s ingots, leaving them nothing. Now, play along with your good friends, Bonnie and Clyde, who would never ever even think of stealing from you, except when they consider that no matter what you play, they will always be better off stealing. As will you. Therefore, this game has reached its logical conclusion called a Nash equilibrium where no player can change their decision without being worse off. The moral of the story, if you ever make it onto a psych show, always steal. 

 However, there is a slight problem with theft (What a shocking catastrophe, I know.) The total benefit of all players decreases with each player that chooses to steal; the best choices lead to the worst outcomes. Now, in the real world someone needs to produce food, or we all starve to death, leading everyone to a dilemma: If you try to produce food, it will inevitably be stolen by the first opportunist that realizes that it is easier to steal than to produce. However, if you then try to steal you run the risk of not being able to steal enough food and starving to death. The Nash equilibrium of this scenario is everyone starving to death because it is always better to steal than to produce as shown in our little game above. Yet, because everyone is aware of this, they will all choose to steal leading everyone starving to death because no one produces. Once again, best choice, worst outcome. As you may have noticed, we are not all dying of starvation at the moment. This is because anywhere this game is repeated through time, the players are forced to produce (Or die, their choice.)  And when they inevitably do so, it will immediately be stolen from them in what the philosopher Thomas Hobbes called a” war of every man against every man.”  So, one way or another, producers must be able to produce and benefit from their product in some way. This must lead to social organization first as delocalized hunter-gatherer tribes and then as agricultural civilizations so that the incentive to produce is protected from would-be thieves. Any group that does not do this to some effect inevitably starves, leaving only those that do. As such, it can be said that each individual gives up their ability to steal and maximize their own private welfare in exchange for the protection of whatever they produce from theft. By participating in a society where some of your freedom (e.g., the freedom to steal) is taken away in exchange for your protection, we all enter into what a very smart French guy called “the social contract.”  Basically, by agreeing to self-regulate in a society, individuals maximize the welfare of society even at the cost of their own as in the long run, everyone is individually better off. 

However, there is still a way to steal, through the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.  The only difference is that countries can choose to dedicate a portion of what they produce towards a military that can also serve in a defensive capacity. The Nash equilibrium for this game would be every country going into an arms race with every other country, yet again leaving everyone starved. Such events were common in the past. Take the rationing of WWII, where anything that could be used for the war, was used for the war. If a major global conflict was taking place right this instant, I would probably not be able to write this article as spending valuable computer chips on consumer electronics as opposed to missile guidance systems would be high treason.  But even during peace, the need to maintain a military to discourage would-be invaders leads to a tremendous loss of welfare in every country. Imagine how many lives could be saved if Eritrea was not forced to spend 10% of its GDP on fending off the Ethiopians. Even in peace, war ends up killing. 

The problem is that countries can fight a war without starving, meaning that militaristic nations do not end up disappearing even after all the non-militaristic ones have been completely subjugated and exploited to great effect as colonies. In fact, they end up as competing great powers that lead to routine major global conflicts that end up scarring everyone involved. As things stand now, the nations of the world are in partial recognition of this fact, agreeing to cooperate through treaties as well as organizations such as the U.N., NATO, etc. However, we are still in a state of nature, the opposite of a society under the social contract, for countries.  It follows that we would once again be better off with a set of rules that all nations would be forced to follow or face severe consequences, however as described at the beginning, it is in no nation’s individual interest to produce or bring about such a society of nations. How to fix it? Ask the political scientists. And you'll be sufficiently annoyed into giving up.