Authors: Aaron James
Assholes (27 page)
That is the main idea. We might also offer two further comments that suggest why this is of interest. First, notice that the situation is not the traditional “free-rider problem,” in which noncooperators hobble cooperation by taking its benefits without bearing its costs out of
amoral, optimizing self-interest
. We have assumed the preferences of both cooperators and noncooperators alike are moralized. The asshole is motivated by his sense of
entitlement
. So the problem of asshole capitalist decline isn’t a problem of amoral selfishness; it is a question of moral values.
Second, note that decline to noncooperation is not irreversible, at least in principle. While cooperation will decay for some time, there is room for hope that cooperation will return. It
could be that the cost of cooperation falls, say, because the overall benefit of cooperation increases. In that case we’d expect that a cooperative cycle would eventually recommence, shifting us back to a cooperative equilibrium.
This is reason for hope, but also reason for eternal cooperative vigilance. For if we assume that “mutant” assholes also enter at later stages, there could be cycling between cooperative and noncooperative equilibriums, with periodic influence by assholes, in the mathematical limit. The work of asshole management, in short, is never finished.
1
. We thus adjust the value of
x
according to how we think the players will value the cooperation of others in the kind of situation in question. So if we want the cooperation of others to play a big role in the decision whether to cooperate, we let
x
equal something very large. Likewise, if we want the proportion of cooperators to count for less in the decision, i.e., if we want
c
to be more important than
p
, then
x
would have a smaller value.
Many plausible scenarios will balance these values. Consider what happens if we dramatically reduce the value of
x
, so that each player is relatively unaffected by the cooperation of others. In that kind of case, even a small increase in costs can mean that people won’t cooperate. Or, more concretely, suppose
c
= 1,
x
= 1, and
p
= 80 percent. Then
xp – c
= .80 – 1.00 = –.20. Since this is less than zero, no one will cooperate. But this seems implausible in many cases, as when costs are in any case low and tons of people are cooperating. In that situation, people are often willing to cooperate as well. We better represent that situation, then, by instead, say, letting
x
= 10. Then
xp – c
= 79, which means that cooperation has an attractive payoff.
AARON JAMES
holds a PhD from Harvard and is associate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of
Fairness in Practice: A Social Contract for a Global Economy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) and numerous academic articles. He was awarded a Burkhardt fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and spent the 2009–10 academic year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He’s an avid surfer (the experience of which has directly inspired his theory of the asshole) … and he’s not an asshole.
Also by Aaron James
Fairness in Practice: A Social Contract
for a Global Economy
