Extortionate strategies in the Prisoner’s Dilemma don’t create value as well as nice strategies do, nor do they do as well against one another as nice strategies do; but they beat nice strategies individually.
Some sorts of oppression seem to follow the pattern of extortionate strategies — “I will take advantage of you, and will make it so that you are better off if you let me do so, than if you fight back.”
(Real-world examples are probably unhelpful here; I expect that everyone can think of one or two.)
What if the problem is “I want to oppress you, but I know individually being nicer would get me more of what I want, so instead I’m going to recruit allies that will help me oppress you because I think that will get me even more of what I want.”
That argument doesn’t address the problem of “I want to oppress you”, “you want to oppress me”.
Extortionate strategies in the Prisoner’s Dilemma don’t create value as well as nice strategies do, nor do they do as well against one another as nice strategies do; but they beat nice strategies individually.
Some sorts of oppression seem to follow the pattern of extortionate strategies — “I will take advantage of you, and will make it so that you are better off if you let me do so, than if you fight back.”
(Real-world examples are probably unhelpful here; I expect that everyone can think of one or two.)
What if the problem is “I want to oppress you, but I know individually being nicer would get me more of what I want, so instead I’m going to recruit allies that will help me oppress you because I think that will get me even more of what I want.”