THE GENESIS OF THE STATE:

MATHEMATICAL MODELS OF CONFLICT AND COOPERATION

Joseph Michael Newhard

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green

State University in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

May 2009

Committee:

J. Kevin Quinn, Advisor

M. Neil Browne

Kyoo H. Kim
 © 2009

Joseph Michael Newhard

All Rights Reserved

 iii

ABSTRACT

J. Kevin Quinn, Advisor

This thesis examines the genesis of states, defined as territorial monopolists of

violence with dominance hierarchy structures. Drawing from research in evolutionary

psychology and anthropology, this paper uses game theory models to demonstrate under

what conditions aggression, coalition-building, property, hierarchies, and territoriality are

dominant strategies when humans are in competition over scarce resources. The paper

also provides anthropological evidence that humans and their hominid ancestors faced

these conditions in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, explaining the

emergence of aggression, rule-like behavior, coalitions, territoriality, and hierarchies

among hominids. As the materialization of aggressive forces, the aggregation of these

dominant strategies may be what we have come to call ‘states’. It is concluded that the

state as a mode of social organization is a stable equilibrium toward which humans

invariably gravitate, explaining why humans do not live in a world of pure anarchism.
 iv

“One must be honest in intellectual matters to the point of harshness to so much as

endure my seriousness, my passion. One must be accustomed to living on mountains – to

seeing the wretched ephemeral chatter of politics and national egoism beneath one. One

must have become indifferent, one must never ask whether truth is useful or a fatality…”

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1888

 v

In celebration of the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin

February 12, 1809

 vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the members of my thesis committee, J. Kevin Quinn, M. Neil Browne,

and Kyoo H. Kim, for their time and invaluable input. Dr. Quinn is a great professor to

work with because of his interests in philosophy, the history of thought, and game theory,

and his willingness to engage in dialogue. Likewise Dr. Browne is highly knowledgeable

and was also able to provide much needed assistance with writing style and clarity. Dr.

Kim was kind enough to help me perfect the game theory contained herein.
 vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION .....…………………………………………………………………….... 1

CHAPTER I. NATURE ........................................................................................................ 4

CHAPTER II. COOPERATION .......................................................................................... 8

CHAPTER III. VIOLENCE ................................................................................................. 12

CHAPTER IV. PROPERTY................................................................................................. 19

CHAPTER V. COALITIONS .............................................................................................. 25

CHAPTER VI. WARFARE.................................................................................................. 34

CHAPTER VII. HIERARCHIES ......................................................................................... 39

CHAPTER VIII. TERRITORIALITY.................................................................................. 43

CHAPTER IX. THE STATE ................................................................................................ 49

REFERENCES ..........……………………………………………………………………… 52

APPENDIX A. AGGRESSION AS A DOMINANT STRATEGY ..................................... 57

APPENDIX B. AGGRESSION UNDER PROPERTY ENFORCEMENT ......................... 59

 viii

LIST OF FIGURES/TABLES

Figure/Table Page

1 Aggression as a Simultaneous Zero Sum Game ....................................................... 15

2 Aggression as a Simultaneous Variable Sum Game ................................................. 16

3 Aggression with Private Property Enforcement I ...................................................... 22

4 Aggression with Private Property Enforcement II ..................................................... 22

5 Coalition-Building as Nash Equilibrium ................................................................... 30

6 Emergence of Hierarchy as Nash Equilibrium .......................................................... 42

7 Shirking versus Participating in Coalitional Efforts I ................................................ 46

8 Shirking versus Participating in Coalitional Efforts II .............................................. 48

 1 

INTRODUCTION
Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Approximately 200 states have claimed and parceled the earth’s land and sections of the

seas. For better or for worse, we are all affected by their existence. Yet many of us seem to take

for granted that they exist, always have, and always will—hence the famous dictum that only

death and taxes are certain. Very few philosophers seem to question why states exist and whether

a world without them is attainable, or even preferable. 1 It is with great presumption that I seek to

address this literary defect in the present essay.

By what process did states come into being? Max Weber defines the state as “an

institutional association of rule, which within a given territory has succeeded in gaining a

monopoly of legitimate physical force a means of ruling, and to this end has united material

resources in the hands of its leaders.” 2 The state apparatus may engage in activities that are

beneficial or harmful to those who live under it, but the monopolization of legitimized violence

within their territory is universal. 3 The state represents an embodiment of merged human

impulses toward collectivism, hierarchy, aggression, and territoriality; perhaps if the emergence

of these discrete yet related phenomena can be explained then an understanding of the origin of

states will follow.

                                                            
1
How states come about is a question even the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau admitted he could not answer. In The
Social Contract he asks regarding mankind’s transition from freedom to statehood, “How did this transformation
come about? I do not know. How can it be made legitimate? That question I believe I can answer.” Abandoning his
inquiry into the historical and social origins of the state, Rousseau takes his readers on a philosophical quest for
legitimate political authority. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (London: Penguin Books, 1968), 49.
2
Max Weber, Max Weber’s Complete Writings on Academic and Political Vocations (New York: Algora
Publishing, 2008), 160-161.
3
To be a monopoly of violence is to possess exclusive control over the police and armed forces. Such power may be
used to either defend citizens or subvert them. How states should wield this power is beyond the scope of this essay.
 2 

The social scientist has available numerous avenues for pursuing a description of human

affairs, and these can be mutually exclusive. Economists, psychologists, sociologists, political

scientists, and anthropologists are all likely to provide conflicting explanations for the origin of

the state, even among those in the same discipline. This is due in part to the fact that each

discipline, sub-discipline, and school of thought “has its own practitioners, language, modes of

analysis, and standards of validation.” 4 Advancements in each and the increasing specialization

they entail perhaps have exacerbated this problem. As such the present analysis draws heavily

from evolutionary psychology while ignoring other modes of analysis that are also deserving of

consideration.

Complementing the evolutionary analyses below are mathematical models that attempt to

describe human behavior in strategic situations. The use of game theory is meant only as

numerical representations of the strategies and payoffs that guide agent behavior. Game theory in

strategic form simplifies complex agent interaction and allows the theorist to easily identify

dominant strategies or calculate mixed strategy equilibria. It is not implied that the conclusions

presented herein follow from the games, only that the games accurately represent the situations

discussed as long as the assumptions in each game hold. These assumptions are stated explicitly;

it is left to the reader to decide if these assumptions are reasonable and whether the strategy

profiles and conclusions follow.

In game theory it is sometimes not necessary to assume that agents consciously or

deliberately choose strategies that maximize their fitness, only that the agents that happen upon

the strategies that increase their fitness relative to competitors become selected for; in

evolutionary game theory the agent and their kin may then be expected through genetic and

                                                            
4
 Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 9.  
 3 

memetic transmission to continue pursuing these adaptive strategies. Likewise I do not assume

any deliberate attempt on the part of coalitions to increase their own fitness, as it would be

absurd to assume they were sentient; a coalition is merely a collection of distinct individuals. 5

Throughout this essay I propose the conditions under which aggression, property,

coalition-building, hierarchies, and territoriality may have been selected for among our distant

ancestors in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. I then argue that these strategies,

which represented adaptations to conditions in our ancestral past, remain adaptive today;

preferences for these strategies are the legacy of our ancestors and the state represents the

materialization of these strategies.

On a final note, the fact that evolutionary theory can be used to describe a great number

of phenomena has led some to refer to discipline as a just-so story. A just-so story is an ad hoc

narrative that cannot be proven or falsified. Addressing the claim that the theory of evolution by

natural selection is a just-so story, Mark Isaac writes, “Such stories still serve a purpose as a

hypothesis. They present a model that can be tested by further research and either rejected or

qualified as more probable. For example, the just-so story that horns on horned lizards evolved

as defense has now been supported with experiments… Science makes little progress without a

hypothesis to test.” 6 The body of evidence in support of evolution is immense and evolutionary

psychology is extrapolated from it, but the merits of evolutionary psychology can be given only

brief treatment here; this task is taken up in the following chapter.

                                                            
5
For more on this see: Herbert Spencer, The Man versus the State: With Six Essays on Government, Society, and
Freedom (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982), 383-434.
6
Isaac writes further, “Such stories also function to rebut claims that something could not have happened. If a
plausible story is presented, the claim of impossibility is shown to be false. This is true whether or not the story is
speculative.” Mark Isaac, The Counter-Creationism Handbook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007),
102.
 4 

CHAPTER I: NATURE
In [the state of nature] there is… continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short.
Thomas Hobbes

The earliest humans lived in tribes consisting of probably 25 to 150 members. 7 These

bands interacted with each other, and united by customs and language, formed dialectical tribes

of approximately 500 members. 8 Humans never lived in a state of isolation as imagined by

Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, or Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But some of the game-theoretic

descriptions that follow begin with two autonomous individuals interacting as if they resided in

Rousseau’s state of nature. Such presuppositions are used in game theory because they abstract

away from aspects of cooperation and conflict not relevant to the specific question at hand. 9

However, cooperation, coercion, conventions, and coalition-building are known precede the

evolution of homo sapiens and such strategies are still exhibited by mankind’s closest

evolutionary relatives.

Of our closest mammalian ancestors, only the orangutan lives a life of solitude.

Orangutan males visit females only for procreation and their offspring live with the females until

they are old enough to live independently; there appears to be no social structure beyond mother

and child. 10 With this lone exception, all of mankind’s evolutionary predecessors lived in groups

and exhibited social behavior. 11 In any case, the evidence suggests that humans are more closely

                                                            
7
Paul H. Rubin, Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom (New Brunswick: Rutgers University
Press, 2002), x.
8
Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind: Unearthing Our Family Tree (London: Phoenix, 1994), 76.
9
Rubin writes, “Obviously, the state of nature is meant as a metaphor, not as a true statement of primitive
conditions. It has the advantage of providing a clean starting point for analysis—what rules and structure would
someone starting with absolutely no law or government choose.” Rubin, 1.
10
Rubin, 4.
11
Rubin, 4.
 5 

related to the social chimpanzees and gorillas than the solitary orangutans. 12 DNA evidence also

indicates that chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than to gorillas. 13

However the question arises, is our ancestral past relevant to modern human behavior?

Evolutionary psychology is founded on the realization that the brain is a product of evolution by

natural selection; from this it is concluded that a great deal of human behavior is directed at

satisfying preferences, drives, and instincts that are the legacy of our ancestors in the

environment of evolutionary adaptedness. There is supporting evidence that shows that “many

behaviors can be enhanced, created, or eliminated through selective breeding.” 14

Evolutionary psychology stands in opposition to what has been called the Standard Social

Science Model which bundles various approaches to studying emotion, thinking, and behavior

without reference to evolutionary determinants. The approach that evolutionary psychologists

bring to the analysis of the human mind, by which they consider human nature to be a product of

biological processes, is summed up by biologist Edward O. Wilson and cognitive scientist

Steven Pinker, respectively:

The brain and the mind are entirely biological in origin and have been highly structured
through evolution by natural selection. Human nature exists, composed of the complex
biases of passion and learning propensities often loosely referred to as instincts. The
instincts were created over millions of years, when human beings were Paleolithic
hunter-gatherers. As a consequence, they still bear the archaic imprint of our species’
biological heritage. 15

I think we have reason to believe that the mind is equipped with a battery of emotions,
drives, and faculties for reasoning and communicating, and that they have a common
logic across cultures, are difficult to erase or redesign from scratch, were shaped by

                                                            
12
Rubin, 4.
13
Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996), 40-41.
14
Michael P. Ghiglieri, The Dark Side of Man: Tracing the Origins of Male Violence (Reading: Perseus Books,
1999), 7.
15
Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), ix-x.
 6 

natural selection acting over the course of human evolution, and owe some of their basic
design (and some of their variation) to information in the genome.” 16

To what extent human nature exists and is a consequence of evolution by natural

selection remains a subject of debate, but the evolutionary approach used by Wilson and Pinker

is adopted herein. It is assumed that animal behavior is shaped by genes which vary over time

through natural selection; organisms are selected for or against in the environment they face

depending on the adaptiveness of their phenotypes (which are a product of their genes) in that

environment. The fittest organisms then pass their genes onto their offspring. The mind is seen as

a purely biological phenomenon that, like the rest of the phenotype, is born by this process; it is

the incarnation of a genotype that has been molded by natural selection. Within this school of

thought it makes sense to look to the other hominids to gain insight into the behavior of early

humans because behavior that is common between two closely related species is likely inherited

from a common ancestor.

Traits that are shared between two species may be analogous—evolved separately—or

they may be homologous—handed down from a common ancestor. Rubin explains, “If two

closely related species exhibit the same characteristic or behavior, and if it appears likely that the

ancestral species also exhibited this behavior, it is likely homologous. Morover, if a feature is

homologous in this sense, all intermediate species from the common ancestor to the current

species must also have exhibited the same feature.” 17

Comparing the behavior of humans and their closest evolutionary ancestors reveals

numerous symmetries. Rubin observes, “chimps, humans, and ancestral and intermediate species

lived in groups internally governed by a set of rules and certain hierarchies within those groups

                                                            
16
Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002), 73.   
17
Rubin, 3.
 7 

and engaged in cooperative behavior. Moreover, all also engaged in intergroup conflict.” 18

Social structures, property rights, murder, warfare, and genocide are just some of the features

shared by human and ape societies. 19 Rule-like behavior humans share in common with the

chimpanzees is likely the result of common descent. 20 It therefore precedes the emergence of

modern man who has only been around about 200,000 years—an instant in evolutionary terms.

So the notion that cooperation, conventions, murder, territoriality, coalitions, and warfare

are entirely human in origin finds no evidence in the anthropological record. The reliance below

on game-theoretic descriptions of the emergence of such behavior is not intended to imply

otherwise. The purpose of the games is only to demonstrate that had these strategies not already

manifested themselves through human interaction, we have reason to believe they would have

emerged invariably as a product of interaction. Since deliberateness and perfect foresight is often

not assumed on the part of the agents in question, such games may apply to our pre-human

ancestors in sub-Saharan Africa no less than to modern man with his highly developed cerebral

cortex.

                                                            
18
Rubin, 3.
19
Rubin, 2-3.
20
 Rubin, 3.  
 8 

CHAPTER II: COOPERATION

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their
regard to their own interest.
Adam Smith

Purposeful human action is directed toward substituting a more desirable state of affairs

for a less desirable one. However, success is not guaranteed. There are economists who assume

all that is required for widespread utility maximization is for the powers that be to step back and

allow the free market to operate so that perfectly rational agents may freely choose their every

objective. But an unavoidable aspect of the human condition is that actions may result in either a

profit or a loss. Profit occurs whenever acting man has achieved some net gain through his

action, but man being imperfectly informed and bound by the limits of the human mind, Ludwig

von Mises reminds us;

It happens again and again that an action does not attain the end sought. Sometimes the
result, although inferior to the end aimed at, is still an improvement when compared with
the previous state of affairs; then there is still a profit, although a smaller one than that
expected. But it can happen that the action produces a state of affairs less desirable than
the previous state it was intended to alter. Then the difference between the valuation of
the result and the costs incurred is called loss. 21

Whether specific actions result in a profit or a loss is immaterial; what is important for the

present analysis is the realization that men are motivated to action by the perception that such

action will improve their state of affairs. It is this psychological egoism that often brings

individuals together into peaceful, functioning societies marked by cooperation and trade. Trade

is tied inextricably with the division of labor. The division of labor, writes Ludwig von Mises,

comes about due to three facts of human existence:

First: the innate inequality of men with regard to their ability to perform various kinds of
labor. Second: the unequal distribution of the nature-given, nonhuman opportunities of

                                                            
21
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998), 98.
 9 

production on the surface of the earth. One may as well consider these two facts as one
and the same fact, namely, the manifoldness of nature which makes the universe a
complex of infinite varieties… [Third], that there are undertakings whose
accomplishments exceeds the forces of a single man and requires the joint efforts of
several. 22

If humans were all the same and possessed identical endowments of natural resources, “everyone

would produce the same qualities and quantities of goods, and the idea of exchange and

cooperation would never enter anyone’s mind.” 23 The differences that exist between men

coupled with the realization that the division of labor results in higher productivity will motivate

men to trade in order to obtain a greater number of various, higher quality goods than can be

produced by one man in isolation:

The fundamental facts that brought about cooperation, society, and civilization and
transformed the animal man into a human being are the facts that performed under the
division of labor is more productive than isolated work and that man’s reason is capable
of recognizing this truth. But for these facts men would have forever remained deadly
foes of one another, irreconcilable rivals in their endeavors to secure a portion of the
scarce supply of means and sustenance provided by nature.24

The Ricardian Law of Association asserts that under the division of labor, when a man

trades goods with another, even though he has an absolute advantage over his trading partner in

every way, he still gains from trading by focusing his productive efforts on the goods in which he

possesses the greatest productive superiority. In this case the less efficient producer is said to

have a comparative advantage in the production of those goods where his productive inferiority

is at a minimum. The insight of Adam Smith’s work on the division of labor, writes Matt Ridley,

is that life need not be a zero-sum game; if two men are able to voluntarily exchange goods for

which they have reverse order preferences, then if they have not made an error regarding the

                                                            
22
Mises, 157.
23
Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy—The God that Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy,
and Natural Order (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 171.
24
Mises, 144.
 10 

satisfying qualities of the good received, they are each made better off by the transaction. 25

Ludwig von Mises believes that from mutually beneficial trade can emerge a spirit of

cooperation and amicability;

Within the frame of social cooperation there can emerge between members of society
feelings of sympathy and friendship and a sense of belonging together. These feelings are
the source of man’s most delightful and most sublime experiences. They are the most
precious adornment of life; they lift the animal species man to the heights of a really
human experience. However, they are not, as some have asserted, the agents that brought
about social relationships. They are the fruits of social cooperation, they thrive only
within its frame; they did not precede the establishment of social relations and are not the
seed from which they spring. 26

Cooperation can make all parties involved better off. In The Economics of Rights, Co-

operation & Welfare, Robert Sugden describes a simple game theory model called the banknote

game:

Two people, A and B, are taken to different rooms, and are not allowed to communicate
with one another. The organizer of the game then tells each player: ‘I have donated a £5
note and a £10 not to enable this game to be played. You must say which of the two notes
you want to claim. If you claim the same note as the other player, neither of you will get
anything; but if you claim different notes, you will each get the note you claim.’ 27

Both players will be interested in developing some rule for determining who gets which note,

assuming they are more interested in coming away with one of the notes than nothing at all. In

this game, each player faces two strategies, choosing either one note or the other. Both prefer

£10 to £5, but both also prefer either banknote to nothing at all. Unfortunately, according to

Ghiglieri, “Trust of a partner is impossible to establish in just one game.” Yet “in real life, trust

is possible, because we play the game more than once and, in small communities, we face the

                                                            
25
Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Penguin
Books, 1996), 46.
26
Mises, 144.
27
Robert Sugden, The Economics of Rights, Co-operation, and Welfare. (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 9-11.
 11 

same partner enough times to learn whether he cheats or cooperates.” 28 More on the emergence

of cooperation follows below, but first, what of those who have no interest in cooperation and

trade?

                                                            
28
Ghiglieri, 240.   
 12 

CHAPTER III: VIOLENCE

The strong rule the weak, and the clever rule the strong.
Boyd Rice

How might a genetic predisposition for intra-species violence have proliferated among

hominids? Traits become selected for when they enhance an organism’s ability to survive, attract

mates, and reproduce relative to its peers, all of which are tied to resource accumulation. Those

who are more successful at obtaining scarce resources have a comparative advantage in mating

and survival over those who are less successful in obtaining resources. In circumstances where

violence is adaptive, it is apparent humans have an evolved preference for such behavior.

Explains Bradley A. Thayer;

Any group facing a shortage of resources may adopt one or a combination of three basic
strategies. The first strategy is the group eliminates or reduces consumption to make the
resource last… Second, the group can seek an alternative or the resource, perhaps
through technological innovation… Third, they can acquire more of the resource from
outside of their territory through migration to uninhibited areas, trade, theft, or warfare. 29

Among humans, scarce resources can be accumulated through the processes of

homesteading, production, trade, and violence. For those who lack the will or ability to produce

and trade with others, obtaining the resources necessary to sustain life will have to come as a

result of violent acts against their peers. 30 Violence, ubiquitous among human societies, is an

adaptive strategy in many circumstances. Though humans are also capable of kindness and

cooperation, ethologist Richard Dawkins reminds us that this is because “Animals are sometimes

                                                            
29
Bradley A. Thayer, Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict
(Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 108.
30
On the subject of rapists, Ghiglieri writes, “Like most felons, sexual predators are uneducated, are unemployed or
underemployed, and have low incomes. Indeed, the most common trait of men arrested for rape is that they are early
losers—or at least not yet achievers—in the socioeconomic arena… [They] belong to a cohort of men who decide to
use force once they learn they cannot count on a job to get them what they want.” See Ghihlieri, 85.
 13 

nice and sometimes nasty, since either can suit the self-interest of genes at different times.” 31

Consequently many cases of intergroup aggression in animal species are documented. 32

If alternatives are not available, “Warfare might be necessary then for offensive purposes,

to plunder resources from others.” 33 Rubin lists three ways in which power is beneficial for an

individual or the members of a group: It provides one with a greater supply of food, results in the

attraction of more females, and allows for better organization for war and defense. 34 These three

benefits enhance the organism’s chances of survival, enhance its degree of procreation and thus

the proliferation of its genes, and since resources are scarce, they reduce both the survivability

and procreation of competitors. 35 Aggression may be offensive or defensive, motivated by either

an absolute or a relative gain in resources over one’s competitors. 36 “An individual animal may

successfully disrupt the efforts of others to breed or raise young through nest destruction,

infanticide, or direct attacks on adult rivals in order to reduce the number of competitors. In

warfare, tribes kill enemy children and steal females to support their own reproduction and to

hinder the recovery of the enemy. They also destroy the enemy’s crops, animals, and food stores,

and strive to displace the enemy from particularly valuable territory.” 37 According to biologist

David Sloan Wilson, “Fitness is a relative concept. It doesn’t matter how well an organism

                                                            
31
Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow (New York: Mariner Books, 1998), 212.
32
Thayer ,161.
33
Thayer, 109.
34
Rubin, 114.
35
Wilson writes that “innateness refers to the measurable probability that a trait will develop in a specified set of
environments, not to the certainty that the trait will develop in all environments. By this criterion human beings have
a marked hereditary predisposition to aggressive behavior.” Wilson, On Human Nature, 100.
36
Thayer, 112.
37
Thayer ,112. Conditions under which war may not erupt: “First, if resources are abundant or alternatives can be
acquired at an acceptable cost, then groups need not compete for them. Second, if the demand for resources is held
in check by other factors, such as a high mortality rate due to disease, parasites, or predators, and if a resource is
widely distributed spatially or temporally, it may require either the reciprocal sharing of resources, or migration, in
which case competing groups are unlikely to come into contact”
 14 

survives and reproduces. It only matters that it survives and reproduces better than alternative

types of organisms.” 38

Violence is a predatory phenomenon by which the action of an aggressing organism

alters the state of another in a way adaptive to the aggressor but harmful to its victim. 39 Among

humans, Murray N. Rothbard writes, the aggressor treats his victim “as he does his livestock,

horses and other animals, using them as factors of production to gratify his wants.” Under threat

of force, the aggressor compels the victim “to agree to expend his labor for the satisfaction of

[the aggressor’s] wants rather than his own.” 40 In evolutionary terms, the fitness of the

successful aggressor tends to be enhanced whereas that of the defeated victim is diminished.

Initiating force against another is a poor strategy in situations entailing a net loss for the

aggressor. It may be the case that two individuals who agree to refrain from utilizing violence in

their interactions with each other may be better off as a whole than two who do not. But if there

are individual gains to be made from violence, then unless a peace agreement can be enforced,

there will be an incentive for one party to cheat and aggress against the other, succumbing to the

prisoner’s dilemma. To the extent that aggression is viable, cheaters will be rewarded with

enhanced fitness; cheating the peace becomes a lucrative strategy. Where violence can result in

gains, those advocating restraint potentially relegate themselves to a position of disadvantage

against their more aggressive, rent-seeking neighbors.

The convention of “might makes right” that Friedrich Nietzsche might endorse is a zero-

sum game. Imagine that an island society of two individuals, Tyler and Jack, have a total of

                                                            
38
David Sloan Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), 38.
39
“Aggression, in short, is a vague term used to designate an array of behaviors, with various functions, that we
intuitively feel resemble human aggression.” Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1975), 22.
40
Murray N. Rothbard, Man Economy, and State with Power and Market, Scholar’s Ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von
Mises Institute, 2004), 81.
 15 

twenty coconuts for the week with an initial endowment of ten coconuts each. Suppose the

description of the game is common knowledge—both players are aware of the strategies and

payoffs involved—and that both players possess common knowledge of rationality, which is to

say they expect each other to pursue maximum utility. Further assume that both choose their

strategies simultaneously and that neither one of them is likely to initiate aggression against the

other (adopt the Hawk strategy) unless he possesses some advantage that bodes well for his

success such as the element of surprise, and that in the case where both simultaneously choose

Hawk, the stronger (Tyler) wins. Then if Tyler aggresses against Jack, he steals Jack’s coconuts

but there is no net gain or loss or society as a whole; the total number of coconuts remains

constant.

A Zero Sum Game: Might Makes Right

Tyler \ Jack Hawk Dove

Hawk +10, -10 +10, -10
Dove -10, +10 0, 0
Figure 1: Aggression as a Simultaneous Zero-Sum Game

As the strategic form matrix of this game plainly shows, on an aggregate scale barbarism

does not diminish the social wealth, at least in the short term, making this game zero sum. But

assuming utility functions with diminishing marginal utility, such as U=Ln(X) then the allocation

of X coconuts does matter. If Tyler monopolizes all twenty coconuts, the social welfare is equal

to UT + UJ = Ln(20) + 0; Social Utility = 2.996. On the other hand, in the situation where Tyler

and Jack each possess ten coconuts, the social welfare increases: UT + UJ = Ln(10) + Ln(10);

Social Utility = 4.605. This result makes sense considering that the utility lost by Jack in the
 16 

event of slow death by starvation would no doubt exceed the utility gained by Tyler being able to

eat extra coconuts. This fact notwithstanding, Tyler may be willing to redistribute part or all of

Jack’s resources to himself, at Jack’s expense. In this case Tyler enjoys enhanced fitness, while

Jack experiences diminished relative fitness. To the extent a genetic predisposition is responsible

for this aggressive behavior we should expect the proliferation of a general willingness to exploit

others through aggression throughout the population. As Dawkins explains,

To a survival machine, another survival machine (which is not its own child or another
close relative) is part of its environment, like a rock or a river or a lump of food. It is
something that gets in the way, or something that can be exploited… Natural selection
favors genes that control their survival machines in such a way that they make the best
use of their environment. This includes making the best use of other survival machines,
both of the same and of different species.41

A more realistic picture of aggression may be painted by allowing for the fact that some

resources will be reinvested away from production and toward weapons of war and some will be

destroyed in ensuing battles. Perfect information on behalf of both of them is still assumed. In

such a simultaneous variable-sum game, both actors begin with an initial endowment of 12

resources and must choose whether they will play pursue the Hawk strategy or the Dove strategy.

A Variable Sum Game:

Might Makes Right
Tyler \ Jack Hawk Dove
Hawk 6, 6 18, 0
Dove 0, 18 12, 12
Figure 2: Aggression as a Simultaneous Variable-Sum Game

                                                            
41
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 66.
 17 

If both play Hawk, their resources are cut in half by investing in weapons and fighting each

other. If only one of them plays Hawk, he loses half his initial endowment but gains the total

resources of his victim. As a whole Tyler and Jack are clearly better off by both playing Dove

and avoiding the loss of goods that will be invested and lost in battle, yielding a social utility of

Ln(12) + Ln(12) = 4.9698. Yet the Nash equilibrium is at Hawk-Hawk (Best Responses are in

bold) yielding a social utility of Ln(6) + Ln(6) = 3.5835. Yet Hawk is an evolutionarily stable

strategy that cannot be invaded by Doves.

Since arms buildups only result in a stalemate, the players are better off if they hadn’t

accumulated weapons at all as these resources could have been spent elsewhere, no doubt a

motive behind the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties as

the Cold War waned. Since there is only one Nash equilibrium, Selten’s theorem informs us that

if this game is repeated finite times, it has only one Subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium: the

repetition of the stage-game Nash equilibrium in each period. 42 However if it is repeated infinite

times, then the Pareto suboptimal Nash equilibrium found above may be avoided through

cooperation. 43 Unfortunately for Tyler and Jack, if they come in contact with a warlike tribe

similar in every way except that it has found a way out of this prisoner’s dilemma through

cooperation, they will be forced to compete with a total of 20 units of goods versus a greater

stock of 24 units. If the game is repeated a number of times, their total resources will be eroded

to bare subsistence level. How may Tyler and Jack develop a rule that allows them to escape the

prisoner’s dilemma and make themselves better off? Their ability to do so will enhance their
                                                            
42
Walter Nicholson and Christopher Snyder. Microeconomic Theory: Basic Principles and Extensions, 10th ed.
(Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2008), 265.
43
 Miller and Page describe a model of strategic communication in which it is found that in finite repeated games
outbreaks of mutual cooperation follow increases in communication but this cooperation quickly dies down.
Increases in the number of cooperators lead to a rise in mimics who pretend to cooperate but instead defect, and this
destroys cooperation within the population. See John H. Miller and Scott E. Page, Complex Adaptive Systems: An
Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 194-195.  
 18 

resource accumulation and thus presumably their ability to achieve victory in battle and attract

mates. The kind of social convention that would prevent them from succumbing to the prisoner’s

dilemma would maximize their potential tribal fitness and be expected to help them prevail over

weaker tribes; thus the convention itself would most likely enjoy memetic transmission across

generations.
 19 

CHAPTER IV: PROPERTY

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.
John Locke

Humans are constrained by scarcity. Our desires seemingly limitless, it is not possible for

men to have everything they want. Men living together therefore have the task of determining

who will get what; some societies have sought various forms of equality while others have been

characterized by extreme inequality. A tribe ruled by barbarism would likely implode, only to be

conquered or absorbed by stronger tribes. It would never have the opportunity to accumulate

capital because the incentive to save and invest would be nonexistent. But as Nash equilibrium,

it would be difficult for a tribe to avoid falling into this destructive downward spiral; human

relations would be characterized by the survival of the physically strongest.

One way barbarism may be avoided is through the spread of memes that prevent tribal

members from wanting to engage in violent act against each other. In many societies private

property is recognized and enforced; the emergence of the private property convention might be

an example of what Robert Sugden calls “spontaneous order.” 44 Writes Sugden,

Individuals living together in a state of anarchy… tend to evolve conventions or codes of

conduct that reduce the extent of interpersonal conflict: this is spontaneous order. The
origin of these conventions is in the interest that each individual has in living his own life
without coming into conflict with others … some of our ideas of rights, entitlements and
justice may be rooted in conventions that have never been consciously designed by
anyone. They have merely evolved. 45

He explains spontaneous order by using the example of driving on the left side of the road in

Britain. He observes that even the worst drivers almost always drive on the correct side of the

road because doing so is self-enforcing—disobeying this convention can lead to injury or

death—thus making voluntary commitment to this rule a network externality. According to his
                                                            
44
See Robert Sugden. The Economics of Rights, Co-operation and Welfare. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).
45
Sugden, 8.
 20 

account, conventions arise as one of the equilibria in a coordination game; for instance, it does

matter which side of the road people drive on, as both the right and left sides are equilibria. But

once one of the equilibria is arrived at, the equilibrium is self-enforcing. 46 Thus Sugden

concludes,

So we do not always need the machinery of the law to maintain order in social affairs;
such order as we observe is not always the creation of governments and police forces.
Anarchy in the literal sense (‘absence of government’) cannot be equated with anarchy in
the pejorative sense (‘disorder; political or social confusion’). 47

The players in the Banknote Game might not agree what the best equilibrium would be—

both want the £10 note—but both prefer the £5 note to nothing. Without the ability to

communicate with one another, they will be unable to cooperate toward the creation of a

convention that will allow both of them to come away with money. But in real life, the two

players often will be able to communicate, and can determine some sort of rule, such as the elder

gets the larger note, or the one with more wives. 48 The fact that the rules are arbitrary is

secondary in importance to the fact that they are both better off if they are able to come away

from the game with money. As Kreps notes, “One might argue which is the better

society/convention. But both conventions serve at least the purpose of getting players to a Nash

equilibrium.” 49

In the competition for scarce resources, aggression may be a dominant strategy; from this

no self-enforcing convention of peace can arise as occurs in Sugden’s examples. For an isolated

                                                            
46
Merchant law may be an example. See Bruce L. Benson, The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State (San
Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1990).
47
Sugden, 1.
48
Kreps writes, “Interesting equilibria “by convention” sometimes are tied to seemingly irrelevant signals or
historical summaries. By “seemingly irrelevant” I mean: These signals do not affect the range of strategies a player
has, or players’ payoffs from various strategy profiles. But these things become relevant to the play of the game
because convention makes them relevant.” David M. Kreps. A Course in Microeconomic Theory (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1990), 412.
49
Kreps, 413.
 21 

tribe, it may be unimportant for survival whether they are able to develop some mechanism for

avoiding the prisoner’s dilemma of violence, even if it means they instead live at a bare

subsistence level—the members of the tribe may still continue to survive and reproduce year

after year. It becomes important when they are in competition with rival tribes over the scarce

resources of their region. The tribe that is able to accumulate the most capital while limiting

violence to a minimum might be expected to prevail over the rest in conflicts over resources. In

such a case an external enforcement mechanism of some sort can affect this shift.

Let us assume there are two tribes in competition with each other for scarce resources, the

first influenced by John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government with rules for the

protection of private property, and the second with no recognition of private property, living

instead in a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes—a war of all against all. If the “fittest”

tribe—the one that will prevail in the long run—is the one that has maximized its productive

efficiency and cooperation, then the one that has developed a means of limiting aggression has

several advantages. In addition to accumulating more capital, it wastes less time an effort on

infighting, an activity that could hurt its coordinating efforts, and consequently tribal members

might possess a greater sense of nationalistic pride and mutual sympathy when they are able to

cooperate with each other.

Figure II above illustrates a situation in which aggression between tribal members is the

Pareto suboptimal Nash equilibrium. How might the introduction of an external enforcement

mechanism defending private property transform the parameters of interpersonal interaction?

Imagine that once tribal members accept private property enforcement, they determine that those

who violate someone else’s private property will be punished and perpetrators will be forced to

compensate their victims.

 22 

Private Property Enforcement

Tyler \ Jack Hawk Dove

Hawk 6-P, 6-P 18-P, 0+P
Dove 0+P, 18-P 12, 12
Figure 3: Aggression with Private Property Enforcement I

If Tyler chooses the Hawk strategy against the peaceful Jack, he again gains 6 resources from

Jack, but loses punishment P. Jack loses 6 resources in the act of aggression, but gains P from

damages that are both compensatory and punitive. With 6 as the typical size of resources gained

through aggression, then as long as P > 6 then assuming all perpetrators are caught and punished,

which is not an unreasonable assumption in a small tribe, the incentive to commit acts of

aggression is lost; aggressors always suffer a net loss from their crimes while their victims enjoy

a net gain. For instance, if P is set to 10:

Private Property Enforcement

Tyler \ Jack Hawk Dove

Hawk -4, -4 8, 10
Dove 10, 8 12, 12
Figure 4: Aggression with Private Property Enforcement II

With sufficient punishment in the enforcement of property rights, the new Nash equilibrium

becomes Dove-Dove, society’s Pareto optimal outcome with payoffs of 12 for each player (see
 23 

Appendix B). Even if perpetrators are only caught and punished with probability X, then the

incentive to aggress is lost as long at X*P > 6.

Alternatively, if the original game without an enforcement mechanism is repeated

infinitely many times, both players may be able to forge a cooperative agreement. Assume the

payoffs of Figure 6. If they adopt a grim trigger strategy in which they each will refrain from

attacking each other until the other player defects, then they each earn a payoff of 12 each period

times a discount rate δ:

12 12 12 … 12

12

12
1

The payoff to either one of them for defecting and playing Hawk against the grim trigger is:

18 6 6 6 6

18 6

6
18
1

The trigger strategies help create a Subgame perfect Nash equilibrium as long as the payoff to

cooperation is greater than or equal to the payoff to defection:

12 6
18
1 1

Solving the equation it is found that both players will abide by the agreement to play Dove as

long as .
 24 

General non-equilibria conventions may arise from religion often from philosophy, such

as natural law. These conventions exist in the mind only and have no relation to objective reality.

The doctrine of natural law, like all ethical codes, is a manmade construction by which

libertarian philosophers attempt to construct grand metaphysical realities out of arbitrary value

judgments. Writes Mises,

There is… no such thing as natural law… Nature is alien to the idea of right and wrong. From the
notion of natural law some people deduce the justice of the institution of private property in the
means of production. Other people resort to natural law for the justification of the abolishment of
private property in the means of production. As the idea of natural law is quite arbitrary, such
50
discussions are not open to settlement.

What is important for the memetic spread of such conventions is not that they are based on

reality, but that they appear cogent to many people who come into contact with each other and

abide by these conventions. To the extent that conventions are useful, i.e. enhance the fitness of

those who adopt them relative to those of other conventions or no convention, they will spread

through the population. The convention may arise that everyone gets what they homestead, or that only

the elders have property rights, or landowners. What is the key is that the people accept the convention for

perhaps religious or philosophical reasons, and that the convention prevents constant, costly aggression. If

stifling aggression really makes a tribe better off, then tribes that adopt such conventions will grow strong

and eventually overtake weaker more barbaric tribes. Western Civilization in general has adopted what

Hans-Hermann Hoppe calls the “private property ethic.” 51 The ethic of private property could be

described as, “my property encompasses the goods that I homestead, produce, and purchase, and

goods that you homestead, produce, and purchase are your property.”

                                                            
50
Mises, 716.
51
See Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and
Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006).
 25 

CHAPTER V: COALITIONS
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
Benjamin Franklin.

The scarce nature of resources is the foundation of both economics and evolution.

Survival and procreation of the organism and its genes demand the competitive acquisition of

scarce resources. To this end, “One of men’s key strategies is to form coalitions with other men.

These organized alliances give men the power to triumph over other men in their quest for

resources and sexual access.” 52 We need look no further than the chimpanzee to observe the

economies of scale in resource accumulation available to coalitions. David M. Buss suggests that

“among chimpanzees, our closest primate relative, males form alliances to increase their chances

of victory in physical contests with other chimpanzees, their status in the group hierarchy, and

their sexual access to females… Solitary males without coalition partners are at great risk of

being brutally attacked and sometimes killed by males from other groups.” 53

Rubin adds that the ability to take advantage of economies of scale in defense against

predation is one of the greatest benefits of coalition membership. He observes that “even among

chimpanzees, in the documented cases of genocide against neighboring bands, the larger band

has always won… At any given time, a larger group has an advantage over a smaller group, so

groups are under continual pressure to become larger.” 54 Larger group size affords its members

an enhanced ability to warn each other of potential threats to the group and to unite in common

defense against enemies.

According to Buss, “Human males, too, form alliances for gaining resources such as large

game, power within the extended group, ways to defend against the aggression of other
                                                            
52
David M. Buss, The Evolution of Desire (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 212.
53
Buss, 212.
54
Rubin, 38.
 26 

coalitions of men, and sexual access to women. The survival and reproductive benefits derived

from these coalitional activities constituted tremendous selection pressure over human

evolutionary history for men to form alliances with other men.” 55 Pascal Boyer describes a

coalition as “an activity in which joining is (presumably) voluntary, defection is possible,

benefits accrue with cooperation and there is a notable cost in being a cooperator when others

defect.” 56 Sober Elliot and David Sloan Wilson define a group “as a set of individuals that

influence each other’s fitness with respect to a certain trait but not the fitness of those outside the

group.” 57 Germane to these definitions is the notion that collectivism benefits members while

excluding outsiders. The in-group/out-group dichotomy of coalition building often leads to

warfare between competing groups. Because of this, a degree of belligerence against outsiders

likely became selected for in the EEA. “If some societies… become less warlike, they are in

danger of being attacked and conquered by other societies that have not made this decision.” 58

This would have constituted a prisoner’s dilemma. Though it may have benefited all tribes in

general to be peaceful with one another, the emergence of warring tribes who decided to break

the peace for personal gain would impel peaceful, less organized factions to organize and build

armies to defend themselves. Rugged individualism especially would be selected against, as “the

growing success of a growing number of small groups within a hunter-gatherer village would be

a Darwinian incentive to join larger ones, and get a leg up on the competition; genetic mutations

                                                            
55
Buss, 212.
56
Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 126.
57
Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998), 92.
58
Rubin, 155.
 27 

that fostered such joining could flourish.” 59 Larger groups enjoying a higher degree of unity

would be more likely to survive the struggle of inter-tribal competition.

The drive for social conformity is probably one way that unity could become enhanced,

by compelling each individual to demonstrate his devotion to the standards of the group.

“Humankind,” writes Matt Ridley, “has always fragmented into hostile and competitive tribes,

and those that found a way of drumming cultural conformity into the skulls of its members

tended to do better than those that did not.” 60 If cultural conformity is conducive to group unity,

then to the extent groups demonstrated cultural conformity in the EEA they would have enjoyed

economies of scale in defense, rendering them a comparative advantage over smaller, less

unified rival groups. The drive to conformity would become selected for.

According to Ridley, “the cohesiveness of groups that conformity achieves is a valuable

weapon in a world where groups must act together to compete with other groups. That the

decision may be arbitrary is less important than that it is unanimous.” 61 The human capacity for

collective conformity is well documented. Rubin notes that “Humans view groups as being

purposive, even though groups as groups cannot have any goals. Members of groups, and

particularly males, put pressure on other members to conform to group behaviors and accept

group beliefs or ideologies. Members are also concerned with the loyalty of other members and

desire to punish defectors, or even those who fail to punish defectors.” 62 Cognitive psychologist

                                                            
59
Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
(New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 207.
60
Ridley, 189.
61
Ridley, 185-186.
62
Rubin, 32, citing Boyer, Religion Explained.
 28 

Aaron T. Beck adds, “we collectively agree that rules must be enforced, but primarily to control

other people. (We like to think we have a special exemption from these communal laws.)” 63

Beck observes, “strong, sometimes transient, bonds also form among members of clubs,

political organizations, schools, and ethnic, racial, and national groups when they have a

common purpose… Group solidarity can be enhanced by espirit de corps, as well as by the

experience of common loss, which promotes communal grieving and mutual support.” 64 Since

mass public support or at least apathy is important for the continued survival of the state, 65 even

in non-democracies, nationalism can be an important component of the process of centralization.

“Whereas genetic mutations cause the changes and adaptations that drive the evolution of living

species, the decisive causal factor for governments is ideology.” 66 Nationalism is one of many

ideologies that reinforce conformity, building group cohesion and enhancing the survivability of

the group. I suggest that, ceteris paribus, nations possessing a higher degree of nationalism will

develop a comparative advantage in war.

Humans seem to have a deeply engrained propensity for group formation. Social

psychologists have found that even randomly chosen group members express strong feelings of

group loyalty and solidarity even if it participants are made fully aware of the arbitrariness of

their division. Such group members are likely to “perceive a difference, naturally in their group’s

favor, in terms of attractiveness, honesty, or intelligence. They are far more willing to cheat or

indeed inflict violence on members of the other group.” 67 In fact it seems difficult for the

members of these groups not to develop such feelings. Group members who are invited to
                                                            
63
Aaron T Beck, Prisoners of Hate (New York: Perennial, 1999), 34.
64
Beck, 35.
65
Etienne de la Boettie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (New York: Black Rose
Books, 1997)
66
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, “The Will to be Free: The Role of Ideology in National Defense,” in The Myth of
National Defense, ed. Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2003), 287.
67
Boyer, 288.
 29 

collaborate with each other rather than outsiders “develop intuitions and emotions about trust and

reliability connected to group membership, intuitions and emotions that are necessary to

coalition building.” 68

Boyer argues that many groups people join are “coalitional arrangements in which a

calculation of cost and benefit makes membership more desirable than defection, and which are

therefore stable.” 69

Coalitions require very sophisticated computations of other people’s reliability, based on

signals that are often ambiguous and sometimes could be faked, as well as estimates of
the costs and benefits that result from joining a coalition. Yet people generally do not
need to make these computations explicit. Rather, they justify their behavior by thinking
and saying that some people are intrinsically reliable and others are not. We can usually
work on the basis of “gut feelings” because they are the result of subtle calculations in
our specialized systems, although these cannot be accessed for conscious inspection. 70

Assuming only that there are benefits to forming coalitions, and that these benefits increase at a

decreasing rate with the number of members, the following game suggests that a clear Nash

equilibrium can be found where the three residents of a given region unite together. Each of them

is able to obtain 5 units of resources by remaining independent. But as soon as two of them

decide to unite with each other, they are able to predate upon the third man, dividing most of his

resources between them while he is left with nothing. But if the three of them join forces, they

are able to orchestrate attacks on migrating individuals or smaller groups they come into contact

with, and they each are left with 12 resources each. Individuals and small groups will continue to

unite in this way not only for offence but for defense; rugged individualism is selected against

when the neighbors of loners are uniting with each other in order to attack relatively weaker

entities. Eventually all individuals will have joined a coalition in order to defend themselves

                                                            
68
Boyer, 288.
69
Boyer, 288.
70
Boyer, 288-289.
 30 

against all the other coalitions running around seeking to gang up on weaker groups. This

process will end once several coalitions of about equal size remain.

Player C Seeks Coalition

Player A \ Player B Coalition Independent
Coalition 12, 12, 12 9, 0, 9
Independent 0, 9, 9 5, 5, 5

Player C Seeks Independence

Player A \ Player B Coalition Independent
Coalition 9, 9, 0 5, 5, 5
Independent 5, 5, 5 5, 5, 5
Figure 5: Coalition-Building as Nash Equilibrium

To understand how the genetic predisposition toward collectivist behavior might spread

through the human population, imagine that the genetic makeup that might impel an individual

toward rugged individualism can be assigned the fitness level F(I) and that of the collectivist

F(J). Under what circumstances can a population of rugged individualists be invaded by

collectivists? On average, individualists fighting each other would have no advantage over each

other born of their individualism. But in a population that had both groups and individuals, could

the individualists survive? There are two conditions for a population consisting only of

individualists to be an evolutionarily stable strategy. First of all, it is necessary that F(I, I) > F(J,

I): The fitness of I in a fight against I is greater than the fitness of J against I. If it is the case that
 31 

F(I, I) = F(J, I) then a second condition must be met: it must be true that F(I, J) > F(J, J): The

fitness of I against J is superior to the fitness of J against J. Yet for the simple reason that the

number of people on each side matters in the outcome of a battle, it is justifiable to expect that

F(I, I) < F(J, I), rendering coalition-building an evolutionarily stable strategy and causing the

individualists of the mixed population to die out in a competitive setting. But would this be

enough to spread genotypes that lean toward collectivist behavior?

It is important to note that the success of coalitions does not imply the success of group

selection theory because “Group-selection theories of individual self-sacrifice are always

vulnerable to subversion from within.” 71 Charles Darwin himself proposes in The Descent of

Man that ceteris paribus, between two tribes in competition with one another, the one possessing

“a greater number of courageous, sympathetic, and faithful members” prepared to aid each other

in defense would conquer the opposing tribe. 72 Though humans “are designed not to sacrifice

ourselves for the group but to exploit the group for ourselves,” 73 shared ideology “gives people a

motive, other than genetic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others. At the cost

of a few society members who die in battle as soldiers, the whole society becomes much more

effective at conquering other societies or resisting attacks.” 74 But there is much debate about

whether the unit of selection in evolution is the group (as in Darwin’s presupposition), the

individual, or the gene.

Among proponents of group selection theory include prominent biologists such as David

Sloan Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould, Robert Ardrey, and Konrad Lorenz. Group selection theory

holds that individual members of groups or species may be willing to sacrifice their own genetic
                                                            
71
Richard Dawkins. The God Delusion. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), 171.
72
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 155.
73
Ridley, 188.
74
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), 278.
 32 

interest so that the group is strengthened, and that groups with such members will be selected for

in inter-group competition; in essence, traits become selected for because of their impact on

group fitness regardless of individual fitness. I do not believe that group selection is the

mechanism that drives the spread of collectivist behavior because I find the theory fundamentally

flawed.

Instead, I believe that collectivist behavior is spread because of its benefits to individual

genes. According to Dawkins, “If animals live together in groups their genes must get more

benefit out of the association than they put in. A pack of hyenas can catch prey so much larger

than a lone hyena can bring down that it pays each selfish hyena to hunt in a pack, even though

this involves sharing food.” 75 Examples include fish who swim in schools for the hydrodynamic

advantages large formations afford them and emperor penguins that huddle together to minimize

the surface area of their bodies exposed to the cold. 76 Group behavior is not evidence that

individuals (or genes) are not the beneficiaries of collective effort.

Dawkins, a gene selection theorist, concedes that “Those of us who belittle group

selection admit that in principle it can happen. The question is whether it amounts to a significant

force in evolution.” 77 The problem with group selection is in how it performs when it goes up

against individual or gene selection. Under group selection theory, a group—a species or a

specific population within a species—consisting of members willing to sacrifice their own

interests for the group will be more fit than rival coalition without such members and thus be

more likely to survive. Through this selection process the species eventually is made up of

individuals with a willingness to sacrifice their own welfare for the group. The reason individual

                                                            
75
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 166.
76
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 166-167.
77
Dawkins, The God Delusion, 170.   
 33 

selectionists such as Dawkins reject this reasoning is that they believe such a population could

too easily be invaded by defectors who refuse to sacrifice their individual selfish interests. As

Dawkins explains,

Even in the group of altruists, there will almost certainly be a dissenting minority who
refuse to make any sacrifice. If there is just one selfish rebel, prepared to exploit the
altruism of the rest, then he, by definition, is more likely than they are to survive and
have children. Each of these children will tend to inherit his selfish traits. After several
generations of this natural selection, the ‘altruistic group’ will be over-run by selfish
individuals, and will be indistinguishable from the selfish group. 78

Dawkins describes a Hawk-Dove game as an example of the effects of selfish interests

compromising the benefit of the group. 79 He posits a hypothetical tribe in which a selfish warrior

who is surrounded by eager martyrs always stays behind the front line in battle. 80 As a result of

his cowardice the army is only slightly less likely to emerge victorious, but the martyrdom of his

fellow soldiers will benefit him more than it will benefit them on average because the greatest

martyrs are killed and removed from the gene pool. The craven warrior will then be more likely

to have children to whom he will pass on any genes that endowed him with a tendency to evade

martyrdom. These genes will spread and individuals with these genes will proliferate until the

population invariably consists of all cowards.

                                                            
78
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 7-8.
79
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 72.
80
Dawkins, The God Delusion, 170-171. 
 34 

CHAPTER VI: WARFARE

War does not determine who is right—only who is left.
Bertrand Russell.

Coalition-building is a dominant strategy under the emergence of aggressive behavior.

Once individuals begin resorting to violence against each other for the acquisition of resources,

building coalitions may emerge spontaneously as a powerful weapon for aggressors as well as a

necessary defensive mechanism for their victims. In a sea of individuals, two or more with

aggressive tendencies may unite to easily overpower other individuals one by one. As soon as

two or more individuals form a predatory coalition, everyone else must either join the same

coalition or form one of their own, as no man is able to defend himself against a coalition by

himself. Once coalitions start emerging, individuals who remain will be left unable to compete

for the scarce resources of their region.

Describing Richard Alexander’s “balance of power” theory of coalition formation,

Thayer writes, “he argues that human society originated in three stages: first, small groups

developed early in human history for protection against predators; second, over time these

groups began killing large animals for food; and third, increasingly large bands had to stay

together to counter the threat posed by other groups of humans. Alexander believes that the

threat of war and the need for protection through balancing the power of neighboring groups

gave rise to human society.” 81 Jared Diamond adds that “The amalgamation of smaller units into

larger ones has often been documented historically or archaeologically. Contrary to Rousseau’s

                                                            
81
 Thayer, 157. 
 35 

conception, such amalgamations never occur by a process of unthreatened little societies freely

deciding to merge” to counter external threats. 82

If people that engage in collectivist behavior are truly better off in terms of survival and

reproduction, than any genetic predisposition for engaging in this behavior would be selected for.

As game theory demonstrates, the proper course of action in any given circumstance often

depends on what the other person is doing. It is because of this that militarization carried out by

one tribe or nation impels the others to follow suit.

Though there are great diseconomies of scale as nations increase in size, these tend to be

outweighed by the economies of scale in defense against predation. In larger populations, disease

spreads more easily, more food must be produced, and communication among the populace

becomes more difficult. 83 But as a nation grows in size, writes Rubin, “the ability to avoid

predation increases more quickly than [nation] size.” 84 People can warn each other of imminent

attacks, they can reduce the amount of time any one individual must spend defending himself,

and they can unite in mutual defense against more powerful foes. He adds, “Even among

chimpanzees, in the documented cases of genocide against neighboring bands, the larger band

has always won.” 85 Larger groups (and nations) enjoy economies of scale in military defense,

resulting in continual pressure for them to grow in size. As James F Dunnigan muses, “Victory

almost always goes to the bigger battalions… To put it another way, victory is a property of the

wealthy.” 86

Warfare is defined by Ghiglieri thus;

                                                            
82
Diamond, 289.
83
Rubin, 38.
84
Rubin, 38.
85
Rubin, 38.
86
James F. Dunnigan. How to Make War: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare for the Post-Cold War
World. (New York: William Morrow and Company, INC, 1993), 506. 
 36 

War is a conflict between social groups that is resolved by individuals on one or both
sides killing those on the opposite side… The offensive goals of war typically include
territorial expansion, plunder of property, kidnapping women, seizing other critical
resources in short supply, and/or genocide. Offensive war consists of, and is defined by,
these intentions to steal en masse what other men own and to leave them dead. The
conduct of war is only a tool to fulfill these intentions. 87

Thayer adds, “From the perspective of individual selection, the origin of warfare is as an

adaptation to a competitive environment. Because resources are almost always limited,

competition occurs both within and among species. For the vast majority of their history, humans

have faced a shortage of resources.” 88 As the famous Malthusian model describes, limited

resources constitute continuous pressure on population growth.

Perhaps inspired by the theory of the Noble Savage, it used to be considered common

knowledge by anthropologists that war was a product of civilization and rare prior to the Iron

Age. 89 This is now known to be false. Burials of early modern humans dating from 34,000 to

24,000 years ago indicate their deaths were violent; skeletons reveal projectile points, scalping,

cranial fractures, and various weapons traumas. 90 Among human skeletons found at an ancient

Egyptian cemetery dating 12,000 to 14,000 years ago, 40% of 59 men, women, and children

reveal stone projectile points damaging their skeletons, indicating that “warfare there was very

common and particularly brutal”; “Several adults had multiple wounds (as many as twenty), and

the wounds found on children were all in the head or neck—that is, execution shots.” 91 Several

studies have shown that warfare has been rampant among primitive societies. 92 In one study of

                                                            
87
Ghiglieri, 160-161.
88
Thayer, 104.
89
Lawrence H. Keeley, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996), 22.
90
Keeley, 37.
91
Keeley, 37.
92
Keeley, 32.   
 37 

fifty societies, 66% of non-states were at war annually versus 40% of states. 93 Another study of

90 societies found that states warred more often than tribes and chiefdoms, but nonetheless 70%

to 90% of bands, tribes, and chiefdoms warred in any given five year period, versus 86% of

states. 94 In Western Europe, examples abound of the skeletons of hunter-gatherers who suffered

violent deaths dating 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. 95

The rise of warfare would only contribute the further growth of groups from small bands

to moderate sized tribes to great chiefdoms. As Bertrand de Jouvenel explains in On Power,

during World War II Germany had been employing all its natural resources in the war, and

“there was no restraining her by other countries with only a part of theirs.” Coalitions that wish

to topple a common enemy must unite and coordinate their actions, particularly if their enemy is

great in strength. “The enemy who… mobilizes the thoughts and feelings of men, must be copied

by the other side, who will otherwise fight at a disadvantage.” 96 Roderick Long recounts that in

the fourth century BCE, Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East by engaging each

independent city one at a time. Perhaps these cities could have saved themselves had they

organized together to decimate Alexander’s army. “Instead, the cities faced Alexander one by

one, each confident of its own unassailability. And one by one they fell.” 97 Success against

Alexander’s forces required mobilizing all available resources into a united front to counter his

powerful and organized attack. As Jouvenel observes, “Thus it comes about that, just as duellists

                                                            
93
Keeley, 32.
94
Keeley, 32.
95
Keeley, 38.
96
Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1993), 4.
97
Roderick Long, “Defending a Free Nation,” in Anarchy and Law, ed. Edward P. Stringham (New Brunswick, NJ:
Transaction Publishers, 2007), 151.
 38 

follow each other's thrusts and feints, nations at war copy each other's "total" methods." 98

Otherwise, they will lose.

Another important consideration is the fact that in evolution, false positives are probably

preferable to false negatives. That is, it is better to perceive a threat where none exists and lose a

few moments of effort than to fail to perceive a threat where one exists and lose one’s life. With

the snowballing coalition-building that increasing warfare might spurn, it would be in any given

coalition’s best interest to prepare for war and not fight than to not prepare for war and suffer

invasion by the hands of a superior force. As Pascal Boyer writes, “the expense of false positives

(seeing agents where there are none) is minimal, if we can abandon these misgauged intuitions

quickly. In contrast, the cost of not detecting agents when they are actually around (either

predator or prey) is high.” 99 This being the case, coalition-building, sought as a complement to

aggression, might itself result in a tendency for members to stock arms; with all the competing

coalitions around, it is far better to prepare for war than to be attacked unarmed. Thus coalitions

might research and develop weapon technology, stockpile weapons, and conduct training, which

require diverting resources away from food and mating. But to come across someone looking to

initiate aggression against you while you are unprepared may be disastrous.

                                                            
98
Jouvenel, 4.
99
 Boyer, 145.  
 39 

CHAPTER VII: HIERARCHIES

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live
for mine.
Ayn Rand

One issue coalitions might face is the problem of coordination. As it has been

demonstrated, coalition-building is adaptive under realistic assumptions. But coalitions do

require coordination among members in order to achieve their objectives. 100 Individuals may

come together to form a coalition by recognizing the importance of uniting for defense and the

spreading of risk across a large group of people in the attainment of necessities. But in order for

a coalition to march in step and to choose between competing goals, some mechanism must be

created to allow for decision making and coordination. A coalition without a decision making

apparatus is inefficacious so a command hierarchy of some sort within the coalition is needed; a

hierarchy of command is important in order to impose uniformity toward a goal, which is why in

competition between coalitions, ones with hierarchical structures will fare better due to imposing

uniformity on its subjects relative to an egalitarian society where agreement must come

unanimously and voluntarily.

The 16th century political philosopher Etienne de la Boettie asks how is it that a small

group of men come to rule millions of subjects:

If two, if three, if four do not defend themselves from the one, we might call that
circumstance surprising but nevertheless conceivable. In such a case one might be
justified in suspecting a lack of courage. But if a hundred, if a thousand endure the
caprice of a single man, should we not rather say that they lack not the courage but the
desire to rise against him, and that such an attitude indicates indifference rather than
cowardice? When not a hundred, not a thousand men, but a hundred provinces, a
thousand cities, a million men, refuse to assail a single man from whom the kindest
treatment received is the infliction of serfdom and slavery, what shall we call that? 101

                                                            
100
Rubin, 100-104.
101
Boettie, 48.
 40 

Likewise Jouvenel remarks, “If they happen every day, then the most surprising events do not act

on our intelligences. Hence it is, no doubt, that so little thought has been given to the amazing

faculty for obedience of groupings of men, whether numbering thousands or millions, which

causes them to obey the rules and orders of a few.” 102 Hierarchies exist in seemingly all human

affairs, in business, government, gangs, cliques, prison populations, armed forces, sports teams,

and countless other social groupings. What purpose do hierarchies serve?

Imagine a group of individuals are engaged in costly aggression against one another but

are able to retain memory of winners and losers in past fights. According to Dawkins, “If animals

such as crickets, who work with a general memory of past fights, are kept together in a closed

group for a time, a kind of dominance hierarchy is likely to develop.” 103 After several fights, the

weaker individuals, having nothing to gain from fighting, attempt to refrain from costly

aggression and become complacent; Low-ranking individuals defer to the higher ones. Dawkins

points out that this may arise even in the absence of individual recognition, but notes that some

biologists reserve the term dominance hierarchies to describe cases where individual recognition

is a component of hierarchical ranking. 104

The low ranking individuals would become obsequious because, as Dawkins explains,

“The best strategy for an individual is to be relatively dovish towards an individual who has

previously beaten him.” 105 Interestingly, it appears that in the case of hens the emergence of

hierarchy is good for the group—once a hierarchy is established, fighting dies down to a rarity,

and egg production is known to be greater in groups of hens where fighting is less frequent. 106 A

                                                            
102
Jouvenel, 21.
103
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 81-82.
104
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 82.
105
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 82.
106
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 83.
 41 

hierarchy eliminates the problems caused by constant infighting by allowing the strongest to get

their way without incident. But it is not the case that the group actively seeks to establish

hierarchy with the goal of minimizing aggression in mind. Dawkins explains,

Biologists often speak of the biological advantage or ‘function’ of dominance hierarchies

as being to reduce overt aggression in the group. However this is the wrong way to put it.
A dominance hierarchy per se cannot be said to have a ‘function’ in the evolutionary
sense, since it is a property of a group, not of an individual. The individual behavior
patterns that manifest themselves in the form of dominance hierarchies when viewed at
the group level may be said to have functions. It is, however, even better to abandon the
word ‘function’ altogether, and to think about the matter in terms of ESSs in asymmetric
contests where there is individual recognition and memory. 107

Rubin distinguished between dominance hierarchies and productive hierarchies. 108 I group them

together under what I term command hierarchies. In the table below are shown Nash equilibria

for the emergence of command hierarchies within coalitions, best responses in bold. In the

situation in which one leader emerges, everyone benefits from enhanced coordination. If one

person leads and coordinates, everyone gets value of coordination, 20, and leader gets additional

5 in the form of status. If no one leads everyone receives zero. If two or more are determined to

become leaders, they fight it out, no one gets benefits of coordination, and those who fight lose 5

in the cost of the fight. These payoffs are consistent with the notion that a coalition

complemented by a hierarchical structure of command is adaptive.

The three Nash equilibria are where one player leads and the others follow. In a coalition

of N players there exist N unique Nash equilibria. At Nash equilibrium, the total social benefit of

a command structure is 65. If all three try to lead, the payoff to each is -15. In a competitive

setting between various coalitions, ones with command hierarchies might be expected to prevail

                                                            
107
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 82.
108
Rubin, 105-108
 42 

because they have the most resources to invest in production, consumption, and war. Coalitions

with no hierarchy of command lose out to more efficient coalitions in intertribal competition.

Player C Assumes Leadership

Player A \ Player B Lead Submit
Lead -5, -5, -5 -5, 0, -5
Submit 0, -5, -5 20, 20, 25

Player C Submits
Player A \ Player B Lead Submit
Lead -5, -5, 0 25, 20, 20
Submit 20, 25, 20 0, 0, 0
Figure 6: Emergence of Hierarchy as Nash Equilibrium
 43 

CHAPTER VIII: TERRITORIALITY

The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing
army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, &c. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of
the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden
men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of
straw, or a lump of dirt.
Henry David Thoreau

According to Peterson and Wrangham, “Territory is a range that is forcibly occupied, i.e.,

defended from trespassers of the same (or sometimes other) species. Range, on the other hand, is

a piece of land that is occupied whether or not force is employed.” 109 In essence it is an

extension of the aggressive impulse by which an organism violently claims resources for both

present and future consumption. Animals that enforce through violence their claim of ownership

over a piece of land and its resources are engaged in territorial behavior. E.O. Wilson describes

territorial aggression thus; “The territorial defender utilizes the most dramatic signaling behavior

at its disposal to repulse intruders. Escalated fighting is usually employed as a last result in case

of a stand-off during mutual displays. The losing contender has submission signals that help it to

leave the field without further physical damage…” 110

Biologists recognize that any given environment has a maximum carrying capacity due to

the resources available there. Claiming a given piece of territory to prevent its resources from

being looted by rivals may help assure one does not fall victim to a shortage. According to E.O.

Wilson, “Animals use aggression as a technique for gaining control over necessities, ordinarily

food or shelter, that are scarce or are likely to become so at some time during the life cycle. They

intensify their threats and attack with increasing frequency as the population around them grows

denser. As a result the behavior itself induces members of the population to spread out in space,

                                                            
109
Peterson and Wrangham, 14.
110
Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, 242.  
 44 

raises the death rate, and lowers the birth rate.” 111 Territoriality may be a species’ way to prevent

overconsumption through overpopulation in a given area, a phenomenon that would result in the

starvation of all.

Male chimpanzees are known to defend their territory as “a gang committed to the ethnic

purity of their own set.” 112 Jane Goodall observes that among chimpanzees, “the violence of

their hostility toward neighbors” is notable in that they, “like hyenas, and lions, differ most from

the traditional territory owners of the animal kingdom” because “their victims are not simply

chased out of the owner’s territory if they are found trespassing” but are “assaulted and left,

perhaps to die.” 113 In the animal kingdom “there are examples of females preferring to mate with

males who hold territories and with males who have high status in the dominance hierarchy.” 114

What is the benefit of territoriality in relations between individuals or groups? Wilson

describes human territoriality as functional in some clear ways. Hunter-gather tribes and families

have been observed to maintain exclusive control of rich sources of vegetables. 115 According to

the rule of ecological efficiency, “when a diet consists of animal food, roughly ten times as much

area is needed to gain the same amount of energy yield as when the diet consists of plant food.

Modern hunter-gatherer bands containing about 25 individuals commonly occupy between 1000

and 3000 square kilometers. This area is comparable to the home range of a wolf pack but as

much as a hundred times greater than that of a troop of gorillas, which are exclusively

vegetarian. 116

                                                            
111
Wilson, Human Nature, 103.
112
Peterson and Wrangham, 14.
113
Thayer, 177.
114
Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 161.
115
Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, 565.
116
Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, 565.  
 45 

If it is the case that territoriality stems from the egoistic impulse to maintain resources for

one’s own use, perhaps this could explain the different brand of territoriality that characterizes

the modern state. As the band or tribe develops a hierarchical structure to address coordination

problems, according to Jouvenel, the hierarchy of command takes on a life-force of its own. 117 In

the gradual genesis of the hierarchy’s territorial claims, it monopolizes not only land and food,

but also another all-important resource for the health of the state—human beings. Territory as it

manifests itself in state action represents essentially treating people as resources to be controlled.

As demonstrated above, coalition-building is a dominant strategy in a physically

competitive environment. But suppose in sudden periods of warfare, when immediate action is

required, the tyrant who has been appointed finds that he has difficulty raising an all-volunteer

army and collecting voluntary dominations for the war effort. In particular, those principalities

that are more concerned with their own welfare may be less concerned as to the fate of the whole

empire than their own regions. Even among those peoples who may be directly affected by an

invasion, there might be an incentive to free ride; the benefit to himself of an individual’s

contribution to the war effort may be negligible at best, so even though contributions in the

aggregate are important, it may be irrational for individuals to contribute. In such a case, there

might be a widespread tendency for the citizens to shirk. This represents a collective action

game, and the tyrant must find a way to overcome it, lest his divided principalities be conquered

one by one by a united enemy. 118

Suppose that there is a payoff that participators in the war effort enjoy, P(n) = 20n-1500,

which depends in part on n, the total number of participants; n < N, the total population. Those

                                                            
117
On this see Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of its Growth.
118
Alexander the Great was able to conquer almost the entire Middle East one city at a time. See Long, “Defending
a Free Country,” 151.   
 46 

who shirk from their civic duty receive a payoff of S(n) = 20n; they still receive 20n, the positive

spillovers that come from raising an army, but also spare themselves from sacrificing 1500 by

avoiding the investment of blood and sweat that the war effort requires; the number of shirkers is

N – n. What is found is that universal shirking is the Nash equilibrium; no rationally active

individual will volunteer for the war effort, and the empire will be conquered.

Shirking v. Participating I
6000
5000
UTILITY PAYOFFS

4000
3000
S(n)
2000
P(n)
1000
0
0 50 100 150 200
Number of Participants n
 

Figure 7: Shirking versus Participating in Coalitional Efforts I

How can the tyrant overcome this situation? Historically, shirking has been overcome through

conscription. A more interesting case, similar in analysis, involves the way that memes might be

spread through the population like propaganda, motivating the citizens to join the war effort

voluntarily. It is not uncommon that societies praise the “sacrifice” of “service” in military,

considering it some sort of higher calling. 119 For those young men who succumb to patriotism,

the payoffs for participating in war include not only the tangible benefits to military enrollment

but also the psychic profit that comes with being a soldier, not to mention the boost in status that

                                                            
119
 Wright, 390-391.  
 47 

nationalistic societies yield to them. 120 Altering psychic profits can alter civic behavior if the

disutility of shirking and the utility of participation are large enough, then defecting from the war

effort will carry too much notoriety to be given serious consideration by most citizens. Suppose

that with the psychic profit of patriotism such that such that is S(n)-C < P(n)+U; C is reputational

cost associated with shirking and U is utility derived from sense of “doing one’s duty.” For

example, change the payoffs from S(n)= 20n and P(n)=20n-1500 to S(n)= 20n-C and P(n)=20n-

1500+U. In this case, participation becomes the Nash equilibrium if C+U>1500. For instance,

when C=U=1000, the payoffs become:

S(n)= 20n-1000

P(n)=20n-1500+1000

P(n)= 20n-500

20n > 20n-500; n ≥ 0

With this transformation of payoffs, the dominant strategy has shifted to participation; each

individual will choose to participate regardless of what everybody else does. Similarly, when

armies are raised by conscription, shirking will disappear as long as the punishment for shirking

P is such that S(n)–P < P(n). Hence the principle of territoriality arises within a region, because

by claiming the resources within a given territory, including its residents, the command structure

of the coalition more easily overcomes problems such as free riding. The fundamental principle

is that successful states treat people are resources by commanding as many of them as possible.

                                                            
120
  Writes Pinker, “Honor and vengeance are raised to godly virtues in societies that lie beyond the reach of law
enforcement, such as remote horticulturists and herders, the pioneers of the Wild West, street gangs, organized
crime families, and entire nation-states when dealing with one another (in which case the emotion is called
“patriotism”). Steven Pinker. How the Mind Works. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997), 413. In nations
such as our own, less patriotic warriors are induced to enlist with generous signing bonuses and other monetary
inducements.
 
 48 

Empires don’t expand simply for the land. Expansion may come through a combination of

conquest over unwilling people and voluntary statehood by those who seek to enjoy the public

goods the state provides.

Shirking v. Participating II
6000
5000
UTILITY PAYOFFS

4000

3000
S(n)
2000
P(n)
1000

0
0 50 100 150 200
Number of Participants n

Figure 8: Shirking versus Participating in Coalitional Efforts II

 49 

CHAPTER IX: THE STATE

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal
controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,
the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place
oblige it to control itself.
James Madison

As shown above, under certain assumptions, aggression, coalition-building, private

property, hierarchies, and territoriality may be dominant strategies for individuals and/or

coalitions that seek to obtain scarce resources in a competitive environment. Once aggressors

appear within a population, coalitions may emerge as a survival mechanism in order to defend

against these aggressors. Aggressors in turn may build coalitions of their own to overcome the

strength of their united victims. Through this process rugged individualism vanishes as

individuals are unable to maintain a balance of power among their coalitional peers. Coalition-

building emerges as a stable equilibrium toward which individuals gravitate.

In general, as these coalitions engage in combat against one another for predation or

defense, those with the greatest resources at their disposal, ceteris paribus, will emerge

victorious. Coalitions that develop conventions, rules, and external enforcement mechanisms

may succeed in minimizing intra-coalitional violence; if these rules lead to capital accumulation

and enhanced productivity and efficiency, then coalitions with such rules will have more

resources to invest in warfare than coalitions dominated by barbarians. Then through warfare

coalitions without such rules will become extinct; various rules for establishing property rights

and other violence-minimizing conventions may spread in this way. As coalitions with the

greatest productive resources eliminate poorer, more barbaric coalitions, the technological

advancements available to the wealthier coalitions that remain might lead to ever greater carnage

as they compete on the battlefields.

 50 

As the balance of power returns to coalitions of similar size and wealth, other means may

be sought in order to gain advantages over competing coalitions. In particular, as coalitions

achieve greater numbers of members, deciding upon and acting toward common goals will

become increasingly difficult. 121 Hierarchies may emerge within coalitions as a means of

coordinating their members’ actions towards common goals. Once this impediment toward

coalition size is overcome, coalitions (or those on top of the hierarchy) may seek to expand the

size of their populations. The impetus toward territoriality may serve to secure the coalition’s

procurement of resources necessary for survival and the strength of the coalition’s defenses. This

would include the number of subjects available to fund war efforts and serve in the military, thus

territoriality may enhance the strength of the coalition this way.

If my analysis is correct, then perhaps the state as a territorial monopolist of violence

represents the materialization of these aggressive forces that play themselves out through human

competition over scarce resources. If aggression, coalition-building, property rights, hierarchies,

and territoriality are indeed dominant strategies, then coalitions commanded by a hierarchical

governing apparatus claiming a territorial monopoly of violence may represent the aggregation

of these dominant strategies; such social institutions may have been the first rudimentary states.

As the embodiment of dominant strategies, these states may be a permanent fixture of human

relations. If so, then evolution and evolutionary psychology may explain why we live in a world

of states rather than some anarchistic alternative.

Future work in this area may focus on what kinds of states perform best in competition.

The above analysis deals with characteristics universal to all states, but there are many ways for
                                                            
121
 Arrows Impossibility Theorem holds that under reasonable assumptions, individual preferences cannot be
converted into communally ranked preferences.  
 51 

states to be structured and for their powers to be organized. There are vast differences between

monarchies, oligarchies, and democracies; additionally, fascism, socialism, capitalism, and

mixed economies exhibit clear distinguishing characteristics. The role these differences play

when these states are in competition with one another is an empirical question that should be a

subject of future study. Additionally, this research should be expanded to investigate the

feasibility of anarchism. If the state is truly a stable equilibrium that is the end product of various

dominant strategies, then anarchism may be a completely unviable alternative to the state as a

mode of social organization.

 52 

REFERENCES

Barash, David P. The Survival Game: How Game Theory Explains the Biology of Cooperation

and Competition. New York: Times Books, 2003.

Beck, Aaron T. Prisoners of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence.

New York: Perennial, 1999.

Benson, Bruce L. The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State. San Francisco: Pacific

Research Institute, 1990.

Boettie, Etienne de la. The Politics of Obedience: A Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.

Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1997.

Boyer, Pascal. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York:

Basic Books, 2001

Buss, David M. The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating. New York: Basic Books,

2003

Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. London: Penguin Books, 2004.

Dawkins, Richard. A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love.

Boston: Mariner Books, 2003.

Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene, 30th Anniversary ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006

Dawkins, Richard. Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder.

Boston: Mariner Books, 1998.

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W.

Norton & Company, 1999.

Dunnigan, James F. How to Make War: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare for the
 53 

Post-Cold War Era, 3rd ed. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc, 1993.

Ghiglieri, Michael P. The Dark Side of Man: Tracing the Origins of Male Violence.

Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1999.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc, 1994.

Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. Democracy—the God that Failed: The Economics and Politics of

Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers,

2001.

Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political

Economy and Philosophy. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006.

Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises

Institute, 2007.

Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. “The Will to be Free: The Role of Ideology in National Defense,” In

The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security

Production, edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, 275-297. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises

Institute, 2003.

Isaac, Mark. The Counter-Creationism Handbook. Berkeley: University of California Press,

2007.

Jouvenel, Bertrand de. On Power: The Natural History of its Growth. Indianapolis: Liberty

Fund, 1993.

Keeley, Lawrence H. War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1996.

Kreps, David M. A Course in Microeconomic Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1990.
 54 

Leakey, Richard. The Origin of Humankind: Unearthing our Family Tree. London:

Phoenix, 1994.

Lemennicier, Bertrand. “Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation or Monopoly?” In The Myth of

National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production, edited by

Hans- Hermann Hoppe, 127-143. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2003.

Long, Roderick. “Defending a Free Nation.” In Anarchy and the Law: The Political

Economy of Choice, edited by Edward P. Stringham, 149-162. New Brunswick:

Transaction Publishers, 2007.

Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration.

Mineola: Dover Publications, INC, 2002.

Miller, John H. and Scott E. Page. Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to

Computational Models of Social Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

Mises, Ludwig von. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises

Institute, 1998.

Moulin, Hervé. Game Theory for the Social Sciences: Studies in Game Theory and

Mathematical Economics, 2nd and Revised Ed. Washington Square: New York

University Press, 1986.

Neumann, John von, and Oskar Morgenstern. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953.

Nicholson, Walter & Christopher Snyder. Microeconomic Theory: Basic Principles and

Extensions, 10th ed. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2008.

Nowak, Martin A. Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life. Cambridge:

Belknap Press, 2006.

 55 

Peterson, Dale and Richard Wrangham. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human

Violence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1996.

Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York:

Viking, 2002.

Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Ridley, Matt. The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. New

York: Penguin Books, 1996.

Rothbard, Murray N. Man, Economy, & State with Power and Market, the Scholar’s

Edition. Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2004.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. London: Penguin Books, 1968.

Rubin, Paul H. Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom. New Brunswick:

Rutgers University Press, 2002.

Smith, John Maynard. Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1982.

Sugden, Robert. The Economics of Rights, Co-operation & Welfare. Oxford: Basil

Blackwell, 1986.

Thayer, Bradley A. Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War

and Ethnic Conflict. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004.

Varian, Hal R. Microeconomic Analysis, 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992.

Weber, Max. Max Weber’s Complete Writings on Academic and Political Vocations. New York:

Algora Publishing, 2008.

Wilson, David Sloan. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of

Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.

 56 

Wilson, Edward O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

Wilson, Edward O. On Human Nature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1975.

Wright, Robert. The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of

Evolutionary Psychology. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

Young, K.Y., E.D. Brodie Jr., and E.D. Brodie III. “How the Horned Lizard Got its

Horns.” Science 304, 65 (2004)

 57 

APPENDIX A: AGGRESSION AS A DOMINANT STRATEGY

To solve for the general case, each player is assigned an initial endowment of I. If one of

them decides to play Hawk against a Dove, the victorious Hawk strategist receives a percent of

his victim’s initial endowment γI; 0 < γ < 1. The victim loses all of his resources in the battle and

the theft. In the event they both pursue the Hawk strategy, both are able to prevent the theft of

their resources but lose a percentage (1 – λ) of their initial endowment in the battle, 0 < λ < 1.

Assuming Jack has P probability of playing Hawk and (1 – P) probability of playing Dove,

Tyler’s expected value of the Hawk strategy is:

E(U)H = P(λIT) + (1 – P)(IT + γIJ)

His expected value of the Dove strategy is:

E(U)D = P(0) + (1 – P)(IT)

Since this game is symmetric, Jack’s payoffs similarly depend on the probability Q that Tyler

will play Hawk and probability (1 – Q) that Tyler will play Dove. We may rewrite the equations:

E(U)H = PλIT + IT + γIJ – PIT – P γIJ = IT(1 + Pλ –P) + γIJ

E(U)D = 0 + IT – PIT

Tyler will choose the Hawk strategy only if:

IT(1 + Pλ –P) + γIJ > IT – PIT

He will choose the Dove strategy only if:

IT(1 + Pλ –P) + γIJ < IT – PIT

When the probability that Jack will play Hawk is equal to:
 58 

γIJ
λIT

In words, Hawk is the dominant strategy because P cannot be negative.

 59 

APPENDIX B: AGGRESSION WITH PROPERTY ENFORCEMENT

In the general case, assume each player has an initial endowment of I. If a player chooses

the Hawk strategy against a Dove, his initial endowment increases by a percentage η of the

initial endowment of his victim but is then diminished by having this increase subtracted as well

as a fine of δ% applied to his original endowment; 0 < δ < 1. The victim then receives his

original property back as well as the sum of punitive damages as compensation. In the event both

players mutually aggress against each other, they are simply fined.

If Tyler chooses to aggress against Jack, the expected value of his attack depends in part

on the probability P that Jack plays Hawk versus the probability (1-P) that Jack plays Dove.

Then the expected value of Hawk is:

E(U)H = P((1-δ)IT + (1-P)((1-δ)IT)

The expected value of playing Dove is:

E(U)D = P(IT + δIJ) + (1-P)IT

Since this game is symmetric, Jack’s payoffs similarly depend on the probability Q that Tyler

will play Hawk and probability (1 – Q) that Tyler will play Dove. We may rewrite the equations

as:

E(U)H = PIT – PδIT + IT – δIT – PIT + PδIT

= P(IT - δIT – IT + δIT) + IT - δIT)

= IT(1 – δ)

E(U)D = PIT + PδIJ + IT - PIT

= P(IT + δIJ – IT) + IT

= P(δIT) + IT
 60 

He will choose Dove if

IT(1 – δ) < P(δIT) + IT

Tyler will choose Hawk if

IT(1 – δ) > P(δIT) + IT

When the probability that Jack will play Hawk is equal to:

P can never be negative, indicating that Tyler’s dominant strategy is now to play Dove.