The war of all with all

Many of the early philosophers of society (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau etc) tried to understand society as arising from the relations of humans in the state of nature.  Sometimes this meant the natural authority of fathers  would justify as natural the authority of Kings.  Sometimes it was assumed that the natural state was war of all with all, which could only be restrained by social contract or (internalized) subjugation.

I think the famous 'Prisoner's Dilemma' problem is a very nice source for considering these issues. Two prisoners have committed a crime, but prosecutors will need evidence against them to establish a full conviction.  Hence they will cut a deal if you default on your partner and give evidence against them.  Formalised, it assumes that by cooperating, both parties can benefit, but by defaulting while the other cooperates your benefit can be even greater, and their penalty large.  The penalty for both defaulting is equal, but less severe than the individual penalty.   Suppose this table gives outcomes - negative numbers are penalties for years in prison.  So if you dob and your partner doesn't, you go free and they get five years.  If you each dob, responsibility is split and you get three years each.

                    Cooperate      Default

Cooperate         -1 / -1              0/-5

Default             -5 / 0              -3/-3

The game theory analysis of this situation is that you should always dob, because cooperating is a dominated strategy - that is, your expected results are considerably worse playing 'cooperate' than playing 'default' regardless of what your partner plays. If you partner cooperates, you wish you'd defaulted. If your partner defaults, you wish you defaulted.*

This game theory solution always makes people anxious.  In real life, the person defaulted against will get out eventually, and may be able to penalize defaulting. They may have powerful friends. These stem from the idea that there is some continuity, and in fact you can change the game by playing indefinitely.  (Interestingly, if you play a fixed series, there is an argument via backward induction that you won't be able to sustain cooperation, because at the last turn, we both know we'll both default, and therefore the decision point moves to the turn before last. The turn before last becomes the chance to default against and so on.)  If you don't know when the last turn will be, and the probability is low enough, the potential benefit of a series of future cooperations may begin to outweigh the loss of being defaulted against once after which you default against your opponent every turn.

I think the cooperate / default choice is foundational for society and that philosophers have tended to come down on one side or the other without consciously / explicitly considering the payoff table.  Society works when you can find games in which 'cooperate' is not strictly dominated by default. You can start structures that will increase the penalties of defaulting and increase the benefits of cooperating - contracts and so on.  Nietzsche has a whole thing about the value of conscience and the construction of beings with the right to make promises, that (I think) is an attempt to undercut the distinction between cooperation and default and an attempt to revalue the two.  In this he is motivated by a justifiable suspicion that the structures that work against 'default' will become a way for indecent power to overcome legitimate power.  That is, the government / law / elders will be motivated to eat the benefit of cooperation and begin to use the penalties of default - thus defaulting in their way, against their society.

A wise old jewish friend took exception to this model applied to marriage, because of the assumption that there is always a solution of defaulting against a cooperator that is better than cooperating. I think it depends on the units of gain and loss, the concept of marriage.  If marriage is a cynical money-making scheme, it may pay to marry Mel Gibson and have a child with him, and then divorce him.  If marriage is a cynical sex-maximising scheme, it might make sense to have an affair or visit prostitutes.  If marriage is a scheme to be known and loved, default cannot increase the bottom line.

*   This changes if the payoffs are different, of course. You can imagine a weakly positive payoff from being defaulted against. You can imagine a game where being defaulted against is still not as bad as both defaulting it.