Defection and Its Dilemmas

Defection and Its Dilemmas

Is there a variable that could help us understand societies in a more helpful way? Let’s try defection, a concept derived from The Prisoner’s Dilemma, a game often analyzed by scholars interested in human evolution (e.g. Nowak, 2011).

The players in a Prisoner’s Dilemma iteration have to choose between selfish and cooperative behaviors. The payoffs and costs to the choices are arbitrarily determined in advance and can be experimentally manipulated. The game shows under what circumstances two rational individuals might choose to cooperate or not cooperate.

All humans are willy-nilly involved in situations in which they have to choose between being loyal, at some sacrifice to themselves, and defecting—choosing to do something that helps them but hurts others. In real life, of course, the payoffs and costs of the choices aren’t determined by an experimenter; they result from the nature of the social situation in which individuals find themselves.

Clearly there are some societies in which the payoffs to defection are high and some in which those payoffs are low. Clearly also, there are some societies in which the costs of defection are high and some in which they are low.

We think it’s possible to characterize societies using only the consequences—costs and benefits—of defection, and we think that this approach might be more useful than such terms as “capitalism” and “socialism,” two terms that have almost lost their meaning. What does “socialism” mean? What Lenin put into practice in Russia? What the current Social Democrat-led government of Denmark does to ease the imbalances of the market system? Or does it mean what Bernie Sanders envisions when he dreams of equality? What does “capitalism” mean? The word began as an epithet, something Karl Marx hissed when he thought of rapacious factory owners. Now, for some, the word seems to signify the source of all progress and the guarantor of all freedom.

Let’s see how far we can get by looking at the social response to defection in various societies, beginning with hunter-gatherer bands. A hunter-gatherer could gain little or nothing by leaving his band, betraying his band-mates, or otherwise behaving selfishly. And the cost of such defection was extremely high. It often led to ostracism, which could mean death. Individuals couldn’t afford to alienate the other members of their band. Survival on one’s own was impossible. We can think of hunter-gatherer societies as Low Payoff and High Cost for defection (LP/HC).

In the United States today, the payoffs to defection are high and the costs are low (HP/LC). For example, oil companies have made billions of dollars making and selling products that pollute the environment (a defection from the common good). The costs, if any, are usually little more than fines that are a small fraction of the companies’ profits. Similarly, Americans can often change jobs on a whim, regardless of the consequences to the previous employer. And a man who abandons his family doesn’t have to face angry relatives intent on mayhem. The cost of his defection is usually limited to alimony and/or child support.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is a High Payoff/High Cost (HP/HC) society. There are many opportunities to make a fortune; the country is incredibly wealthy. But the powers that be are not tolerant of deviation from the rules, as the murder of Jamal Khashoggi recently highlighted.

Some countries have both low payoffs for defection and also low costs (LP/LC). To find such a society, one might look to failed or failing states, such as Venezuela or Somalia. These are societies in which opportunities are limited; most people have little to gain by abandoning spouse, family, for that matter, a steady, if low-paying position. “Defection” (trading in the black market, drug-dealing, pilfering) often goes unremarked or unpunished. For defection in such places to have a high payoff, one has to be a major criminal, a corrupt official, or flee the country.

Of course, punishing “crime” can deter defection even if the word doesn’t appear in statutes. Treason is usually punishable by death. Graft, fraud, and corruption can land one in prison. Damage to the environment can generate fines—the Deepwater Horizon oil spill comes to mind—but “defection from the common good” is not on the statute books as a punishable offence.

As a result, there are usually plenty of loopholes through which defectors can slip. For example, Martin Shkreli bought the drug Daraprim, which was selling for $13.50 a pill, and raised the price of one pill to $750. Was that defection? Shkreli later went to prison, but for fraud, not for causing hardship to his fellow citizens. Hundreds of American manufacturing companies have left U.S. communities for the cheap labor of foreign countries, often throwing hundreds of people out of work and destroying the community’s tax base. Is that defection? In an HP/LC society like ours, many such behaviors are perfectly legal.

Looking at social and political behavior through the lens of defection can give us new insights into the way societies operate. What behaviors are considered defections? How are these behaviors dealt with? What behaviors have the effects of defections but are not punished? This lens might be particularly useful for a better understanding of the gray area between illegal and unethical.