1.1.2 Cooperation and collective action: the dichotomy between “state” and “community”
- As concerns cooperation, sociologists such as Jon Elster look at the drivers and initiators of cooperative behaviour at individual level, which can be traced back to basic human traits such as altruism, envy, social norms, and self-interest. How an individual propensity to cooperate is then turned into actual cooperation at increasing scale has long been explored.
- Thus, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes advocated in the 1651 classic “Leviathan” an authoritarian, centralizing state. Elster on the other hand argues: “[People] may also, however, achieve cooperation by decentralized, uncoerced means. […] Decentralized solutions are more fundamental than centralized ones since compliance with central directives is itself a collective action problem.”
- Michael Taylor analyses the conditions under which people can cooperate at large scale, and social order can be maintained without the state . He asserts that shared common beliefs and norms, direct and complex relationships and reciprocity are ingredients which can create communities, essential for stateless cooperation.
- The problem of cooperation has also been explored in a game theoretic framework. The workhorse of game theorists is the so called “prisoners’ dilemma” game. After looking at the problem in a dynamic, iterated setting, the political scientist Robert Axelrod published in 1984 “The Evolution of Cooperation” which showed that when:
- 1 the game is repeated,
- 2 information on the past behaviour of other players is available,
- 3 the number of players is not too large (150 – 200, see par. 53 below),
then cooperation between rational actors (like human beings) can evolve spontaneously without the need for a coercive state.
Figure 1. The classic "prisoners’ dilemma" game, workhorse of game theory - source
- Only a few years later, in his book “The Possibility of Cooperation”, Michael Taylor applies the game-theoretical analysis framework to argue two important things. First, that Hobbes conclusion of the necessity of the state in Leviathan is based on a political analysis which can be reduced to a static, non-iterated “prisoners’ dilemma”. Second and most importantly, that the state and its coercive action tend to minimize or even destroy the very elements of community which he identified as essential for the maintenance of social order in its absence. To quote from the books’ epilogue: “states create or aggravate problems of the kind they are supposed to solve and undermine conditions for alternatives to the state to be workable” .
- To sum up, the ways in which humans achieve cooperation can be usefully discussed in the framework of game theory and both centralizing states and stateless communities can be effective at small scale. As the groups’ sizes increases though, “communities” lose effectiveness absent a supporting infrastructure, and we observe states and “state-like” institutions taking over.
- However, it is important to keep in mind that the “state” is self-reinforcing, and it exacerbates the conditions which are supposed to make it necessary. This is highly relevant because, as I’ll argue in chapter 1.3, blockchain technologies support and strengthen communities and allow them to maintain their qualities as their size grows. As blockchains reinforce stateless communities, a neutral state would not have been expected to interfere with their development, but a state which is acting to “destroy small communities" and “acts as to make itself even more necessary” will see decentralized blockchain systems and blockchain-supported communities as antagonists.
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[29] J. Elster, ibid, p.287
[30] J. Elster, ibid, p.17
[31] M. Taylor, “Community, Anarchy, and Liberty”, Cambridge University Press, 1982
[32 ]R. Axelrod, “The Evolution of Co-operation”, Basic Books, 1984
[33] M. Taylor, “The Possibility of Cooperation”, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p.129
[34] M. Taylor, ibid, p.165
[35] M. Taylor, ibid, p. 167