[Newspoetry] Prisoner's Dilemma: Continued

[Donald L Emerick]

Of course, if you are already well known as a person who will vote for Nader, regardless of what effect your vote might have upon {Kerry,Bush}, you might think the previously analysis is merely academic machiavellianism.

But, you could, instead think of the following strategic behaviors.  For instance, you could threaten one other voter who is a {Kerry,Bush} fan that you will vote for {Bush,Kerry}, unless that voter defects from Kerry and votes for nader, too.  You would not use this threat more than once, if you were an ethical person -- because you thereby enter into a pact, if the threat is believed, and the offer-that-can't-be-refused is accepted.  But, my view of ethical people is they should not want to use the stick instead of the carrot, anyway -- as threats are just unacceptable to me.

But, even if you are voting for Nader, and even if nothing will change your mind about that the quality of that choice, the P.D. analkysis offfers you something else to do.  Namely, you could go out and become a broker of pacts between Kerry-Bush lesser-evil voters, by showing them the benefits of the P.D. pact.  You thus would multiply your solitary Nader vote into a host of pacts, all of them doing no harm to either Kerry or Bush, and all of them increasing the total Nader vote.  You thus  would be demonsrating better the vast need for reform of the election system and its co-simpatical pieces that are all too often mere masks hiding naked ambitions, a baroque clothing for various forms of opportunistic greed.