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Comment by nostromo95 | Hacker News Reader

Seems like we're mixing up couple things here--(a) the level to which a government represents the people and (b) the powers that a government should have.

It's easy to lose sight of the fact that the government is--in its ideal essence--just a way for a population to collectively enforce compliance with / contribution to a social good.

I don't think it's controversial to say that if 100% of people wanted a 32 hour work week, the government should probably pass a law mandating that. Separately we can argue about the tendency for the aims of government to diverge from the aims of the citizenry or there being a slippery slope, but the "legitimate role" of government is representing the people.

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It's probably more nuanced than that. If 100% of people wanted a 32-hour work week, a law wouldn't be necessary - we would just have a 32-hour work week. The fact that the number is less than 100% is the reason we need a law, because the incentives aren't aligned between those who want it and those who don't.

Because 100% of people don't want something is hardly "reason" to create a law and just because a majority wants something doesn't make it right. There are plenty of examples of that in history.

Is the role of government to maximize social good or individual liberty? I'd rather the latter because the examples of the former are abundant and dreadful. Anyone who thinks this isn't a race to the bottom where lawmakers trade "happiness" for votes at the cost of liberty is lying to themselves. Let's not kid ourselves, a 40 hour work week is not the same as child labor in the coal mines; such laws exist only to win votes. When will it be 20 hours a week? 16? At what point do we descend into the madness that embraced Rome where the role of government became appeasement of the populace to keep them from revolting?

The prisoner's dilemma is a toy example where everyone wants the same thing, but they can't achieve it without some external mechanism. Many regulations in the real world fall into this category, ensuring your competitors can't do things you don't want to do and thereby force you to do it to compete (and they in turn don't want to do it, but if their competitors do it...).

This is not a good example, and is part of the problem with these types of discussions.

Not everyone wants the same thing in the prisoner's dilemma. The prisoners all want one thing and the prosecutors want something different. If everyone wanted the same thing here, there would be no dilemma.

That's the case with 32 hour work weeks. Employees want them - but employers don't. So there is a misalignment of incentives. And employers specifically have much more power in the situation because there is a significant imbalance in risk between the two. The external mechanism is needed here in order to accommodate and mitigate that power balance.

The mechanism could be legislation, it could be collective action in the form of a union, etc. But it's specifically because not everyone agrees, and the disagreement comes with a power imbalance that the law is necessary.

The definition of the prisoners dilemma is that it is symmetrical, the only two parties involved are the prisoners and they want the exact same thing, and have the exact same motivations and payoffs and still can't agree on the best course of action.

Thats why it is a good toy example of this issue.

It is a confusing name for it, since in reality there are often mechanism to punish "snitches".

I prefer to think if it as two people wanting to make a trade without a framework to enforce any contract law. You both want to swap your items that are valued more by the other party, but since there's no mechanism to force you to be honest, you're both motivated to steal the other person's goods and not deliver yours. And so you both do that, and the trade doesn't happen, leaving you both poorer.

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