Why the future is bright and stealing from Microsoft is not that bad
I am very optimistic for the future of our race.
I believe from now on it will just get better and better, on average.
Every kind of ethical code, every kind of event in our recorded history as a species points to one inevitable fact; humans want to have more.
This is great news.
Because humans always want more, we work, we fight, we play, and we cheat.
One crucial important thing is, we work more than we fight and we play more together, than we cheat.
Cultures that fight more than they work have a notoriously short history.
Think of the Roman Empire and the Mongol empire. Both are known for their superior armies, but only one prospered over centuries, the other one rose and dissolved within one generation.
What was the big difference? The Romans build roads, educated the locals, added value to the areas they conquered. The Mongol hordes burned everything down.
There is mathematical proof for this notion, it is called game theory. The easiest example is a game where people have to trade with each other.
If both are honest both earn 1 $ each, 2 $ in total.
If one cheats and the other is honest, the cheater gets 2$ and the honest one loses 1 $, in total 1$.
If both cheat both earn 0 $ each, 0 $ in total.
For one person the best strategy is to cheat all the time. Cheaters always win or stay even.
Honest people earn only a little, or loose a little.
In this game it is obvious everyone will cheat.
Imagine would live 1,000 years ago. You could stay at home and work hard in the fields 80 hours a week. Or you could sleep in late have fun, play and at night, go to the farmers and steal from them. You would have enough food and only work 10 hours a week.
Clearly stealing is the better strategy, so why did anyone choose to be a farmer?
The answer is very simple, because the thieves all died. Only the farmers survived.
The game above describes it perfectly, if everyone in the society works hard and trades goods, everyone benefits and ends up with more than they had. You plant potatoes, I breed cattle, we both have more than we need and share our excess. So both of us have plenty of potatoes and meat. In total we earn 2 $.
If you work hard and I steal from you, I get a lot and you lose, because you worked hard in total we still earned 1 $ as a group.
If both of us steal from each other we get nothing and die of hunger.
Now some smart scientists made the experiment with the same rules as described above. But they added an important part. Many people play this kind of game using a computer, so they don’t see each other. They play this game many times and they will never know the name of who they are playing with.
Here comes the amazing part: The scientists said to the people: We made 2 versions, the rules are identical but in the first version you cannot punish someone if they cheated on you. In the second version you can punish a cheater you simply push the button and the cheater has to wait for one round where he cannot play.
Almost all people choose they don’t need punishment and choose the first version.
What followed should have been obvious to everyone who ever heard a thing about history.
One person started to cheat in the first version, and soon everyone discovered that cheating is the best strategy.
Now the scientists said: every round you can change the version if you wish.
People started to change from the non-punish version to the punish version. Everyone who cheated was soon punished, so everyone played honest.
At the end the few remaining ones in the non-punish version of the game earned almost nothing. But everyone in the punish version of the game earned quite a lot.
The important lesson from this is, even if everyone is selfish and only cares about him/herself it turns out that in real life being honest and helping each other is the best way to get rich especially if you meet the person again in the future.
To be honest the story is a little bigger than described here. There always were thieves and there always will be. We as a society punish with the help of a police, but to be honest the police do not catch many thieves. There is a certain number, maybe 1% maybe 3%, I don’t know. As long as only 1% of the population steals it is no problem, the rest works hard and 1% less does not make any difference. The police is there to keep the number low, but 0% is almost impossible.
Interestingly if you know about this little game suddenly society makes a lot of sense. Christian religion says that you will suffer for your sins (stealing is one of those sins). Maybe not now, but after you died. This is great because everyone who does not want to be in hell must not steal. Perfect if your police force consists of a few drunken soldiers who ride on horses and can’t even take fingerprints.
Another amazing thing is, our brains are hard wired from birth on to hate people cheating on us and make us feel good for being honest. What do I mean by that. Another game, the ultimatum game.
Imagine 2 kids. I tell the first kid I will give you 10 cookies, but you have to share with the other kid. If the other kid says you shared to little I will not give you the cookies.
So the first kid says: I will give you one cookie. This is clearly a great deal for the second kid. Free cookie! 1 for the second kid (better than 0) and 9 cookies for the first kid. Both win.
But this is not how the game plays out. As it turns out, if the first kid offers less than 5 cookies, the second kid will rather have no cookie at all, than to accept this injustice.
For adults it is 6 cookies (yes there are some adults so rational that they will prefer 1 cookie over 0, logical)
So obviously this is evolutionary insanity. Imagine you are out in the wild, having one cookie will feed you for a day, why would our brains make us do such an illogical thing?
The answer is pretty simple, to punish the cheaters. If everyone works hard to punish all cheaters, cheaters will stop cheating. As an individual not getting one cookie is okay, because in the future the other person will be sure to give you 5 cookies.
Another famous example is the hourly wage of factory workers. The workers had to choose what wage they would prefer: First shift (they): 60$, second shift (the others) 61$. Or first shift 58 $, second shift 57 $.
As you guessed right, they choose 58$ just because it was unfair for the other shift to earn more than they did.
By the way primates (monkeys) act exactly the same way, they rather not have any cookie than getting less than the others.
With understanding this simple idea you can explain so much. Why we have a God and a Devil. Why you get reborn as a worm in Hinduism. Why we turn on the news, night after night, although all we see is people stealing, murdering and other bad news.
Think about it, if one person cheated you and you tell everyone that they should protect themselves from the cheater. The cheater will soon starve to death because no one is willing to help him/her.
Here comes a thought experiment: what would happen if the game was a little different:
Both are honest 1 $ each, 2 $ in total.
Cheater gets 2$, honest person loses 0$, 2$ in total.
If both cheat both get 0$, 0 $ in total.
This somehow resembles the software industry.
Lets say I am a baker. If I buy the software from Microsoft I give them money and because the great software helps me organize I can bake a little more bread. Both earn +1 $.
If I download the software illegally, Microsoft does not lose anything, but I keep my money and make more bread +2$ for me.
If I download the software illegally and Microsoft made really shitty software that does not help me at all, they get nothing and I get nothing, +/-0$.
The thing is, downloading illegally is not stealing, because Microsoft does not lose money. I bake more bread, so I can sell it cheaper to the Microsoft employees. Still if too few people pay for software Microsoft cannot pay its employees, no more software for anyone.
So the number of thieves in our society can be somewhere around 1% and we still prosper. For software the number of thieves can be around 20% and Microsoft still earns money. Obviously they have to charge the people who do pay more money to make up for the thieves. Therefore more people are willing to steal. The only way to counter that is by lowering the price.
Imagine how many iPhone apps for 1$ each, are downloaded illegally. Very few. Stealing makes no sense. But because so many people are willing to buy the app they programmers still earn a very good living.