POLSCI 1AA3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Game Theory
30 Oct 2018
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Politics includes, but is not limited to, the actions of government. Government has to do with compulsion, not voluntary decision making. Government is a specialized activity of those individuals that make and enforce public decisions that are binding upon the whole community. Human social life requires hierarchical government to progress (assumption made) Game theory: way of predicting how people will behave given certain assumptions of the way people are and they way they behave. Assume people maximize rational utility (they are not inherently good or bad); they will attempt to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Assume the society in which they exist has no government hierarchy. Best possible outcome: 1 d, c = 0 years. There is no agent that can make them live up to their word, so they end up with a suboptimal outcome. Government is a mechanism that moves society from suboptimal to an optimal outcome.
