From a website linking psychopathology and social organization:
“Some observers believe that there is a psychological continuum between psychopaths (who tend to be professionally unsuccessful) and narcissistic entrepreneurs (who are successful), because these two groups share the highly developed skill of manipulating others for their own gain…….
In general, the successful psychopath “computes” how much they can get away with in a cost-benefit ratio of the alternatives. Among the factors that they consider as most important are money, power, and gratification of negative desires. They are not motivated by such social reinforcement as praise or future benefits. Studies have been done that show locking up a psychopath has absolutely no effect on them in terms of modifying their life strategies. In fact, in is shown to make them worse. Effectively, when locked up, psychopaths just simply learn how to be better psychopaths…………..
When two individuals interact with each other, each must decide what to do without knowledge of what the other is doing. Imagine that the two players are the government and the public. In the following model, each of the players faces only a binary choice: to behave ethically either in making laws or in obeying them.
The assumption is that both players are informed about everything except the level of ethical behavior of the other. They know what it means to act ethically, and they know the consequences of being exposed as unethical.
There are three elements to the game. 1) The players, 2) the strategies available to either of them, and 3) the payoff each player receives for each possible combination of strategies.
In a legal regime, one party is obliged to compensate the other for damages under certain conditions but not under others. We are going to imagine a regime wherein the government is never liable for losses suffered by the public because of its unethical behavior – instead, the public has to pay for the damages inflicted by the government due to unethical behavior.
The way the payoffs are represented is generally in terms of money. That is, how much investment does each player have to make in ethical behavior and how much payoff does each player receive for his investment.
In this model, behaving ethically, according to standards of social values that are considered the “norm,” costs each player $10.00. When law detrimental to the public is passed, it costs the public $100.00. We take it as a given that such laws will be passed unless both players behave ethically.
Next, we assume that the likelihood of a detrimental law being passed in the event that both the public and the government are behaving ethically is a one-in-ten chance.
In a legal regime in which the government is never held responsible for its unethical behavior, and if neither the government nor the public behave ethically, the government enjoys a payoff of $0. and the public is out $100 when a law detrimental to the public is passed.
If both “invest” in ethical behavior, the government has a payoff of minus $10. (the cost of behaving ethically) and the public is out minus $20. which is the $10. invested in being ethical PLUS the $10. of the one-in-ten chance of a $100. loss incurred if a detrimental law is passed.
If the government behaves ethically and the public does not, resulting in the passing of a law detrimental to the populace, the government is out the $10. invested in being ethical and the public is out $100.
If the government does not behave ethically, and the public does, the government has a payoff of $0. and the public is out $110 which is the “cost of being ethical” added to the losses suffered when the government passes detrimental laws. Modeled in a Game Theory Bi-matrix, it looks like this, with the two numbers representing the “payoff” to the people – the left number in each pair – and government – the right number in each pair.
In short, in this game, the government always does better by not being ethical and we can predict the government’s choice of strategy because there is a single strategy – no ethics – that is better for the government no matter what choice the public makes. This is a “strictly dominant strategy,” or a strategy that is the best choice for the player no matter what choices are made by the other player.
What is even worse is the fact that the public is PENALIZED for behaving ethically. Since we know that the government, in the above regime, will never behave ethically because it is the dominant strategy, we find that ethical behavior on the part of the public actually costs MORE than unethical behavior.
In short, psychopathic behavior is actually a POSITIVE ADAPTATION in such a regime.
The public, as you see, cannot even minimize their losses by behaving ethically. It costs them $110. to be ethical, and only $100. to not be ethical.
Now, just substitute “psychopath” in the place of the government and non-psychopath in the place of the public, and you begin to understand why the psychopath will always be a psychopath. If the “payoff” is emotional pain of being hurt, or shame for being exposed, in the world of the psychopath, that consequence simply does not exist just as in the legal regime created above, the government is never responsible for unethical behavior. The psychopath lives in a world in which it is like a government that is never held responsible for behavior that is detrimental to others. It’s that simple. And the form game above will tell you why psychopaths in the population, as well as in government, are able to induce the public to accept laws that are detrimental. It simply isn’t worth it to be ethical. If you go along with the psychopath, you lose. If you resist the psychopath, you lose even more…………
The psychopath never gets mad because he is caught in a lie; he is only concerned with “damage control” in terms of his ability to continue to con others. Societies can be considered as “players” in the psychopath’s game model.
The past behavior of a society will be used by the psychopath to predict the future behavior of that society. Like an individual player, a society will have a certain probability of detecting deception and a more or less accurate memory of who has cheated on them in the past, as well as a developed or not developed proclivity to retaliate against a liar and cheater. Since the psychopath is using an actuarial approach to assess the costs and benefits of different behaviors (just how much can he get away with), it is the actual past behavior of the society which will go into his calculations rather than any risk assessments based on any “fears or anxieties” of being caught and punished that empathic people would feel in anticipation of doing something illegal.
Thus, in order to reduce psychopathic behavior in society and in government, a society MUST establish and enforce a reputation for high rates of detection of deception and identification of liars, and a willingness to retaliate. In other words, it must establish a successful strategy of deterrence.
…..That is, identifying and punishing liars and cheaters must be both immediate and predictable that it will be immediate.
And here we come to the issue: concerning the real-world, human social interactions on a large scale, reducing psychopathy in our leaders depends upon expanding society’s collective memory of individual players’ past behavior.
…— Laura Knight-Jadczyk
My Comment
Of course, I don’t agree that this is capitalism. It’s criminality and the absence of genuine capitalism. It’s monopoly. In a genuine free-market regime, laws would be enforced swiftly and sociopathy wouldn’t work, because it would be punished immediately.
Risk and reward wouldn’t be separated, as they are today.
Nonetheless, I do like the analysis and find it a compelling account of what society here (and elsewhere) has become.
The writer just lacks the historical and theoretical framework to understand that what she calls capitalism is only the diseased tumor produced by the state feeding on the free market.
