The equilibrium depends on which faction is stronger. Threateners who don’t always enforce and targets who don’t always ignore threats are not parts of this game, so it’s not even about relative positions of threateners and targets, only those that commit are relevant. If the threateners win, targets start mostly giving in to threats, and so for threateners the cost of binding becomes low overall.
I’m talking about the equilibrium where targets are following their “don’t give in to threats” policy. Threateners don’t want to follow a policy of always executing threats in that world—really, they’d probably prefer to never make any threats in that world, since it’s strictly negative EV for them.
If the unyielding targets faction is stronger, the equilibrium is bad for committed enforcers. If the committed enforcer faction is stronger, the equilibrium doesn’t retain high cost of enforcement, and in that world the targets similarly wouldn’t prefer to be unyielding. I think the toy model where that fails leaves the winning enforcers with no pie, but that depends on enforcers not making use of their victory to set up systems for keeping targets relatively defenseless, taking the pie even without their consent. This would no longer be the same game (“it’s not a threat”), but it’s not a losing equilibrium for committed enforcers of the preceding game either.
But threateners don’t want want to follow that policy, since in the resulting equilibrium they’re wasting a lot of their own resources.
The equilibrium depends on which faction is stronger. Threateners who don’t always enforce and targets who don’t always ignore threats are not parts of this game, so it’s not even about relative positions of threateners and targets, only those that commit are relevant. If the threateners win, targets start mostly giving in to threats, and so for threateners the cost of binding becomes low overall.
I’m talking about the equilibrium where targets are following their “don’t give in to threats” policy. Threateners don’t want to follow a policy of always executing threats in that world—really, they’d probably prefer to never make any threats in that world, since it’s strictly negative EV for them.
If the unyielding targets faction is stronger, the equilibrium is bad for committed enforcers. If the committed enforcer faction is stronger, the equilibrium doesn’t retain high cost of enforcement, and in that world the targets similarly wouldn’t prefer to be unyielding. I think the toy model where that fails leaves the winning enforcers with no pie, but that depends on enforcers not making use of their victory to set up systems for keeping targets relatively defenseless, taking the pie even without their consent. This would no longer be the same game (“it’s not a threat”), but it’s not a losing equilibrium for committed enforcers of the preceding game either.