Multipolar Trap

Also known as destructive defection, a situation in game theory involving a group where individual incentives produce a suboptimal outcome for all participants. An intuitive illustration is a theater or concert: an individual audience member can get a better view by standing up from his seat, but then the person behind him will be forced to stand up, and so on until everyone is standing and the view is no better than before. Another example is a crab bucket, where each individual crab could escape if it were not being constantly pulled back in by its fellows.

Details

The word "multipolar" refers to the presence of multiple actors in a system as opposed to a bipolar system with two dominant actors (such as Terra during the Nuclear Dark Days) or a unipolar system with one. A multipolar trap arises when individual actors have the incentive to take some action which is detrimental to the group as a whole ("defect" in game theory parlance) and obtain a benefit from it. The defector gains an advantage over the other actors in the system, who are then faced with the choice to either defect themselves or slide into irrelevance. Assuming the actors are rational and self-interested defection will propagate through the system until everyone is contributing to the harm of the group and is no better off for it (and in fact it is likely their situation is worse than before).

Resolution

So far, the only known way to escape a large-scale multipolar trap is for an authority to enforce a rule preventing the action causing the trap, since the flaws of human nature seem to preclude grassroots cooperation on the level necessary to avoid it. Hence decentralized, libertarian, and poorly-regulated societies are extremely vulnerable. A careful balance must be struck here: power is needed to regulate, but too much power can lead to tyranny.

Examples

• Ancient Terran nuclear stalemate: In the absence of a supranational authority to enforce rules on states, the international system is anarchic and thus one state with nuclear weapons has no guarantee if it unilaterally disarms itself others will follow suit. While a world free of nuclear weapons would be better on account of reduced existential risk, no state has an incentive to give up its weapons when it might become vulnerable to states that retain them, and states without nuclear weapons will seek to acquire them as a deterrent. Thus the world lives in constant fear of nuclear holocaust.
• Arms races in general: One state seeks to gain an edge over another by building up its military, causing its opponent to respond in kind. Eventually both are diverting huge sums of resources to national defense but are no more secure than before they started.
• Corporations under unregulated capitalism: A company may find it can reduce production costs and make more profit by taking an action resulting in a negative externality (e.g. a cheaper manufacturing process leading to more pollution). This will enable it to increase its market share and its competitors, not wanting to go out of business, will be forced to follow suit and adopt the new practice until eventually the effects of the externality destroy the market altogether. (As illustrated by climate change in the absence of regulations against carbon dioxide emissions.)