We previously established the Anatomy of the Game and considered some basic implications of the Nash Equilibrium. We demonstrated that any corrupted, highly extractive political system is inherently unstable because it cannot remain in a stable Nash Equilibrium.

This structural realism provides us with absolute mathematical assurance that the passive compliance of the Ruled cannot endure in the face of systemic oppression. Eventually, their Strategy must change to something that provides a better Pay-Off.

Before we can model the complex dynamics of social conflict between the Ruler and Ruled populations, exploit the vulnerabilities of aberrant autocrats, or execute sophisticated cost-imposition strategies, we must first learn how to think in terms of Game Theory.

We will be examining five foundational games that serve as the strategic blueprints of everyday social and political friction. They provide a foundational understanding of how trust is built, how threats are evaluated, how bystanders are paralysed, how agents are corrupted, and how information is controlled.

As a Rebel, you must learn to identify which of these games is being played on the board at any given moment. Crucially, you must also learn how to deliberately set up these situations in order to change the Environmental Pressures and Pay-Offs for an oppressive regime.

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1. The Deterrence Game: Action and Inaction

The simplest game that we will consider is the Deterrence Game. It was originally designed as the mathematical backbone for the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine of the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The goal was to prevent a nuclear first strike by ensuring that the defending nation maintained a highly visible, automated, and survivable second-strike capability. This guaranteed that any act of Aggression would trigger an automatic Retaliation so catastrophic that the expected utility of the invasion would fall below zero.

In the Deterrence Game, the Aggressor will only refrain from initiating an attack if the cost of the retaliatory blow exceeds the anticipated Benefit of the Aggression:

The most reductionist form of Game Theory is the principle that action is only expected if the Risk is not larger than the Reward.

Both the Ruler and the Ruled populations have the ability to change the Risk and Reward matrices for either side. Since either side can escalate, the is no monopoly on violence. One side simply has a more credible threat than the other, but credibility can change over time.

An oppressive regime will try to make the risk of resistance seem to outweigh the potential reward.

An active citizenry should maximise the Risks associated with political over-reach and minimise the perceived Reward. This actually maximises the Perceived Value of society for both the Ruler and the Ruled populations, as we will prove later using Monte Carlo simulations.

On the other hand, to defend your movement you need to minimise your own Risks, while maximising the Reward anticipated with your Strategies.

In this regard, any good Strategy should have a combination of offensive and defensive elements.

2. The Game of Chicken: Brinkmanship and Swerving

The Game of Chicken gets its name from the car-racing stunt popularised in James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause, 1955.

In the real world, the original application of this game was Cold War crisis management, most notably during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Both the United States and the Soviet Union drove towards the brink of thermonuclear war. Each superpower wanted the other to concede, or Swerve, first. If both head Straight, the joint outcome was mutual destruction.

This game is modelled by two players heading on a collision course, where the worst-case scenario occurs when both choose the Aggressive, non-cooperative Strategy:

Oppressive regimes routinely use the threat of physical and economic violence to trick the Ruled into Swerving. They rely on the assumption that the Ruled value their comfort or survival above all else.

Any resistance that the Ruled forms against an oppressive regime is challenging the authority of the Rulers, and so every stand off is essentially a Game of Chicken.

The only way to get the regime to Swerve is to threaten a Straight/Straight situation. However, a Swerve/Swerve outcome is also desirable if it minimises the intensity of the oppression.

In a Swerve/Swerve situation, both Players will try to get the other to Swerve harder, which amounts to a Game of Chicken within a Game of Chicken. An elegant rebellion must learn to make use of this, since outright confrontation is not the only move you can make during a battle.

The more credible the threat, the more likely your opponent will Swerve.

3. The Stag Hunt: Coordination and Defection

The Stag Hunt, also referred to as the Assurance Game, Trust Dilemma or Common Interest Game, was developed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Discourse on Inequality, 1755.

Two hunters are needed to catch a high-value Stag. If they work together, they both succeed and get a high Pay-Off. However, if a low-value Hare passes by, one hunter might be tempted to defect to capture the Hare for immediate, guaranteed survival but with a small Pay-Off, leaving the other hunter with nothing.

Mathematically, the Stag Hunt is represented as a coordination matrix where mutual cooperation yields the highest collective Pay-Off, but defection is the safer, low-risk Strategy:

The Stag Hunt explains why sovereign nations struggle to cooperate on global challenges, such as mutual disarmament or climate treaties, even when cooperation yields the highest mutual benefit. It has also been adopted to model cooperation under anarchy by Kenneth Waltz.

The Stag Hunt explains the logic of keeping your head down and minding your own business: you are guaranteed to avoid conflict if you go for the easy way out.

However, it also proves that this mindset does tremendous damage to the Perceived Value of society, because you are giving up genuine gains in prosperity for the easy bread crumbs.

The people who choose the Hare strategy are responsible for collapsing any attempt by the Ruled to reverse the decline of society, but you do not need the entire population to hunt Stags successfully, just a minimum proportion.

In a multi-round game, we can talk of these strategies in terms of the Probability of Cooperation, which can be interpreted as the proportion of a population that adopts a Stag strategy.

A Rebel needs to encourage other Rebels to hunt Stags, while pressuring the oppressive Rulers into a situation where a few of them starts adopting a Hare strategy.

In terms of the Ruler vs the Ruled, it is in the interest of the Rulers to pressure the Ruled into a compliant Hare strategy, while it is in the interest of the prosperity of society for the Ruled to prefer a Stag strategy when pushing back against political overreach.

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4. The Volunteer’s Dilemma: Action and Inaction

Kitty Genovese was murdered in her home in New York in 1964. Her neighbours heard her cries for help, but no one called the police. Each individual assumed that someone else would do it, or had already phoned the police. This phenomenon was called the Bystander Effect.

The Volunteer’s Dilemma was formalised in 1985 by sociologist Andreas Diekmann, inspired by the Bystander Effect.

It models any situation where a single player must bear a personal Cost to provide a public Benefit that is enjoyed by everyone, regardless of who Volunteered.

The Pay-Off structure shown in the example is such that the group benefits from the sacrifices of the one, be this resources, effort or something else, and there is no benefit if no one does anything:

The original applications of the Volunteer’s Dilemma explain failures in public goods provision and crisis management. For example, an entire neighbourhood might sit in the dark during a power outage because every household waits for a neighbour to make the tedious phone call to the electricity provider.

If you live in an oppressive society, this game is the defining psychological barrier to change. The rational, short-term Strategy for every citizen is to wait for someone else to take the risk.

Everyone knows that something must be done to challenge the system, whether organising a strike, speaking out, or protesting, yet few people are willing to be the first person to put their neck on the line.

The individual Cost of being a pioneer can be catastrophic: arrest, professional ruin, or physical violence. On the other hand, everyone Benefits from a reformed society where the Rulers are no longer as oppressive and extractive towards the Ruled, including those who stayed safe.

Individual Costs can be mitigated by community support structures, while the perceived Benefits of Volunteering can be reinforced by a shared vision of what a better society looks like.

Historically, Resistance Movements have used a mechanism of struggle clout to enhance the perceived Benefit of Volunteering. If the oppressive regime resorts to murder, develop a culture of revering martyrs to the cause.

5. The Principal-Agent Problem: Information and Concealment

The Principal-Agent Problem emerged during the 1970s, pioneered by economists Stephen Ross, and Michael Jensen & William Meckling. It explores the structural friction, conflicts of interest, and inefficiencies that occur when one party, the Principal, delegates decision-making authority to another party, the Agent.

While traditionally applied to corporate governance, the most profound application of this model lies in representative democracy. The voting Ruled population acts as the Principal, delegating executive, legislative, and representative authority to the Rulers, who act as their Agents.

Voters charge these politicians with a strict mandate: to enact policies that maximise the collective utility of the citizenry and to deliver on campaign promises.

However, because of Information Asymmetry, the Agent can get away with enacting ulterior motives due to conflicts of interest, generating and Agency Cost that draws away from the Perceived Value of society:

In a corrupted system, this problem manifests as systemic capture, and the Agency Costs that society must suffer for each responsibility they give to the government inflates as a result.

The politician is nominally the Agent of the citizenry, but they have been secretly co-opted by corporate interest groups or foreign adversaries. These external entities offer private Benefits such as campaign donations, post-political board seats, or direct financial intelligence, that dwarf the perceived utility of public service.

The politician’s dominant Strategy shifts to serving these hidden masters. In order to maximise their own Benefit, the Rulers need to maximise Information Asymmetry. The less the voters know, the more they can get away with Cost-free.

Rebels must treat captured politicians not as leaders to be persuaded, but as rogue Agents whose Information Asymmetry needs to be eroded and whose double-dealing must be made prohibitively expensive.

Furthermore, it warns us to minimise delegation: each individual must do as much as he can by himself. This further highlights the necessity of a culture of Voluntarism:

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A Note on Strategies

Rebellion is often romanticised as an emotional eruption of collective anger, but this is just a stereotype because there are other forms of rebellion.

History shows us that spontaneous, unstructured uprisings are highly volatile. They are easily hijacked, brutally crushed, or lead directly to chaotic power vacuums and systemic collapse.

The five games that we considered here are not academic abstractions, they are the underlying structural machinery of everyday political friction. We need to stop viewing oppression as an insurmountable moral evil and begin analysing it as a series of flawed, exploitative Pay-Offs that can be systematically re-engineered.

Our goal is not to burn down the board when seething anger reaches a boiling point. The goal of a coordinated Rebel population should be to understand these structural dynamics so deeply that we can intentionally alter the Environmental Pressures and change the nature of the game.

This is how we force a transition to a stable, prosperous peace – not through chaotic disruption, but through the deliberate, mathematical enforcement of Deterrence in an Antagonistic Balance between the Ruler and The Ruled. This is the only way to maximise the Perceived Value of society for all of its members.

In modern politics, we have been conditioned to view societal conflicts through moral, legal, or ideological lenses. However, the dynamics of having a Ruler population and a Ruled population, and the conflicts between the two, follows established principles in the field of Game Theory.

The Ruler population has a long history of using Game Theory, and less rigorous predecessors like the strategic advice of Machiavelli, against the Ruled population to extract resources from the Ruled and to suppress their rights.

We are told to vote, to protest peacefully, or to appeal to the shared values of our institutions and everything will magically work itself out. To a pragmatic realist, this is shamefully naive because it ignores the underlying mechanics of power struggles and creates a situation where the Ruled loses every conflict, incentivising the Ruled to become even more aggressive in its value extraction.

The Ruler population already understands this. They have designed the playing field to make absolute compliance your path of least resistance.

Whether consciously or through trial and error, ruling elites use principles of Game Theory such as Asymmetric Information, cost-imposition strategies, and Mechanism Design to structure society in a way that optimises their own utility at your expense.

The aim of this series is not to encourage political unrest, it is to educate Rebels living under oppressive regimes about the aspects of Game Theory that they need to understand in order to maximise the value that both the Ruler and the Ruled populations get out of society.

The best way to fight back is to learn how the game works, and then to play the optimum strategy. There is no need to tear everything down, this is a guide on how to level up your game.

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The Anatomy of the Game

Every game or strategic conflict on Earth is governed by the four foundational Components of the Game:

The Players:

The independent, utility-maximising decision-makers involved in a game. Game Theory for Rebels defines the Player as the Ruler and the Ruled populations.

The Strategies:

The plans of action available to each Player, dictating exactly how they will react under any possible set of circumstances.

The Pay-Offs:

The real-world outcomes of the game, measured in the gain or loss of resources, physical security, capital, operational efficiency, or political agency.

We will group all the possible Pay-Offs between the Ruler and Ruled as the Perceived Value of society, which increases if there is mutually beneficial cooperation and decreases if either side imposes costs on the other.

The Environmental Pressures:

The rules imposed on the board that strictly limit the types of Strategies each Player can realistically deploy. These rules can be violable or inviolable depending on the game.

The some of Ruler vs Ruled Environmental Pressures are violable on both sides, which means that both sides are capable of changing the rules of engagement at any time, limited only by the credibility of their threats.

The Instability of Non-Equilibrium

The central concept of modern Game Theory is the Nash Equilibrium: a situation where no Player can benefit from unilaterally changing their Strategy because all Players are playing the optimal strategy for the situation.

A corrupted society is fundamentally unstable because it is not in a Nash Equilibrium.

In a corrupt state, the Ruler continuously imposes costs on the Ruled through parasitic extraction while minimising their own costs of coercion. Because the Ruled are forced to absorb negative utility, the status quo is mathematically guaranteed to change.

As oppression intensifies, the benefit for the Ruled to change strategies increases while the benefit for the Rulers to keep their strategy of extraction decreases.

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You are the Hope

Game Theory gives an absolute mathematical assurance to those living under dystopian conditions that the status quo cannot remain permanent.

Because the system is in a Non-Equilibrium state, the Strategy of the exploited Ruled population is guaranteed to change. The Ruled cannot maintain passive compliance, it is mathematically impossible to remain in a Non-Equilibrium state for too long.

History confirms this mathematical inevitability.

The Soviet Union possessed one of the most pervasive, heavy-handed security apparatuses in human history. Yet, total oppression could not override the underlying structural decay of a Non-Equilibrium system.

In the end, the Soviet Union decided to voluntary and peacefully dissolve. The Pay-Offs for the Rulers were eroded by the changing strategies of the Ruled.

The solution was always in the hands of the Ruled, compliance is the only strategy that guarantees that you lose the game.

Next:

In Part I, we introduced the basics of Game Theory, explaining how systems naturally drift toward strategic equilibria, and how we can use Mechanism Design to shape those rules. We can now expand on those basics to explain the fundamentals of Conflict Analysis, as well as Reciprocity in the context of Conflict Theory.

The fundamental basis for general conflict modelling is the Hawk-Dove game, using a shared resource pool as the basis of conflict. This model serves as our primary tool for analysing conflicts and deterrence between two players in society, each with a specific probability of being aggressive or compliant.

To analyse social conflicts realistically, we have to model society as an infinite horizon, step-by-step game where all Players move simultaneously in each round and the number of rounds is infinite unless societal collapse is triggered.

This creates the opportunity for reciprocal strategies, where each player’s next move is determined by the opponent’s move in the prior turn, which will be explored in the context of Tit-for-Tat Strategies.

By studying these dynamics, we come to a better understanding of how to penalise misbehaviour when designing more functional Social Contracts based on Game Theory dynamics, aimed at preventing catastrophic conflict escalation or shared value depletion due to incentive misalignments.

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I. Historical Development of Conflict Analysis

Historically, classical Game Theory assumed that players were rational human actors, which worked well for modelling economic markets and Cold War nuclear strategy. However, this paradigm struggled to explain strategic interactions where players lack conscious foresight or where formal reasoning is impractical due to the number of factors or uncertainties involved.

In the late 1960s, an American population geneticist named George Price was investigating the evolution of animal aggression, hoping to explain why animals of the same species rarely fight to the death when competing for mates, food, or territory, opting instead for highly ritualised displays of strength. He then collaborated with John Maynard Smith, a British evolutionary biologist.

Smith and Price published “The Logic of Animal Conflict” in 1973, formally introducing the Hawk-Dove game and the concept of an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS). They eventually won a Nobel Prize for this work.

They proved that strategic stability, and thus stabilising behaviour, can emerge without conscious planning, since behaviours are selected for by the environment based on the reproductive fitness (pay-offs) they yield for both the individual and its species as a whole.

Since then, this analytical framework has been successfully applied to wide-ranging fields:

Evolutionary Biology:

Mapping physical animal contests, such as stags locking horns in ritualised combat rather than lethally goring each other’s flanks.

Behavioural Economics and Sociology:

Explaining the spontaneous emergence of property rights and ownership conventions via the Bourgeois strategy, which demonstrates how respect for possession can stabilise a population without centralised legal institutions.

In the Bourgeois strategy, players play Hawk if they are the “owner” of a resource and Dove if they are the “intruder”.

International Relations:

Analysing high-stakes geopolitical brinkmanship, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, where both superpowers face a catastrophic “Hawk-Hawk” collision of mutual nuclear annihilation, the mathematical equivalent of the Game of Chicken.

II. The Hawk-Dove Game: Coercion and Compliance

In Conflict Analysis, the Hawk-Dove Game serves as the perfect abstraction of the historical power struggle between Ruler populations and the Ruled populations that they govern. The simplest form of a Hawk-Dove Game is a high-stakes, one-round game.

The basic set up is two Players competing for a shared resource of value, V, and where Hawkish behaviour has a cost, C. Each Player can choose one of two strategic postures:

The Hawk’s strategy is aggressive, escalatory, and unyielding. The Hawk attempts to seize the entire resource by force, willing to risk a high-cost conflict, C, to win.

The Dove’s strategy is cooperative, submissive, and accommodating. The Dove seeks to share the resource peacefully, but will immediately back down and yield if met with Hawkish aggression.

When these two strategies collide, the pay-offs distribute into the three distinct patterns seen in Figure 1, below:

Dove vs Dove:

Both Players share the resource peacefully. The costs are low, cooperation is high, and the system generates stable, mutual prosperity, giving a pay-off of V/2 for each player.

Hawk vs Dove:

The Hawk takes the entire resource, and the Dove yields. The Hawk secures the full Pay-Off V at zero operational cost, while the Dove survives but is completely exploited giving a pay-off of V – C = 0.

Hawk vs Hawk:

Both Players refuse to yield, resulting in an immediate escalatory spiral. The conflict consumes the resource, inflicting severe, often terminal costs on both players. If the cost of conflict consumes the value of the resource, (V – C) / 2 = 0, this results in mutual destruction or a game ending event.

Practically speaking, the Ruler and Ruled are competing for the Perceived Value of society, V_per. It is also useful to discuss their behaviour in terms of the probability of being Hawkish, p(H), as a convention.

We can treat the Residual Perceived Value, V_res = V_per - C_total, as a proxy for how prosperous a society is at any stage of the game. Here C_total represents the Total Costs, which grows or diminishes after the end of every round depending on Hawkish or Dovish actions, respectively.

III. Compliance and Deterrence

If the citizenry behaves like a perfect Dove, the state is structurally incentivised to play the Hawk.

A Dove allows a Hawk to achieve maximum resource extraction at zero enforcement cost, and the system falls into the Compliance Trap: compliance makes future resistance harder, increasing the probability of giving up in the future. In this state, the state’s extraction of wealth and suppression of liberties will continue to expand until the point of societal collapse.

However, if the state pushes too far and a volatile segment of the population decides to change strategies to Hawk via resistance, disruptive protests, or civil unrest, the system enters an escalation spiral, leading to Systemic Collapse if one side doesn’t back down.

In a healthy system, the goal is not to eliminate this tension, but to maintain a state of Antagonistic Balance.

The state must have the capacity to enforce basic order, preventing the citizenry from sliding into chaotic lawlessness. Conversely, the broader population must maintain the credible capacity to escalate the state’s operational and logistical costs if the state attempts predatory overreach or if corrupt mismanagement is present.

The ability of either side to escalate is proof that neither side has a monopoly on violence, and all that differs is the perceived credibility of their threats.

When both players possess a credible capacity to inflict costs on the other in response to Hawkish behaviour, they become locked in an equilibrium of mutual respect, which maximises the Perceived Value of society for everyone involved.

IV. Tit-for-Tat: The Cost-Imposing Governor

Real-world societal interactions operate as an infinite horizon, step-by-step game where players move simultaneously in each round. In such a continuous arena model, one of the most robust mechanism for stabilising behaviour over time is the reciprocal strategy of Tit-for-Tat.

Originally popularised by Robert Axelrod (1984), Tit-for-Tat is deceptively simple for how powerful the strategy is:

1. Start by playing Dove (cooperating in the first round).

2. In every subsequent round, replicate the previous move of your opponent.

For a Pragmatic Realist, Tit-for-Tat is not a moral framework of forgiveness and punishment, but a highly efficient Total Cost minimisation mechanism.

It stabilises the strategic landscape because it enforces direct consequences for behaviour:

It is clear and predictable:

The opponent immediately understands that their choices dictate their future Pay-Offs, removing strategic ambiguity.

It is retaliatory:

If one side defects by playing Hawk, Tit-for-Tat immediately punishes them with a matching Hawkish turn, forcing the aggressor to consider the costs of their own overreach.

It is forgiving:

The moment the opponent swerves back to Dove, Tit-for-Tat resumes cooperation, preventing the system from locking into an inescapable loop of mutual retaliation.

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While Tit-for-Tat’s rigid responsiveness carries an inherent escalation hazard if either side refuses to mutually de-escalate, this friction is structurally necessary in order to maximise the Residual Perceived Value of society for everyone involved, which we will prove later when we discuss the results of the Ruler vs Ruled Monte Carlo simulations.

By forcing both players to dynamically react to one another, Tit-for-Tat introduces corrective feedback loops. Rather than a rapid slide into systemic collapse, players engage in a step-by-step negotiation of moves.

This reactive friction delays societal collapse, stretching the timeline of Total Cost escalation and buying the system precious space to adapt, adjust incentives, or rewrite the rules before the Residual Perceived Value of society is completely consumed by the Total Cost of societal conflict.

Ultimately, the threat of escalation under Tit-for-Tat is not an act of thuggishness or banditry, it is the dynamic catalyst that prevents systemic decay due to political misconduct. It ensures that the playing field remains dynamic and self-correcting, forcing players to remain communicative, receptive and acutely aware of boundaries determined by the Social Contract.

This keeps the nation in a state of dynamic equilibrium, where both Ruler and Ruled populations are structurally incentivised to produce the best societal outcomes by imposing costs on misbehaviour.

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References

• Axelrod, R. (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books.

• Maynard Smith, J., & Price, G. R. (1973). “The Logic of Animal Conflict.” Nature, 246(5427), 15–18.

• Schelling, T. C. (1960). The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Expanding on our introduction to Conflict Theory, we are now going to establish Game Theory, along with statistical methods like Monte Carlo simulations, as our primary toolkit for Conflict Analysis.

Historically, political thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to Karl Marx have rooted their proposals in moral, social, or economic philosophies. However, these classical frameworks lack a rigorous mathematical language capable of mapping natural Strategic behaviours.

A paradigm shift began around the mid-20th century, when mathematicians realised that human conflict, governance, and cooperation could be modelled with the same analytical rigour as physical systems.

The new language and methods that they developed for this is called Game Theory.

To a Pragmatic Realist, Game Theory is not merely an academic branch of mathematics, it is the mathematics of human interaction itself! It is the study of how independent, self-interested agents make decisions when the nature and outcome of their actions depends entirely on the actions of others.

In future articles, we will use Game Theory to explore the relationship between Ruler and Ruled populations, and then explore how Game Theory can be used to restructure society by setting up incentive structures that minimise the harm that corruption is capable of doing to a society.

However, if we want to engineer a resilient state using Game Theory, we must first understand the rules of the board and the kinds of Games that are played.

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I. The History and Implications of Game Theory

To understand why Game Theory is a Pragmatic Realist’s preferred toolkit for Conflict Analysis and institutional engineering, we must trace its evolution from a mathematical curiosity to the bedrock of modern microeconomics and political Realism.

The formal foundations of Game Theory were laid by mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern in their 1944 book, Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour.

Before these foundations, economic and social sciences lacked a rigorous way to model situations where the optimal choice for one individual depends on the choices of others.

Von Neumann and Morgenstern solved problems for zero-sum Games, establishing the minimax theorem. A zero-sum Game is a two-Player Game which either ends with a winner and a loser, or end with a tie.

However, the real world has situations whose outcomes also result in mutual gain or mutual destruction.

In the early 1950s, John Nash expanded the mathematical toolkit to handle non-cooperative, non-zero-sum, and/or n-person Games. Nash proved that every finite Game has at least one stable point where no Player has an incentive to change their Strategy unilaterally. This is called a Nash Equilibrium.

During the height of the Cold War, strategic thinkers like Herman Kahn and Thomas Schelling weaponised Game Theory to model nuclear deterrence, analysing how sovereign nations could communicate credible threats without triggering accidental mutual annihilation.

Successful Application in Economics

Game Theory achieved one of its most famous triumphs by dismantling classical assumptions about monopolies and competition.

Legacy economic models had a simple view of markets: either there are countless passive firms with no Strategic cooperation, or there is a single seller with a monopoly.

In reality, markets are dominated by oligopolies where a few powerful competitors must constantly anticipate and react to each other’s price and production choices under conditions of Asymetric Information.

Through concepts like the Nash Equilibrium and Subgame Perfection, John Nash, Reinhard Selten, and John Harsanyi, who shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics, proved how competitors reach stable points of rivalry or collusive cartels.

The Implications of game Theory for Politics

The transition of Game Theory into political science completely demystifies the romantic, moralistic view of governance.

From the perspective of Public Choice Theory, pioneered by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, political scientists began treating politicians, bureaucrats, and voters as rational, utility-maximising Players within a specific Game.

This shift in perspective resulted in some profound insights:

The Median Voter Theorem:

In a majoritarian, two-party political system, competing parties are mathematically compelled to converge on the preferences of the median voter to win elections. This is why politicians tend to flip flop on their positions.

Coalition Dynamics:

Game Theory allows us to predict which political coalitions will form, how power will be partitioned, and how minor parties can hold disproportionate leverage in parliamentary systems.

The State as an Equilibrium:

Under this paradigm, a constitution or a system of laws is not a sacred moral contract. It is simply a paper agreement.

If the rules of that document do not describe a stable Nash Equilibrium where those in power find it less costly to follow the rules than to violate them, the constitution will be ignored, rewritten, or bypassed.

The survival of a state depends entirely on whether its institutional design matches the Strategic realities of its Players.

II. The Anatomy of a Game

Before we can analyse complex social conflicts, we must define the three core components that make up any Game-theoretic model: the Players, the Strategies and the Pay-Offs. We also need to consider a fourth aspect to bring this into the realm of Political Science and Conflict Analysis: Environmental Pressures.

The Players:

The independent decision-makers of the system.

A Player is not necessarily a single human being, it can be an individual, a corporate entity, an interest group, a regional municipality, or the national government itself. Any cohesive unit that possesses agency and a distinct set of interests is a Player on the board.

The Strategies:

These are the complete sets of actions available to each Player, victorious or otherwise.

A Strategy a pre-calculated plan that dictates how a Player will react under any possible set of circumstances on the playing field.

Alternatively, a Strategy is a particular sequence of events being examined from the results of a Monte Carlo simulation of multiple Games.

The Pay-Offs:

These are the outcomes of the Game, desirable or adverse.

In the real world, Pay-Offs are the gain or loss of resources, physical security, capital, operational efficiency, or the preservation of political agency.

A Player’s Pay-Off is determined by the joint product of their Strategy and the Strategies of all other Players on the board.

The Environmental Pressures:

These are inviolable rules that are imposed on the Game, and that limits the kinds of Strategies that each Player can use.

In a Game of chess, the Environmental Pressure is the rules of the board and the limitations on how various pieces move.

When analysing the Social Contract, the way that the Social Contract sets up incentive structures limits the strategies that are available to each player in a manner that minimises the potential for corruption to cause societal harm.

However, we will not be considering Games where we assume players can cheat, and will only be considering Games that do not involve a trust system. For the foreseeable future, at least.

III. The Real-World Utility of the Nash Equilibrium

The central concept in Game Theory is the Nash Equilibrium, formalised in John Nash’s seminal works on non-cooperative Games (Nash, 1950, 1951).

The Nash Equilibrium describes a state of play where no Player can unilaterally improve their Pay-Off by changing their Strategy. In an Equilibrium, every Player is making the best possible decision they can, given the decisions of all other Players.

To understand the profound utility of this concept, we must examine what happens when a system is not in Equilibrium.

A system that is not in a Nash Equilibrium is fundamentally unstable. In a Non-Equilibrium state, at least one Player will eventually realise that they can improve their personal Pay-Off by altering their Strategy, resulting in a behavioural shift which alters the Pay-Off matrix for every other Player, forcing the other Players to adjust their Strategies as well.

Given enough time, Players will continuously shift, defect, escalate, or capitulate until the system drifts into a stable Nash Equilibrium where every player is satisfied that they are making the right moves given the situation.

For a Pragmatic Realist this is at the core of Game Theory’s utility: it allows us to predict where systems in conflict will inevitably evolve, given the costs imposed by each player on the other.

If you design a constitution, a business contract, or a local regulation that relies on Players maintaining a Non-Equilibrium state, such as expecting politicians to behave selflessly at the expense of their own careers when there are minimal costs to being self-serving, the system will destabilise in a somewhat chaotic way until a new metastable Nash Equilibrium is achieved for some period of time.

Societal decay under corruption is not a matter of bad leadership or a lack of education. It is a structural certainty that is made inevitable by incentive structures that do not impose the right Cost Imposition Strategies.

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IV. Game Theory as an Engineering Tool

Legacy political systems fail because they treat stability as an exercise in Utopianism by anticipating a situation of moral actors. Politicians launch moral crusades, draft lofty-minded bills of rights, and hope that the right people will get elected to run the machinery for all of time.

A Pragmatic Realist wouldn’t not design a system under the assumption that actors will be moral, ethical, or altruistic. We assume that every actor is a utility maximising Player looking for the path of least resistance to maximise their own gainful Pay-Offs or to minimise their own costly Pay-Offs.

Treating the state as a Game, with incentive structures, allows us to shift our focus from political philosophy to Mechanism Design, the science of “reverse Game Theory” pioneered by Leonid Hurwicz (1960, 1972), winning him a nobel prize in 2007, along with two others.

Instead of taking the rules of the Game as given and predicting the equilibrium, we will use Mechanism Design by defining the desired social outcomes, such systemic stability, proper conflict management and poverty reduction, and works backward to construct the rules, roles, and incentive structures that compel self-interested actors to produce that outcome.

This can be simplified to generating a Social Contract where there is no possibility of a Nash Equilibrium existing if political performance does not improve the lives of the poorest section of society, or if systemic decay allows conflicts between the Players to be left unaddressed.

Instead of hoping for virtue, we can construct the physical and legal architecture of our nations to make outright corruption the least profitable Strategy.

We can design the playing field so that no single Player can achieve their personal goals by cannibalising another, and we ensure that any attempt at predatory exploitation is met with automatic, mathematically certain penalties.

In the next few articles, we will apply these principles directly to structural conflict, modelling how decentralised actors can build stable mechanisms of mutual deterrence. This includes a Monte Carlo simulation of the Ruler vs the Ruled Game.

References

• von Neumann, J., & Morgenstern, O. (1944). Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Nash, J. F. (1950). “Equilibrium Points in n-Person Games.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 36(1), 48–49.

• Nash, J. F. (1951). “Non-Cooperative Games.” Annals of Mathematics, 54(2), 286–295.

• Hurwicz, L. (1960). “Optimality and Informational Efficiency in Resource Allocation Processes.” In K. Arrow, S. Karlin, & P. Suppes (Eds.), Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences (pp. 27–46). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

• Hurwicz, L. (1972). “On Informationally Decentralized Systems.” In R. Radner & C. B. McGuire (Eds.), Decision and Organization (pp. 297–336). Amsterdam: North-Holland.

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Find Part II here:

Introduction

The idea behind this handbook is to use the Enchiridion as a basis text to derive a regime of messages to use in an attempt to alleviate the suffering of the homeless by introducing them to Stoic thought.

Epictetus was selected because he was a slave, but his mind was free. Epictetus taught and inspired slave and emperor alike, for of all men he alone knew what it was to have nothing and be happy.

While I have no expectation that the text of the Enchiridion would help people overcome their homelessness, it can most certainly make the mental and emotional burden more bearable.

The adaptations I provide are therefore examples of the spirit of the messaging campaign, and not necessarily actual messages to be used. The messages should be short aphorisms that are easy to read, but gets the mind thinking. They can be based on any philosophy, but the students of Epictetus created a manual (enchiridion) that is easily adapted into advice for the homeless, and so this is low hanging fruit.

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The messaging campaign involves periodically printing thought-provoking messages on permanent or disposable cups and food containers and to donate these to soup kitchens and feeding programs.

The use of stickers instead of printed messages also has interesting potential if the stickers are easy to remove and place on other objects.

The homeless will then receive the positive messaging together with their food, and hopefully they will talk to each other about the messages.

The idea is to combine the feel-good dopamine from the meal with messages of encouragement and healthier perspectives, so that the impression of the positive messaging has a deeper impact on their minds.

Different but complementary messages should be printed on cups and food containers, combining an uplifting message with some advice or food for thought.

This should be viewed as a long-term approach as the homeless are slowly exposed to more and more stoic ideas. The aim here is to help uplift the minds of the homeless, not to lift them out of homelessness, which philosophy cannot do alone.

There needs to be a second component that comes after messaging which is aimed at uplifting the homeless in material ways that lead to employment down stream.

I need to stress this point. Some of the messaging implies that there is a way out for the homeless if they take small steps. This will require outside help, they need to be provided with a route out.

Stoic thought emphasises an acceptance of one’s circumstances, but also encourages one to work towards self-improvement.

The necessary introspection can be facilitated through arts, performing arts and crafts. Therefore the complementary program to the messaging campaign should seek to provide opportunities for creative exploration that double as training facilities to reskill the homeless.

In order to create an industry out of it, a central marketplace should be created that is an upliftment program to drive the sales of the artistic produce. Some people find gardening therapeutic, so don’t limit your thought to art as therapy/training.

Alternatively, an industry like construction can absorb manual labour when the homeless become mentally prepared to re-enter the workforce.

Our primary source is the discourses of Epictetus as translated by W.A. Oldfather.

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The Enchiridion of Epictetus

1. Some things are under our control, others are not. Focus only on what is under your control.

• Focus on the things you can change, not the things you can’t change.

• Let go of the past, you can’t change it but you don’t have to carry it with you.

2. Don’t aim for or expect to avoid things that you can’t control. Don’t desire things that are out of your control.

• Do not desire things that are out of your control, take care of the things that are within your control.

• You have nothing to gain by avoiding your problems. You have your freedom to gain when you forgive those who caused the problems.

3. Recognise all the things you possess and be mentally prepared to lose them.

• Don’t focus on the things you have lost.

• Good things come to those who do good deeds.

4. Have a goal to remain tranquil.

• You can choose to have peace of mind, let go of the past.

• First you must heal your mind by choosing to do only good, then you must heal your life by taking steps to improve it.

• Doing good for others can make up for the wrongs you have done in the past.

5. It is not things that disturb us, but our judgements about them.

• If you slowly change the way you see the world, the world slowly changes.

• It isn’t the past that bothers you, but your thoughts about the past.

• You can change the way you think about the past.

• Don’t judge your past, the only thing that matters is your desire to be a good person in the future.

6. Don’t take pride in things that are not your own.

• Don’t take pride in worldly things, take pride in your character.

• Take pride in choosing to be good.

7. Be prepared for emergencies to occur in life.

• Nature is cruel, bad things happen.

• Don’t avoid the past, letting go requires forgiveness.

8. Accept what happens.

• Don’t fight against the past, try to participate with your destiny instead.

• Your challenges are your ticket to freedom, but you must face them.

9. Your mind is separate from your body. You bodily condition is no excuse for poor morals.

• Your bodily condition is no excuse for poor morals.

• Focus on being a good person, evil will only hurt you more.

• Homelessness is not a reason to give up.

10. For every challenge there is a solution. Remain calm and decide how best to deal with them as they come.

• Every challenge in life can be overcome.

• If the challenge looks too much, focus on winning one small victory at a time.

11. Everything in life is temporary. Be prepared to lose everything eventually.

• Everyone loses everything eventually.

• Everything in life is temporary.

12. Do not let your peace of mind depend on external factors. With small breakages or troubles, tell yourself they are the price you pay for a peaceful mind.

• Your peace of mind is not based on the outside world.

• Focus on being a good person and you will find peace from within.

• Letting go of the troubles of your past is the price you must pay for peace of mind.

• Forgiveness is the only way to let go of the hurt that you carry with you.

• Don’t avoid the past, acceptance comes through forgiveness.

13. Be content not to control other people’s view of you and when people praise you, distrust yourself.

• Don’t worry about what others might think, there are too many other people.

• Choose who you want to be and work towards that instead.

14. Do not will that loved ones live forever, or that other people won’t do wrong. These are out of your control.

• Don’t fear losing things, or be sad because you have lost them.

• Focus on the things that you can change.

15. Take what comes to you. Do not fret what does not.

• If things come to you it is reason to be happy, but if things don’t come to you that is not reason to be sad.

• He who has nothing and yet wants nothing is most blessed. He who has everything and still desires for more is cursed.

16. It is our judgements of things that make us sad. That said, do not refuse to console someone who has made themselves sad.

• It isn’t the things that happen that make us sad, but how we react to them. We can keep reacting the same, or change our reaction.

• What would happen if you stopped reminding yourself of all the bad things that happened?

17. Play the cards you are dealt in life, don’t complain about them.

• If you cannot avoid the challenges in life, the best you can do is seek to overcome them.

• God’s plan might have taken you down a rough path, but you need a rough surface to polish a diamond. Don’t give up.

18. You can choose the judgement you place on events.

• You can’t change the things that happened, but you can change how you feel about it.

• Don’t judge yourself too harshly for your mistakes, it is never too late to turn your life around.

19. Just because someone has more things than you doesn’t mean that they are happy. The only consistent way to be happy is to stop focusing on external factors.

• Having more things doesn’t make you happy.

• Happiness is found inside, not outside.

• Treat your mind as your friends, take care of it and your burdens will lessen in time.

20. If you are offended or irritated it is because you have chosen to be offended or irritated. Delaying your judgement is a good way to avoid this.

• It isn’t the past that hurts us, we hurt because we hold on to bad memories. Let go.

• If something hurts you it is because you haven’t chosen to let go of the hurt.

• You have the power, choose to let go of the hurt.

21. Memento mori (remember your own death). It keeps things in perspective.

• Life is short, don’t waste it by holding on to the past.

22. People will ridicule you for your principles. Abiding by your principles is the only way to convince people of their value.

• People will laugh at you for believing you can change, but showing them your change is the only way to prove them wrong.

23. Don’t turn to external factors to please someone. Living in accordance with your philosophy is the best way to demonstrate the value of it.

• Don’t impress people with what you have, impress them with who you are and who you will become!

24. Do not live life to fulfil the expectations of others and do not sacrifice your principles to potentially aid your friend or country.

• Don’t care about the expectations of others, choose who you want to be.

• Do not sacrifice your principles when life gets tough.

25. Be happy of others’ success, they probably paid a price somewhere to achieve it.

• Be happy when other people are successful. Bitterness will only cloud your day.

• Don’t worry about the things you can’t have, instead you should cherish the things you do have.

26. We feel terrible when some misfortune befalls us and nothing when it befalls others. Keep that in mind.

• If you don’t care about others, why should you expect them to care about you?

• Be good people. Help each other.

• A good person tries to prevent others from experiencing their pain. A bad person wants others to suffer with him.

27. Evil exists to throw you off course.

• Evil exists to throw you off course. You can overcome evil.

• Bad memories only hurt as long as we hold on to the pain.

• Let go of the evils of the past and work towards a better future.

28. If you wouldn’t be happy if your body was enslaved, why would you enslave your mind to the opinions of others?

• There are too many people to care about everyone’s opinions.

29. Don’t waste effort, think before you start something new.

• Real change requires a real plan.

• You need to make a step-wise plan to change your life, focusing on small victories at first.

• You need to look inside and address the problems you have been avoiding.

30. Don’t let people’s bad behaviour towards you affect how you treat them.

• Be good to others regardless of how they treat you.

• Choose to be good, and focus on that.

31. God’s plan has a role for each of us. You can either complain about your life or learn the lessons that life is teaching you.

• God’s plan has a role for each of us. We can complain, or we can learn the lessons God is teaching us.

• Those who have lost the most can become the closest to God.

32. Only question the things that you can change.

• Ask yourself which things you can change and which things you can’t change.

• Focus on what you can change.

• There is no use obsessing about things that you can’t change, obsess about things that you can change instead.

33. Choose who you want to be and be that person. Be careful of who you associate with.

• You are who you choose to be.

• You can change, but only if you believe you can change.

• Change happens in small steps, not big leaps.

• Some behaviours make you feel better, while other behaviours make you feel worse. Pay attention!

34. Weigh the joy you get from indulgence against the damage done from indulging, and consider the joy you’ll get from successfully avoiding indulgence.

• Do the drugs really bring you joy? Imagine the joy of overcoming your addiction…

• Getting your life back in order is not easy work, but each small victory makes you stronger.

35. Don’t fear those who rebuke you wrongly, have confidence in your actions.

• When people react with anger, don’t take it personally. They are just stressed.

• Be kind to others, even if they aren’t kind to you. It warms your soul.

36. Don’t be a glutton, show respect to your host.

• You build self-respect by showing respect to others.

• Even though you have little, share with your neighbour. Acts of kindness matter.

37. Don’t take on roles above your ability.

• Changing your life requires small adjustments.

• Big leaps are harder to accomplish, look for small victories instead.

38. Take care of your morality as you do your body.

• Morality is a treasure, even for the poor.

• If you can’t control the fate of your body, control the fate of your soul.

39. Don’t be greedy or extravagant.

• Try to be fair, even if the world is not.

• Those who have less appreciate what they have. Those who have many things appreciate very little.

40. Don’t put up false appearances, you are honoured for being yourself.

• Even if it doesn’t feel like it, it is an honour to be yourself.

• Don’t put up false appearances, the best you can do is be yourself.

• Don’t think about how society sees you, show society your effort to help yourself.

41. Focus on your mind, not just your body.

• Spend some time looking inwards, the mind has many wonders.

• If you cannot find work, why don’t you work on your mind instead?

42. Everyone is trapped in their own world view, don’t take things personally.

• Don’t take things personally, everyone has their burdens in life.

• People don’t ignore you, they just don’t know how to help.

43. There are always two ways of looking at things, don’t choose to see everything as a problem.

• You can see things as unconquerable problems if you want, but does that help?

• Never think about how difficult something is, focus on fixing one thing at a time.

44. You are more important than the things you own.

• The better person has more virtue, not more wealth.

• A good person is better than a rich person.

• Your soul is important, your possessions aren’t.

45. Don’t judge people’s actions, try to see their reasons.

• Forgive those who have done you wrong. Let go, don’t carry it with you.

• If you can see why others behave the way that they do, you will understand yourself better.

46. Live by actions and not by words. Exercise restraint and humility.

• Don’t tell yourself who you are, show yourself who you could become.

• Actions matter more than words.

• Act with humility and understanding.

47. Don’t show off or seek admiration.

• Rather help a friend than show off to your friends.

• Do not seek admiration from others, be yourself.

48. The wise man looks for help from within rather than from without.

• You are the best person to help yourself, but you must first choose to do so.

• Only you can get yourself out of your situation. First you must forgive and move on.

49. Don’t give false appearances or claim virtues that you have not earned through action.

• Take ownership of your situation and the actions needed to change your situation.

• Don’t lie about your situation out of shame, honesty is part of the healing process.

50. Your principles are more important than what other people think about you.

• Having good values is more important than having lots of stuff.

• Don’t worry about what people think, worry about being a good person.

51. Deep down you know what you need to do to fix yourself. Can you really avoid doing what needs to be done?

• You can fix yourself, but you must do it one small victory at a time.

• Make up your mind, you know what you need to stop doing in order to improve your life.

52. How you behave is more valuable than what you tell yourself.

• If you act like you have already changed, then you will change.

• Only by being moral can you experience why morality is good.

53. The things that are beyond your control are part of the mystery of life.

Life is a mystery, learn the lessons that God is teaching you.

Sources

Discourses Books 3–4, Fragments, The Encheiridion. Translated by W.A. Oldfather. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1928. Public domain. PDF found at archive.org.

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Conflict theory is a fundamental perspective in political philosophy and sociology which observes that society is in a state of perpetual struggle over limited resources, agency, and power. Rather than viewing society as a cohesive organism bound by mutual consensus, classical conflict theory argues that social order is maintained by domination and power dynamics.

While classical conflict theories often utilise the reality of social friction as a critique to advocate for a Utopian alternative, Pragmatic Realism accepts conflict as inevitable in any system.

The Inevitability of Conflict

Social conflict is biologically and structurally inevitable because humans can be categorised into a near-infinite amount of interest groups.

This inevitability is driven by the existence of disparate interest groups, forming a fractal grouping dynamic where groups can be found at every scale ending in “the whole world”. Society is a complex multi-dimensional web of associations that scale from the individual upward.

A conflict can emerge on any part of that web at any time, if the interests of a group is threatened or compromised by another group, intentionally or not.

At the micro-level, an individual belongs to multiple, distinct groups, such as work friends, neighbourhood acquaintances, or bar friends. There is also little to no overlap in values or objectives between these groups.

These groupings scale from the smokers’ corner to a dinner party, to voluntary action like a beach cleaning day, all the way up to small businesses, community organisations, corporate entities, regional populations, nations, and even alliances, ending at the earth itself (which will only experience conflict at its scale if we encounter alien life or establish space colonies).

Because human beings are naturally inclined to form coalitions based on shared interests, temporary or otherwise, systemic friction is guaranteed at every scale of society at some point as time goes on.

On the other hand, from the perspective of Pragmatic Realism the role of society is to manage the conflicts that arise from human activity, which includes the management of threats. The Code of Hamurabi (~1753 BCE) is the oldest surviving evidence of written law, and focuses mainly on predicting common conflicts and prescribing solutions.

The oldest law seems to have been a way to avoid common arguments when common conflicts arise, explicitly stating who is in the wrong and what the remedy should be.

The code of law was in the form of “if this conflict emerges, then that remedy is applied”. For example:

“If a man takes in adoption a young child at birth [literally “in its water”] and then rears him, that child will not be reclaimed”, translated by M. T. Roth.

On the other hand, we often refer to people who are prone to conflict escalation and violence as barbarians or savages, suggesting that the very notion of being civilised is tied to how you deal with conflicts.

In the framework of Pragmatic Realism, conflict is merely a clash of interests between two or more interest groups. If the parties involved cannot resolve the conflict on their own and are unwilling to walk away from the conflict, then it becomes a legal dispute.

Pragmatic Realism’s Theory of Social Conflict

Historically, conflict theory has been championed by foundational sociologists and political philosophers, who sought to explain the inequalities inherent in human civilisation or to mitigate social conflicts using ethics. Significant philosophers include:

• Plato and Aristotle: Plato’s work on ethics and his construction of Kallipolis (Good/Beautiful City) in the Republic were early and far-reaching attempts to use rational thought to minimise the number of social conflicts that arise. Aristotle’s work on ethics was equally as influential over the last 2000 years.

• Karl Marx: Marx framed societal friction through the lens of dialectical materialism. He argued that capitalist societies are defined by the economic struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; the means of production and the labour. Marx claimed that systemic exploitation would inevitably culminate in a revolution, leading to a stateless, classless utopia.

• Max Weber: Weber argued that social conflict is driven by a broader set of variables, including social status, the possession of property or political power, etc. I would classify this as an abundance/desire dynamic. Individuals have the agency to affect their social, business or political relationships, making societal conflict a multi-dimensional struggle for influence, or a struggle between scarcity and abundance.

• C. Wright Mills: The philosophy of Mills focused on the power elite, a fusion of corporate, military, and political leaders. The elites shape social structures to serve their own interests, often in direct opposition to the general populace.

The contrast between classical conflict theory and Pragmatic Realism lies in the ultimate objective. Historical theories treat conflict as a problem to be permanently solved, often through ideological victories. They rely on the assumption that if they can just implement the correct system, friction will cease.

Pragmatic Realism abandons this Utopian illusion. It assumes that every golden age will eventually decline into corruption and that human nature cannot be engineered away, but we can minimise the potential for harm or build self-correcting structures for society.

It is better to treat phenomena like the emergence of a bourgeoisie, a power elite, corruption and greed not as moral failings to be eradicated by a perfect society, but as predictable and unavoidable structural flaws that must be managed in order to minimise conflicts.

In daily life, the majority of social friction is resolved through informal mechanisms like politeness and empathy. These are necessary for a high-quality social life but are insufficient for a stable state.

An ethical population is less likely to cause avoidable conflicts, and so ethics will always be the most important aspect of conflict management.

When an interest group breaches the bare minimum standards of the Social Contract, the courts act as a logic processor to enforce rationality or to prescribe remedies.

It may be wise for societies to establish an explicit Social Contract, specifying the pillars of the state and the minimum rights that each pillar can expect to have. For example, you can group the state into: individuals, animals (in contact with humans), the environment/land, media organisations, businesses, regional governments and national governments.

Such a Social Contract should derive the rights of each pillar in a way that establishes the bare minimum of guaranteed protections that each pillar has. This will allow courts to arbitrate rationally when any interest group or pillar of state causes a conflict to emerge with another.

Conclusion

In summary, Pragmatic Realism is a highly functional, engineering-focused branch of philosophy that sees conflict as unavoidable but manageable. It recognises the fractal nature of interest groups, which makes conflict a permanent recurring feature at every level of human life.

We should be building systems that function effectively even when actors lack virtue, treating conflict as an engineering variable rather than a moral crusade. We should assume that everyone is a bad actor and build state constitutions that manage and survive human failures, rather than assuming everyone will be ethical and moral.

Everything from civil disputes to crime can be seen as clashes of interest that require arbitration only when personal resolution fails.

Ultimately, Pragmatic Realism acknowledges that we cannot build a perfect world, but we can engineer a resilient one—a system that bends, adapts, and extracts progress from the very conflicts that define the human condition.

References

Roth, Martha T., Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 1995. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature. ISBN 9780788501043.

In the previous analysis, we established that Politics is the Art of Having Problems and that the responsibility for solution franchises lies with Civil Society. These two forces need to be balanced for a society to be healthy.

To understand the relationship between the Politics and Civil Society, we must recognise that they are two sides of the same coin: the engine that drives civilisation forwards. This engine needs to operate smoothly to maintain the health of a civilisation.

The Art of Having Solutions

While the political sphere is a marketplace of attention, Civil Society is the marketplace of activism. It is the domain of charities, NGOs, community groups, religious institutions, private enterprises, informal interest groups, etc.

Civil Society tends to organise itself around single issues, or specific solutions that a group wants implemented. It allows individual citizens to amplify their voices by organising along narrow interests, usually for a short period of time.

Civil Society groups grow by convincing others that they have the solutions, attracting donations and volunteers in the process. If the solution is actually implemented they risk losing their donors, but if they do not make a show of pushing for the issue then donors will stop taking them seriously.

The flaw of modern Civil Society is therefore the reliance on established institutions whose survival depends on the issue not being resolved.

The Art of Having Solutions therefore lies in how an NGO or Civil Society organisation is organised. Is the organisation reliant of a solution franchise for continued existence, or has the organisation been formed to aggressively push a single issue?

The Solution Franchise

A political camp thrives by ensuring a problem remains visible and urgent, while making token gestures to provide the illusion of progress. On the other hand, a Civil Society organisation thrives by ensuring their specific solution is seen as the most effective or necessary intervention, and so they construct a solution franchise to draw in donors and volunteers.

However, in a messy, complex world, simply having a solution for a problem is not enough to justify implementing it.

A solution to an economic efficiency problem might destroy a cultural tradition. A solution to a security problem might erode civil liberties. A solution to a localised grievance might bankrupt the national treasury.

Ideally, the tension between problem franchises and solution franchises creates a friction that prevents both Politics and Civil Society from running wild. Without the inertia of problem franchises, a well-meaning actor might unknowingly dismantle the rudder just to fix the stove.

This is only possible if a healthy ecosystem of ephemeral NGOs or Voluntary Organisations exist that arise to push a single-issue campaign and then dissolve when the campaign is complete. NGOs that persist across multiple campaigns are dependent on the problems not being solved, but could justify their existence by supporting these ephemeral NGOs.

Flourishing Through Antagonistic Balance

Politics and Civil Society never agrees on everything, but this friction is healthy for society if it is balanced in a way that prevents stagnation.

Civilisation needs the antagonistic balance. We need the Politician to say, “That problem matters more than anything else in the world right now”, and civil actors to say, “Well then? Solve it already. Here are our recommendations.”

The Art of Having Solutions is not about fixing the world or creating a state of perfection, or moral purity. It is about finding an antagonistic balance between Politics, with its problem franchises, and civil action, with its solution franchises.

The Art of Having Solutions lies in changing the course of the ship when the captain has fallen asleep at the wheel.

In this article, we will be looking at the mechanisms that exist in modern politics, trying to find mechanistic explanations as to why politicians are famous for never delivering on their promises to voters.

Please do not to view what follows as a criticism of politics; it is an exercise in Pragmatic Realism and not moral judgement.

The Art of Having Problems

Given how often politicians talk about solving problems, it is easy to assume that politics is the art of solving problems.

The politicians even build a personal brand that depicts them as a sort of societal engineer – a person who identifies a crack in the system that voters seem to care about, drafts a blueprint for a repair, and executes it.

When they fail to deliver, we assume incompetence or the politician brands the failure as an indication of the “complexity” of the task. But if we take a step back and look at the modern political landscape through the lens of structural realism rather than idealism, a different picture emerges.

When politicians talk about problems and solutions, it is part of their brand-building activities. They build franchises around these problems, giving token gestures towards solutions to sustain the problem franchise. A problem franchise is a portfolio of public-interest issues that is maintained and exploited by a political camp.

Should a problem be solved, the problem franchise collapses and the political brand needs to spend effort and treasure remobilising around some other problem franchise. This is not a cynical view of politics, but rather a pragmatic assessment of incentive structures coupled with a realistic assessment of input (promises) and output (delivery).

In modern politics, a problem is not merely an obstacle to be overcome; it is an asset to be managed. In politics, a popular problem becomes a franchise that attracts voters. This may sound critical, but I am not arguing that politics is broken.

Civil Society organisations deal with solution franchises, and in a healthy society this creates a situation where Civil Society and voter pressure forces gradual changes while politics slows down the process so that enough time passes to be sure the solution is the best solution.

The Problem Franchise

Rapid innovation is dangerous in the political sphere.

To campaign on a new problem franchise requires a massive investment at personal risk, while public interest in existing problem franchises is well defined. You would either have to exploit some popular talking points on social media, running the risk that public interest in the problem is a passing fad, or you have convince the public that something is a problem by astroturfing.

Once you understand that a problem franchise is political assets, the behaviour of political camps becomes clearer.

Different ideological camps are therefore just different people screaming at each other, insisting that the problem franchises that they are personally invested in are more important than the problem franchises that the other camps care about.

A problem franchise is built around a specific enduring grievance, or a natural conflict that emerges periodically from competing interests that naturally arise in a society.

A problem franchise relies on the problem remaining urgent enough to justify the existence of the political structure surrounding it, but being trivial enough that small gestures can be mistaken for genuine movements towards delivering on campaign promises.

If you look closely at successful political careers, you rarely see a resumé of concluded issues – despite a lifetime of campaign promises. Instead, you see a resume of problem management: a career spent “fighting for”, “standing against”, or “championing the issue”.

There is a useful aspect to this, which also highlights the fact that this is not a criticism. Political inertia prevents rapid implementation of changes without a detailed consideration of the consequences. By the time politicians are forced to deliver, they had been milking the problem franchise for decades already – resulting in a robust debate.

The Necessary Tension

It is not problematic in itself that politics functions this way, provided that the inertia is balanced by a Civil Society that eventually forces the problem franchise to resolve by forming organisations or changing voting behaviour.

Civil Society is the clear and obvious answer to the question: who watches the watchers. For a nation to move forward, political inertia must be balanced with a dynamic of forced resolution, which Civil Society imposes through lawful civil action.

Civil Society refers to any kind of organised civilian political action that does not involve professional politicians or political parties. This can be in the form of NGOs or a simple group of friends deciding to vote a certain way based on a single issue concern.

A healthy civilisation should operate like a biological system.

Politics provides the inertia needed to thoroughly debate the outcomes before implementing a solution. Civil Society provides the motive force that forces problem franchises to eventually dissolve.

This is Yin and Yang, rather than a sign that something is fundamentally broken. It is better to strive for balance than to rage against the one side or the other.

If Civil Society gets too wild without politics stepping on the brakes, you get chaos and unintended consequences. If Politics dominates and creates enduring problem franchises, you get stagnation, endlessly debating the problems while only making small, meaningless gestures towards fixing them.

Neither instability nor stagnation is desirable for a healthy society...