Tit for Tat politics
We have not discussed this in class when talking about game theory, only one round of prisoner’s dilemma. However, a competition was held where participants wrote code to play prisoner’s dilemma for 200 rounds, and whoever served less jail time won. The winning program had only two lines: remain silent in round one, and in all other rounds do whatever the opponent did in the previous round. This method ended up with the least amount of time in jail and thus is the dominant strategy for this kind of game. The ideology of it is quite simple; it rewards the opponent when they stay silent and punished them when they confess. This often leads to cooperation which, overall, leads to less time in jail.
This method of game theory takes a large part in our everyday lives, including politics. The cited article mentions examples that are predominantly negative reactions, as in the opponent’s previous action was negative so your next move will also be negative. A small-scale example, explained in the article, would be when you are leaving a plane after a long flight. Each row leaves one at a time, front to back. However, once it’s your turn, someone behind you cuts in front to deboard first. You feel anger, even though it was so insignificant to your life, you still feel cheated.
Of course, if the only thing being tit and tat-ed is negative energy, that’s not optimal for the success of one or both parties. We see this in politics quite frequently, which is the focus of the article. In the U.S. Government, it seems like there hasn’t been any bipartisanship since Reagan; this is isn’t too far from the truth. As tensions rise with the upcoming election, each party isn’t taking any chances. The specific occurrences aren’t as important as the concept, but they continue to break “norms” that positively affect their own party and negatively affect the other. Just under 4 years ago, Mitch McConnell did not allow a vote to fill a seat in the Supreme Court so to “let the voters decide in an election year” as he said. But this year, however, he plans to proceed with a nomination and fill the seat if a vacancy opens. This is seen as cheating to Democrat, but it is likely only retaliation for Harry Reid and the nuclear option back in 2013. When Tit for Tat game theory is applied this way, nobody ever wins. Unless something is done to create more cooperation, the government will spiral out of control. There are many ways to solve this problem, we just have to figure out the best one that will let both parties help each other. No one can lose this game if both players work together.