Anarchy and Game Theory

Doug Newdick

1. Introduction.

In any discussion of anarchism, or the conditions for a stateless society, sooner or later a claim like this surfaces: " people are too selfish for that to work". These, I believe, are based upon an assumption (or theory) about human nature, that is taken to be evidently true, rather than argued for. Often I hear a version of "I'm sorry but I just have a more pessimistic view of people than you." This purpose of this essay is to show that even if we grant the assumptions of selfish rationality then cooperation without the state is still a possibility.

2. The anti-anarchist/Hobbesian argument.

2.1. The intuitive argument.

With these sorts of objections to anarchism ("people are to selfish to cooperate without laws" etc) I think people are tacitly appealing to an argument of the form:

1 People are selfish (rational egoists).

2. Selfish people won't cooperate if they aren't forced to.

3. Anarchism involves the absence of force.

4. Therefore people won't cooperate in an anarchy.

The opponent of anarchism can then say either; as anarchy also requires cooperation, it involves a contradiction; or, a society without cooperation would be awful, therefore an anarchy would be awful.
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