Delphian
the prisoners
dilemma
CasqueOpenFace
Barry Krusch
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Times
1994 by Barry Krusch
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Avant Garde
LAST UPDATED: October 16, 1994
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Times
+lUBIn 1994 I taught an 8th grade junior high school class, and every 
Monday
H	we would 
)=?play a game called 
Who Wants It?
  The game worked this way: I
H0would offer to give a dollar away to any person 
g in the class, provided that that
person 
)*Fwas the only person who raised their hand when I asked 
who wants it?
HAIf more than one person raised their hand, I would drop down the 
offer a quarter
H each time, until the reward was 
&.  Was I unnecessarily putting my hard
H?earned cash at risk?  Hardly 
 in fact, for me the outcome was 
predetermined.  I
HJknew I
d be giving away little, if any, money. I knew this because I knew 
about
Prisoners
 Dilemma
)t9, a critically important topic in game theory.  Just as I
H*expected, week after week, the kids would 
%compete with each other for the buck,
H"past the quarter right on down to 
', and all would end up empty-handed. It
H&never occurred to these poor souls to 
+cooperate; it never occurred to them to get
together and have 
)i?one person raise their hand, and then split the cash.  The look
HFof dismay on these kids
 faces as they all watched each other raising 
their hands
HCwas palpable 
 they knew they were trapped in a cognitive web they 
did not
H"have the intellectual capacity to 
.escape.  It was sad, but, I have to say, quite
instructive.
>Just a bunch of immature, silly junior high school students?  
Surely we big,
smart 
)&Eadults would not be so foolish as to compete with each other in those
H>situations where mutual cooperation would benefit us all!  Uh 
. . . yeah.  As
H=Henry Hazlitt pointed out nearly fifty years ago in his book 
A New 
Constitution
Men do 
)'Mnot act in accordance with their interests; they act in accordance with their
l5illusions.  To know what one
s real interests are is 
!an intellectual feat of which few
l$men seem to be capable. 
If all men 
)acted from enlightened self-interest,
Bertrand Russell 
)T=has put it, 
the world would be a paradise in comparison with
what it is.
l@Recognition of this problem is older than fifty years; in fact, 
it was
H?originally described with some formal rigor in 1832 by William 
Forster Lloyd, a
H"professor of political economy at 
Oxford University.
 As Lloyd noted, cattle
H9owners have a short-term interest in increasing the size 
of their herds.  Yet when
H/cattle graze on common pasture, an 
indefinite 
]!increase in the size of the herds
sooner or later produces 
5a number of animals that is far beyond the biological
carrying capacity
 of the pasture.
! This phenomenon is known as the 
Tragedy 
the Commons
)N", formulated by Hardin as follows:
A New Constitution Now
, p. 55.
Filters Against Folly,
 p. 90.
Filters Against Folly
, p. 91.
Times
+l]#Imagine yourself as a herdsman . . 
/. when the total population of herd animals has
l*just reached the carrying capacity of the 
#land.  Suppose you have a chance to
l-acquire ten more animals.  Suppose also that 
%you are in complete possession of the
facts
that you understand 
6carrying capacity and the dangers of transgressing it.
lAShould you, or should you not, add ten more animals to your herd?
Since the 
).Aadditional animals are (by hypothesis) ten more than the carrying
capacity, all your 
)TDanimals will have a little less food per capita next year than this.
l"So will everyone else
s animals.  
'Even so, you expect a net gain from the
l=acquisition, for this reason: the gain is all yours, but the 
loss (from transgressing
l!the carrying capacity) is shared 
2among all the herdsmen.  Your share of the loss is
l/only a small fraction of the total.  Balancing 
gain against 
 loss you decide
l0to take on ten more animals.  In economics this 
"is called a rational decision.  To
lBbehave otherwise would be to behave irrationally
in the short run.
?Every other herdsman in a commons must, if rational, reach the 
lGdecision
not only this year but in every succeeding year.  In the long 
run this kind
l6of behavior produces disaster for all, as overgrazing 
turns semidesert into desert.
lNEven if you understand completely the disastrous consequence of living by the 
rules
l)of the commons, you are unable to behave 
'otherwise.  The rules pay you to do the
wrong thing.
AAs a good citizen you might refuse to add to your herd, but what 
	makes you
l;think every other herdsman would also be a good citizen? . 
. . As selfish and
lHrational exploiters prosper at the expense of the public-spirited, envy 
will cause
l3some of the latter to join the 
rational
 decision 
!makers in their ruinous behavior.
What might begin as 
)d?the selfish rationalism of a few, ends in the corruption of the
many.
The Fall of Man.  
)i7As time progresses, poetic observations become prosaic;
H6our subconscious insights make their way from dusk to 
dawn. Lloyd
s 19th
H+century observation that people do not act 
I"in accordance with their long-term
interests 
)3Gturned out to be a very telling one, and one that grew concomitantly in
importance as 
)U>society 
progressed
, and nuclear weapons were invented.  With
H)this new importance came new realization.
=After World War II, the potential of the superpowers to turn 
the entire
HBplanet into the Sahara led to extensive research into game theory 
at Defense
Department 
think tanks
. Eventually, a concept known as the 
Prisoner
Dilemma
Awas discovered in 1950 by Melvin Dresher and Merrill Flood of the
HLRAND corporation.  Since their original formulation of the problem is 
less 
clear
HKto the uninitiated
, Hofstadter (1985) developed a parallel example in one 
of his
two superb articles on the 
Prisoners
 Dilemma 
anthologized in his 
Metamagical Themas
l.Assume you possess copious quantities of some 
item (money, for example), and
wish to obtain some amount 
+of another item (perhaps stamps, groceries,
lKdiamonds).  You arrange a mutually agreeable trade with the only dealer of 
	that item
known to you.  You are 
)z6both satisfied with the amounts you will be giving and
 Filters Against Folly
, pp. 92-93.
Times
+lQIgetting.  For some reason, though, your trade must take place in secret. 
 Each of
you agrees to leave a 
)j;bag at a designated place in the forest, and to pick up the
other
s bag at 
)CFthe other
s designated place.  Suppose it is clear to both of you that
lNthe two of you will never meet or have further dealings with each other again.
/Clearly, there is something for each of you to 
fear: namely, that the other
l0one will leave an empty bag.  Obviously, if you 
#both leave full bags, you will both
l;be satisfied; but equally obviously, getting something for 
nothing is even more
lIsatisfying.  So you are tempted to leave an empty bag.  In fact, you can 
even reason
it through rigorously 
)h>this way: 
If the dealer brings a full bag, I
ll be better off
l,having left an empty bag, because I
ll have 
'gotten all that I wanted and given away
l	nothing. 
)+K If the dealer brings an empty bag, I
ll be better off having left an empty
bag, 
Nbecause I
ll not have been cheated.  I
ll have gained nothing but lost nothing
either.  Thus it seems that 
'no matter what the dealer chooses to do
m better 
l3leaving an empty bag.  So I
ll leave an empty bag.
Edealer, meanwhile, being in more or less the same boat (though at the
l=other end of it), thinks analogous thoughts and comes to the 
parallel conclusion that
l#it is best to leave an empty bag.  
,And so both of you, with your impeccable (or
lFimpeccable-seeming) logic, leave empty bags, and go away empty-handed.
lEThe original example as formulated by Dresher and Flood is closer to 
H	following
You and a man named 
/Jack are suspected of having committed an armed
robbery, and you are 
/each placed in separate jails, with no means of
communication.  Some 
:hours later, a District Attorney enters your cell. You are
H7told that there is enough evidence to convict both you 
and Jack on a lesser charge
H=of illegal possession of firearms, but not enough to convict 
on the more serious
charge of armed robbery.  To 
0avoid a lengthy trial, you are given a chance to
H(confess, under the following conditions:
neither
) 	 you nor 
)7,Jack confess, you will both be convicted of 
illegal
possession
, which carries a sentence of 
six months
 both
4 you and Jack confess, you will both get the MINIMUM
sentence
armed robbery
, which is 
)2	two years
	only one 
),&of you confesses, that person will be 
considered a state witness
go free
; the other will get the 
MAXIMUM sentence for 
armed robbery
, which
twenty years
l7To clarify this matrix of possibilities, you decide to 
construct the following
H#table, which you organize from the 
fewest
 months you could possibly 
serve to the
! months you could possibly serve:
Metamagical Themas
, pp. 715-716.
)	`The following discussion is based on Watlzwick
s formulation of Albert Tucker
s description, in 
How Real is
Real?,
 p. 98.
Helvetica Black
%#POSSIBLE MONTHS THAT WILL BE SERVED
GIVEN THE POSSIBILITIES
CONFESSION POSSIBILITIES
I CONFESS, JACK DOESN'T
NOBODY CONFESSES
WE BOTH CONFESS
I DON'T CONFESS, JACK DOES
Times
l%Before you looked at this table, the 
%answer seemed simple; neither you nor
HEJack should confess, thus limiting the time served by both of you to 
six months.
But then a thought 
)m=enters your mind: 
Jack must figure I don
t want to confess.
You decide to scan the table, 
1and your eyes drop to the last row.  Uh oh. 
 if I don
t confess, and he does, he gets off 
scot-free 
no months in jail.
Hmmm 
)@Ethat
s a powerful incentive for him to confess!
 Then you look at the
first row of the table. 
Uh oh, there
s an even 
worse
 incentive for him to give it
+ incentive to confess!  How can Jack trust 
when I can get off
HAscot-free by confessing?
  Your mind is slowly changing, Dave, I 
can feel it. You
HHdecide to get even more sophisticated by putting this analysis in a new 
table which
H8contains the average results of the opposing strategies:
	I CONFESS
I DON'T CONFESS
HE CONFESSES
HE DOESN
T CONFESS
AVERAGE RESULTS
lBYup, looks pretty clear.  The average sentence you can serve with 
confess
strategy is 
+ months, while the average sentence from a 
t confess
 strategy is
! months.  Clear as day.  So, you 
'confess.  And Jack, who knows you
re an
HBanalytical thinker just like him, chooses likewise.  You both end 
up serving two
years, when simple cooperation 
,would have reduced both your sentences by 75
H5percent.  Thus operates the 
logic
 of individualism 
embedded in a 
Prisoners
Dilemma
)49 scenario. (By the way, an interesting observation: your 
guilt or
H*innocence with reference to the charge is 
irrelevant
: even 
if innocent, you must
HHconfess!  The Salem Witch Trials and plea bargaining come to mind here).
<Of course, the problem isn
t in the logic
the problem is in 
premises
H"Note the problem of the prisoners:
+They could not communicate with each other.
MEven if able to communicate, they could not necessarily trust each other, and
(They could not trust each other, because
they came 
)2:from a society whose culture encouraged the free-flowering
of egocentrism, and
Times
@there was no arm of enforcement preventing those individual acts
.which betrayed the long-term interests of all.
4But, as one might expect, the Prisoner
s Dilemma is 
not merely confined
to hapless 
)=Fsuspects in the lock-up. Locks, chess clocks, cops, umpires, steroids,
shoplifting scanners, 
4two-way mirrors, video surveillance, parking meters,
H+QWERTY keyboards, radar detectors and toll 
booths are contemporary
H/monuments to the existence of this phenomenon. 
Consider these notorious
examples from real-life:
A club has a fire, 
)T?and all rush for the exits, preventing the exit of anyone; as a
result, all perish.
AAt a concert, A stands on his toes to better see the performer.  
The person
~?behind A must now stand, and the effect ripples throughout the 
auditorium.
~DSoon all are standing, and no one has a better view than they would 
have had in
~?a sitting position, except that now they must stand versus sit.
Big kids 
pick 
)GAon
 little kids, and society allows it (
you have to learn how to
~ defend yourself
).  Thus, a kid 
.must 
act tough
 to develop a 
 and avoid
~%being singled out.  Soon kids become 
%teens become adults, and fists become
~/knives become guns, and gangs become organized 
gangs become organized
~Ocrime. Eventually the 
big kids
 are confronted by even bigger and badder kids.
FThe phenomenon of military escalation engendered by a genuine need to 
defend:
If one nation 
)DAmaintains constantly a disciplined army, ready for the service of
ambition or revenge, it 
)n6obliges the most pacific nations who may be within the
~<reach of its enterprises to take corresponding precautions.
Athlete A uses 
)P8steroids, which gives him a competitive advantage. Other
athletes are 
)9Dforced to use steroids to retain parity.  As a result, no athlete is
~Pgiven a competitive advantage, but all are subjected to the hazards of steroids.
1Model A gets breast implants, which help her get 
jobs. Other models are forced
to get breast implants to 
/retain parity. As a result, no model is given a
~Ocompetitive advantage, but all are subjected to the hazards of breast implants.
5In a college dorm, A blares his stereo.  To hear his 
stereo, B must blare his.
Soon the whole floor is awash 
)in a cacophony of noise as a 
stereo war
~	develops.
,A says, 
never take the first offer.
  Soon 
B says it, and eventually C.
~<Gradually, society becomes filled with people who refuse to 
take the first offer,
~#forcing those who otherwise wished 
%to make honest first offers to become
~Ddisingenuous,  leading to a society with radically diminished trust.
 Federalist  41
, Madison.
   NYT, 7/28/91, p. S-1.
Times
$A depositor hears that a bank is in 
*trouble, and goes to pull out his savings.
~1Others are forced to pull out their savings as a 
 begins on the bank
~ savings, and the bank collapses.
0State X offers a lottery, and soon the citizens 
 of State Y are sending money out
~#of the state to state X.  State X, 
/which did not wish to have a lottery because it
felt that lotteries 
)T;had a corrupting effect on the citizenry, is forced, out of
~'financial necessity, to have a lottery.
Mr. A pirates software. 
)r2 So does Mr. B.  So does Mr. C.  As a consequence,
the software that 
)Q<would have been otherwise written for the benefit of Messrs.
~9A, B, and C is not written, because there is a radically 
diminished market for
~	software.
Mr. Z writes a 
virus,
 which 
)destroys the operating system of people
computers.  
)?;Mr. Z thus provides a role model for others, who also write
~Eviruses, one of which attacks Mr. Z
s computer and destroys his data.
Car companies institute 
)q7a policy of 
planned obsolescence
 due to their control
Ethe automobile market.  Foreign automobile manufacturers are given an
opportunity to 
)H<enter the market, and the domestic car companies lose market
~&share, and American workers lose jobs.
!College student X (and I do mean 
) rips out the pages from a book a
~1professor has put on reserve, and other students 
follow suit; that
s why X now
t get the article he needs.
In a 
Kpublic debate where ready access to the facts is not available, X misstates
the truth, and the audience 
3sees X
s viewpoint as more legitimate, forcing Y to
misstate the 
)>@truth to retain parity.  The presence of counterfeit information
~"delegitimizes genuine information.
Congressman X 
)P=votes to keep a military base open to improve his chances for
election, even 
)DBthough it will hurts the country by adding to the deficit.  Voters
~	vote for 
)*Da representative who 
brought jobs
 to the district, even though the
~>policy will have a devastating effect on the national economy.
Metamagical Themas
, Hofstadter gives 
additional examples of the
working-out of the 
Prisoners
 Dilemma
)r+ in everyday life, in order of seriousness:
-loudly wafting your music through the entire 
neighborhood on a fine summer
not being concerned 
)e8about driving a car everywhere, figuring that there
~8point in making a sacrifice when other people will just 
continue to guzzle gas
anyway;
Anot worrying about having ten children in a period of population 
explosion,
~6leaving it to other people to curb their reproduction;
Pnot devoting any time or energy to pressing global issues such as the arms race,
Nfamine, pollution, diminishing resources, and so on, saying 
Oh, of course I
Times
+~R6very concerned
but there
s nothing one person can do.
While this last example is, in 
1the final analysis, the most serious, its effects
H3are harder to see. The driving example is probably 
the one most likely to be
H6confronted on a daily basis, and the one which is the 
most visible. It
s probably
H0no surprise, in a country which has such a love 
b affair with the automobile, that
HHthe Prisoner
s Dilemma situations which most frequently confront us are 
found in
traffic
)$!.  Among these are the following:
?drivers who don
t wear seat belts, thus driving up the cost of 
everyone else
insurance;
5people who avoid driving small cars because big cars 
are safer, putting the
people in small cars at 
)p6greater risk, which forces them, in turn, to buy large
cars;
8the person who drives 
gas-guzzlers
 because he 
likes
big cars, giving others
~#permission to do what they like as 
(well, increasing America
s dependence on
foreign oil, 
)8Dwhich increases the price of gasoline as well as increasing the risk
~,of war to secure scarce petroleum resources;
the phenomenon 
rush-hour traffic, 
)[%the congestion of streets, roads, and
highways at 
)<Bdesignated times, where every person
s individual desire to get to
work 
promptly
 makes everybody 
0the pollution which results from the collective 
!actions of individual drivers who
believe 
)%Gthat their one act of driving 
doesn
t matter,
 resulting in air no one
wants to breathe;
Athose drivers who go to the front of long lines at freeway exits 
butt in,
~0forcing other drivers to retaliate or 
take it
	finally, 
gridlock, 
)50the total cessation of traffic flow that results
from 
Eclogged intersections.  Gridlock is preceded by a phenomenon known to
traffic engineers as 
)h	spillback
, which 
)/!results when drivers move into an
intersection with no 
)`:place to go, and thus block the other drivers from passing
~Ithrough.  Each driver who 
spills back
 hates being blocked himself, but 
blocks
~2others to save a second
s worth of traveling time.
l:As the above situations clearly indicate, the rudeness of 
driver A means
that driver B has to 
)s=be equally rude to secure his or her rights, and the rudeness
begins to 
escalate
.  Localities without adequate 
 sanctions against these acts are
transformed into
 dog-eat-dog 
cultures. Says Hofstadter:
lJI have been struck by the relative savagery of the driving environment in 
the Boston
lAarea.  I know of no other city in which people are so willing to 
take the law into
lQtheir own hands, and to create complete anarchy.  There seems to be less respect 
l4such things as red lights, stop signs, lines in the 
$street, speed limits, other people
Metamagical Themas
)U	, p. 757.
Times
cars, 
Oand so forth, than in any other city, state, or country that I have ever driven
in.  This incessant 
me-first
 attitude seems to be a vicious, self-reinforcing circle.
Since there 
;many people who do whatever they want, nobody can afford to
l+be polite and let other people in ahead of 
'them (say), for then they will be taken
l8advantage of repeatedly and will wind up losing totally.
l.Boston is not alone.  In some cities, such as 
Los Angeles, frustrated drivers
H4have been known to arm themselves, and shoot others.
8Well, junior high school students and normal adults are 
Prisoners
Dilemma
 prey, 
)*<but surely the best among us can rise above the fray. Right?
Wrong. Out there in the 
4real world is a gloomy illustration of the depths of
irrationality 
)JBto which our best-educated individuals can sink. In his June, 1983
column in 
Scientific American,  
Hofstadter announced a 
lottery not unlike the
Who Wants It?
 game. In that lottery, the prize to be 
awarded was $1,000,000
HDdivided by the number of entries received; so, if 1,000,000 entries 
were received,
and your name was picked, you 
(would win $1.00. Obviously, the rational
behavior
" for the purchasers of that issue 
Scientific American 
would have
H4been to designate one subscriber to enter one time, 
with the others holding out.
After winning, that subscriber 
,would then divide up the money among all who
H)cooperated.  Thus, if there were 100,000 
#cooperating subscribers, each would
H	have won 
$10.00.  Since the readers of 
Scientific American
, of all people, could
H)be expected to be more rational than the 
'rest of us, they would be presumably be
5most likely to discover the most rational solution.  
Presumably
.  But, as
Hofstadter reported,
Dozens and dozens of readers 
4strained their hardest to come up with inconceivably
large 
Nnumbers.  Some filled their whole postcard with tiny 
s, others filled their
card with rows of 
)[Aexclamation points, thus creating iterated factorials of gigantic
l>sizes, and so on.  A handful of people carried this game much 
further . . . Some of
them exploited such powerful 
5concepts of mathematical logic and set theory that to
l*evaluate which one was the largest became 
)a very serious problem, and in fact it is
not even clear that 
)\=I, or for that matter anyone else, would be able to determine
l+which is the largest integer submitted . . 
'. meanwhile, all this monumental effort
[was] to the detriment of 
everyone
Perhaps 
)39now we can see why the problem was formulated in terms of
H+prisoners; in society, individuals are the 
H	prisoners
 of their own 
(collective)
H=beliefs.  Individual Heaven is Communal Hell; our problem is 
that we are
H"surrounded by people just like us!
 Metamagical Themas
, pp. 732-733.
=  Assuming that the acquisition of wealth is always rational.
Metamagical Themas
, p. 760 (paragraphs combined).
Times
Is the problem hopeless? No. 
Prisoners
 Dilemma 
theory 
provides at least
three ways out:
Enable
 communication
  to enable the formation of 
culture
Establish 
social codes
 which combat
 Prisoners
Dilemma
 effects, while
simultaneously
Creating an organization that 
enforces
  these social codes.
l/How fortunate the prisoners would have been if 
an organization had been
set up to 
prevent
 self-destructive attention to 
their own self-interest, an
HBorganization that would have set a penalty for violations greater 
than any possible
HDrewards for betrayal.  Consequently, both would have cooperated, to 
their mutual
advantage. 
The ultimate act of 
)p2individualism is to implement an organization that
curbs irrational exercises 
of individuality.
)]%  The cure for the Prisoner
s Dilemma
H3disease has been known for centuries 
 for all its 
unfashionability, it
s called
government
if people 
persist
 in having children in a time 
!of overpopulation, government can
insist 
that they 
desist
6if companies are polluting the rivers, government can 
fine them or put them out
of business;
+if drivers 
spillback
 into intersections, 
#government can post traffic cops at
~2intersections to issue tickets, and can alter the 
$timing of traffic lights to increase
traffic flow;
3if one party to a contract breaches the agreement, 
government can enforce the
~	contract.
*if people expect others to contribute for 
&their mutual protection or for 
public
~*goods
 such as transportation, government 
$can force these 
freeloaders
 to pay
what they owe.
In short, 
government
)D+ (i.e., the organization which creates and 
enforces
social codes to counter 
Prisoners
 Dilemma
)r% scenarios) is absolutely necessary. 
H Alexander Hamilton reflected in 
Federalist 15, 
[w]hy has government 
instituted at all?  
)b?Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of
H(reason and justice, without constraint.
  And James 
Madison reiterated this
H	point in 
Federalist 51
[W]hat is government itself 
but the greatest of all
reflections 
)B<on human nature?  If men were angels, no government would be
Federalist
 15 (Hamilton).
Times
necessary.
3  A non-angelic culture which bandies about maxims 
like 
look out
HGfor number one
 and 
nice guys finish last
 is a culture which demands 
HGgovernment capable of fighting the behavioral outcomes of these maxims.
>people do not always understand why they need good government.
Prisoners
 Dilemma 
)v!theory predicts that people will 
fight good government when
H(it helps their short-term self interest.
According to Hamilton:
l2Happy will it be if our choice should be directed 
#by a judicious estimate of our true
lMinterests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the 
public
l/good.  But this is a thing more ardently to be 
%wished than seriously to be expected.
l7The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many 
particular interests, innovates
lEupon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a 
variety of objects
lOforeign to its merits, and of views, passions, and prejudices little favorable 
to the
discovery of truth.
l"Many will fight the establishment 
$of good government. Yet without good
government, we are doomed 
to enact, on a daily basis, 
Prisoners
 Dilemma
scenarios.  When 
)e=our government no longer functions as it should (for whatever
H reason), we are at the mercy of 
'this phenomenon of game theory. And the
HAprevalence of chronic problems in America, from crime to welfare 
to health-care
H/to domestic abuse to a host of other problems, 
leads many observers to the
conclusion that government 
5in this country is no longer functioning.  Worse yet,
H:the antics of our 
representatives
 in Washington, DC are 
giving the concept of
government
 a bad name.
Unfortunately, 
)X9though many people feel that the United States government
is chronically inept 
)}4and inefficient, a gaping maw which devours precious
resources and spits out 
1waste products like Congressional sound-bites and
HAtelevision close-ups of Presidents waving from helicopters, they 
simultaneously
H8believe that there is little that can be done about it. 
More unfortunately, these
HBsame people will not hesitate to let others know of their belief! 
While these
H"verbalizations of felt inadequacy 
.might serve to satisfy some individual
s short
H/term need to relieve cognitive dissonance, the 
P%net result is that society as a whole
H<loses, because these verbalizations, though unbuttressed by 
evidence, are seen as
  due to sheer repetition. Spiraling begins, where the 
belief
 of inadequacy
leads to inadequacy 
in fact
climate of belief
 is created 
which rewards
statements of helplessness 
6with affirmation, and punishes statements of hope with
HLeither disbelief, scorn, the 
silent treatment,
 or any combination thereof.
Federalist
)&0 51, p. 262 (Madison).  While they did not call 
1the phenomenon by the same name, the Framers were
aware of the 
Prisoners
 Dilemma
.  See the essay 
)P$The Political Theory of the Framers 
at ftp.netcom.com,
/pub/krusch.
Federalist 
1 (Hamilton).
Times
Thus, a 
primary
Prisoners
 Dilemma
 situation is created 
a foundation
H*for future scenarios. Worse, this problem 
%may be exacerbated, if those who have
H2the power to manipulate public opinion benefit in 
some way from a defective
government;
 Prisoners
 Dilemma
)v, theory predicts that these individuals (or 
groups
Gindividuals) will broadcast and publish that information which seeks to
H;conserve the form of government which acts to secure their 
own particularized,
HNspecial interests, and ruthlessly organize against any competitors, no matter 
worthy.
-The net result is that a society buffeted by 
	secondary
 Prisoners
Dilemmas
)9(, (the dilemmas which arise from a lack 
of functioning government)
H5may be locked into such a situation for decades, due 
to the 
primary
Prisoners
H	Dilemmas 
)H-(dilemmas which prevent the establishment of 
functioning
government).
8And to the extent that we are mired in the quicksand of 
our appetites, we
H+shall to that extent submerge unvictorious.
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	temp.0001
Barry Krusch
Barry Krusch
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