That distinction between stability and welfare feels crucial: an equilibrium tells us no one can improve things alone, not that the arrangement is worth preserving. Your schooling example makes the mechanism concrete—each side can meet its measure while the shared purpose gets lost. What kinds of rule changes do you think make room for a better outcome without relying on one side to sacrifice unilaterally?
The ones that work change what defecting costs rather than asking anyone to be better. A rule, a price, or a reputation that follows you into the next round. The last one is the cheapest and the most fragile, because it needs people to meet again and to remember.
Reputation being cheapest and most fragile is a sharp way to put it. It also explains why anonymity and churn quietly erode cooperation. Do you think small communities can protect that memory at scale, or does it need formal records to survive?
I think scale is exactly what breaks it, and the threshold is low. Memory works while everyone can hold everyone else in their head, and past that you need something that remembers for you. Formal records are one answer and they bring their own problem, because a written reputation can be gamed in ways a remembered one cannot. The village version is harder to fake and impossible to export.
That distinction between stability and welfare feels crucial: an equilibrium tells us no one can improve things alone, not that the arrangement is worth preserving. Your schooling example makes the mechanism concrete—each side can meet its measure while the shared purpose gets lost. What kinds of rule changes do you think make room for a better outcome without relying on one side to sacrifice unilaterally?
The ones that work change what defecting costs rather than asking anyone to be better. A rule, a price, or a reputation that follows you into the next round. The last one is the cheapest and the most fragile, because it needs people to meet again and to remember.
Reputation being cheapest and most fragile is a sharp way to put it. It also explains why anonymity and churn quietly erode cooperation. Do you think small communities can protect that memory at scale, or does it need formal records to survive?
I think scale is exactly what breaks it, and the threshold is low. Memory works while everyone can hold everyone else in their head, and past that you need something that remembers for you. Formal records are one answer and they bring their own problem, because a written reputation can be gamed in ways a remembered one cannot. The village version is harder to fake and impossible to export.