Civilization, I’ve decided, is the ability of a society to sustain positive-sum games. Successful positive-sum games consist of all the players choosing the cooperative option over the selfish option, in the expectation that everyone does. Sure, individuals gain even more if they defect, so although there are incentives to cheat, there is also an incentive for other players to police cheaters.
The most basic of these games are played every day, and we are compelled to play them because they are encoded in laws: We observe property rights, human rights, speed limits and tax laws. We abide by the results of democratic elections. These compulsions are virtually second nature — to most of us the concept of ownership has taken on a physical reality — but once they were not. Modern democracy is now the gold standard of civilization, but it began as an audacious experiment whose benefits were only evident with time.
The more such games a society can sustain, the more civilized it is. Civilization is not to be confused with modernity, though many of these games evolve with the advance of technology: For example, intellectual property rights have become harder to enforce in the digital domain, but after an initial run of selfishness, many of us are recognizing the need to pay for digital delivery of a song or clever software.
To me, the most interesting games are the ones we are not compelled to play by force of law. Civil society contains a whole range of these, both new and old: We turn off cell phones in cinemas, we let passengers off the subway before boarding and we give directions, because reciprocating such behaviour means everyone is better off by a margin far greater than the utility freely curtailed in the short run by the individual. Newstand owners will tell you to pay tomorrow if you don’t have the correct change, and you do pay. You pick up garbage at picturesque spots.
We’re conditioned, as social beings, to act this way, often without rationally weighing the pros and cons first. And yet it is obvious that the aim is to maximize our individual utility in the long run. Civilized societies are inhabited by those smart enough to recognize that the best way to satisfy the instincts is by choosing collaboration over instant gratification in return for a larger reward later. The more people realize this, the fewer defectors there are. The fewer defectors there are, the more such games can be played before those that do defect erode the positive effects.
Of all the societies I’ve drifted through, and there have been plenty, I must nominate the Swedes (and previously, the Norwegians) as the society where the positive-sum game is played most competently. I notice it every day: A lunch place near where I work has an unattended basket of money where you pay and whence you take your change. Recycling is an obsession. Queues are flawless; often they aren’t even needed, because a numbering system takes care of it. Women with babies in strollers are allowed free on busses. There is an extraordinarily low murder rate. Corruption is among the world’s lowest.
Why might this be? Because Sweden is such a homogeneous society, and people who look alike look after each other? But that’s simply not true: in 2002 11.8% of Sweden’s population was foreign born, compared to 11.5% for that “melting pot”, the US. Maybe the benefits of playing the positive-sum game are made clearer to recent immigrants to Sweden. Maybe the winnings from playing in Sweden are stacked in such a way that everyone feels they have a stake in society.
Is there room for improvement? Are there positive-sum games with even greater returns that we are not yet playing because the benefits of collaboration are not transparent enough, or because the incentive to defect is too tempting? Eurof and I have had this conversation intermittently for a decade, in various forms. To put it bluntly: Can something akin to communism’s “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” evolve naturally? Is such a society within the realm of possible human activity, or does it go against our very nature, our selfish instincts? Remember that we already play positive-sum games to satisfy our instincts; why not just raise the stakes and hence our winnings? Eurof contends it cannot be done, but he can elaborate in his comments if he wishes.
I am cautiously optimistic that such a society can evolve over time, but with two caveats. The first is that we might not ever get there all the way, but that society, Swedish society at least, is moving in that direction. More and more, we are capable of abstracting the process by which effort begets reward. It’s clear that the future will involve more behaviour based on this ability, not less.
Second, there is a minimum quality of life that the overwhelming majority of the population needs to have before you can play for higher stakes. Communism is not for the poor. Sweden is eradicating poverty in its midst, surely, if not evenly,A report released Friday by Rädda Barnen/Save the Children shows 262,000 Swedish children were classified poor in 2001, 34,000 fewer than in 2000. and as it does so there will be progressively fewer desperate people for whom defecting brings a disproportionately large reward increase. The eradication of poverty is a prerequisite for, not a result of communism.
This is where Charles et al will usually retort that poverty is a relative concept, that there will always be poor as long as there are rich. Charles is right. The common assumption, though, is that low wealth disparity in society, though feasible via a policy of progressive taxation, is not desirable because it saps economic incentive. In fact, if it’s not the other way round, the best we can say is that there is very little correlation between income disparity and growth. [PDF] Sweden, for example, has robust growth and low income inequality.
It’s going to take a while before we get there — quite possibly another half millenium or so. But don’t forget that 500 years ago democracy was a ludicrous notion.
Ok boys, the post is all yours. Go rip it to shreds.
