Games We Can't Win

When everyone loses: the shared structure behind wars, status games, and destructive competitions

War is curious. It comes with a lot of extreme destruction.

People are killed, infrastructure is wrecked, reputations are hurt, money is lost.

Yet, although both sides suffer, it keeps on going. It seems irrational. Couldn't we like, have a judge evaluate what would be the outcome of a war, agree to it, and only go to war when a party disagrees enough with the judge's assessment?

Sadly, that scheme is not workable. (But it is good to establish why exactly it is not workable beyond "Oh, it is too strange and people would not even try".)

Nevertheless, it is not exactly the topic of today's essay.

Today's essay is about the fact that much of life is structured like wars. Situations where even if there might be a "winner", participants collectively suffer. The technical term for these is "Negative-sum games".

Dollar Auction and Competitions

A dollar auction is a simple game where players bid on a dollar.
Presented like this, it's quite a boring game: players bid as close as possible to a dollar until they stop caring, like 99¢ for instance.

The twist is that the second-highest bidder must also pay their bid. This changes a lot. Now, if the highest bidder is at $1, and the second highest bidder is at 90¢, it might make sense for them to bid $1.10 (that way, they'd only lose $1.10 − $1 = 10¢, compared to losing their entire 90¢).

So players just keep on bidding until they decide to just cut their losses and gaining the one dollar wouldn't make much of a difference on their total loss regardless.

Not playing is not winning either: if you don't play, some will just snatch the dollar from you for 10¢.

There's no really principled solution here, there's no strategy that works in all situations. (This is mathematically proven!)

This seems like an artificial setup designed by economists. And it is!

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But it is also more than that.

All competitions share the structure of a dollar auction. Even worse, they specifically share the structure of an all-pay auction: all bidders lose their bids, not only the second highest one. When people participate in a competition, their efforts are sunk regardless of how well they perform.

If there's a job offer, then the time of all candidates but the one selected for the job is wasted.
On dating apps, the time and energy of all the uninteresting prospects is wasted.
If only the top 10% of the kids are going to make it, parents keep sinking more and more resources in extra-curriculars and the money and youth of the 90% is wasted.
If only the top 0.1% of artists is going to make a living out of their passion, then we should crush the idea that you have to fight for art. Else, the efforts of the 99.9% are going to be wasted.

In a dollar auction, there may be relative "winners", but overall, everyone is collectively worse off and much has been wasted.

Chicken and Status Games

Wikipedia describes the game of chicken better than I was going to:

The name "chicken" has its origins in a game in which two drivers drive towards each other on a collision course: one must swerve, or both may die in the crash, but if one driver swerves and the other does not, the one who swerved will be called a "chicken", meaning a coward.

This sounds stupid, like another artificial game created by economists.

Who would ever participate in such a game? Only the most foolish one, the most disregarding of their own life, would survive.

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But war is a lot like the chicken game.

If you're not willing to fight, people will walk over you.

This is what motivates guerilla fighting techniques and terrorism.
It is not that guerilla fighters and terrorists expect to win on a battlefield. They just hope their enemy will cave first, and have a lower willingness-to-pay.

This is terrible. In our world, there is a natural incentive for armed groups and states to be as stupid, violent and self-destructive as possible.

(This is also why countries should never build a culture of pacifism. Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, you must prepare and be ready to fight war. This means a culture of war that knows when and when not to fight it.)

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Status games are a lot like the chicken game, and war.
There's an incentive to pay increasingly costly signals. Costly signals are actions taken that are costly, and whose main benefit is to demonstrate a willingness to pay the costs. The incentive is there up until the point of personal ruin.

Among teenagers: the tamest one, the one who studies the most, the one who sacrifices their social life the most, look like the best students from the point of view of their teachers. Up until they fall off the cliff and burn out.
Among teenagers: the most daring, the one who drinks the most, the one who sacrifices their studies the most, look the coolest from the point of view of their peers. Up until they fall off the cliff and fall into the drug lifestyle.
Among ideologues: the most screeching, the most polarising, the most outlandishly conspiracist, look like they are the most faithful. Up until they completely get untethered from reality and go crazy.
Among politicians (including workplace politics): the most sociopathic ones, who lie the most, who exaggerate the most, who are most unconcerned with what is realistic and possible, look like they care about people. Up until it becomes too obvious and they lose everyone's trust.

Again, there may be relative "winners", but overall, everyone is collectively worse off and much has been wasted. It seems irrational to not rally these types of situations.

Tragedies of the Commons

Everyone always talks about the Prisoner's Dilemma, but I much prefer the Tragedy of the Commons: it is much more realistic.

In the tragedy of the commons, there is a subset of the population (like fishermen or Big Oil) who is making things worse for everyone (by overfishing or polluting the atmosphere), not only themselves.

I think this one hits too close to home to feel like it's just an artificial thought experiment by economists.
It is more obviously relevant.

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War is often a lot like this.

War is dog-eat-dog.

You steal, you deceive, you lie, you cheat. You sow distrust everywhere you go. You pillage.

In a deep way, this may be the worst of war.
Humanity is largely about transcending the self and doing great things together.
War undoes this.

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I personally see one of the great missions of Civilisation as building Commons. Commons are "resources accessible to all members of a society", like security, culture, trust in strangers, cheap Internet infrastructure, etc.

When politicians lie, I don't care that much about them being in a chicken game where they risk ruining their reputation. I care that they are making it harder for everyone to trust all politicians, including the honest ones.

When clickbaiters clickbait, I don't care that much that they're selling their soul. I care that they're wasting everyone's time and attention on clickbait.

When criminals fight each other for territory or market shares, I don't care that much about the damage they're doing to each other. I care that they are making the world a much less safe and trusting place for everyone else.

When nerds want to do politics and find themselves trapped in the Overton window, I don't care that they feel bad about not expressing their true beliefs. I care about every honest person's job getting harder because the nerds are being "strategic". (Remember: If you feel stuck in the Overton window, it is because YOU ARE the Overton window.)

Commons take a lot of effort to build, and very little to deplete, abuse and destroy.

In a very concrete way, a civilised place differs from an uncivilised one based on how good it is at creating, maintaining and protecting commons.

Conclusion

All these aspects of war are present everywhere in our society and daily lives.

We should spend a lot of effort avoiding and annihilating them.

Quite often, the only winning move is not to play.

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Instead, we must build, maintain and protect a civilised peaceful society. That way, our work will effortlessly lead to the common good.

This involves banning bad behaviours, enforcing good norms, market design, public choice theory, political philosophy, experimenting in real-life, as well as building a practical might to police things internally and externally.

This is a lot of effort, but it is worth doing. We gained 250 years of Civilisation from the Enlightenment people and their descendants doing it.

I like to think that with our modern-day technology, it ought to take us less effort than it did them.

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On this, cheers!