"Beggar-Thy-Neighbour" Policies in International Trade Illustrate the Prisoners' Dilemma As Applied to States; the "Dominant Strategy" of Each State Is to engage in Discriminatory Trade Practices

On a less apocalyptic level, "beggar-thy-neighbour" policies in international trade seem to be a perfectly good practical illustration of the prisoners' dilemma as applied to states. Generally speaking, all states could be better off if, by cooperative conduct, they allowed the potential gains from trade to be fully realized, just as all prisoners would be better off if none betrayed the other by confessing. The "dominant strategy" of each state (as the "optimum tariff" argument demonstrates), however, is to engage in discriminatory trade practices, high tariffs, competitive devaluations and so forth. This strategy is "dominant" on the argument that if other states behave nicely and adopt free-trader conduct, the first state will reap advantages from its misbehaviour, while if other states misbehave, it would suffer by not also misbehaving. The supposed outcome of every state adopting its dominant strategy is an escalating trade war with everybody rapidly getting poorer and being unable to do anything about it in the absence of a super-state with powers of coercion. In actual fact, many, states much of the time behave reasonably well in international trade. They either do not have a dominant strategy, or, if they do, it is not to misbehave. Most states most of the time adhere to GATT rules (which stand for the "cooperative solution" in game-theory parlance). Trade wars are generally minor skirmishes, limited to a few products of a few states and instead of escalating as they should, they usually subside. Such "partial free trade" is achieved, just like "partial peace," without benefit of a state above states and the transfer of power to it. Complete free trade, like total peace, may from most points of view be more satisfactory, but the cost of the added satisfaction must appear prohibitive to the participants; states do not willingly submit to domination even if the dominant entity is to be called the Democratic Federation of Independent Peoples.

--Anthony de Jasay, The State, The Collected Papers of Anthony de Jasay (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), 46.