Prisoners Dilemmas In Corporate America

I learned about prisoners' dilemmas in college and didn't find them super useful/applicable. A lot of the contexts seemed very contrived, both the literal prisoner example and the macro-political, cold-warish vignettes. It was a fun puzzle to think about but I didn't believe it would ever affect my life.

Then I learned about corporate America.

Corporate America now seems full, to me, of very real prisoners dilemmas where the parties really do act accordingly. For example:

• suppose you like your job, but you know there's some chance you might want to leave this year. You can tell your manager the truth, which would allow her to plan better. But she may then defect on you, and fire you pre-emptively. So instead you defect, don't tell her your plans, and surprise her by quitting.
• meanwhile, your manager is in kind of the same position: she can be honest with you about e.g. your performance and your possibility of being let go, which in the best case lets both of you plan and strategize much better, but also puts her at risk that you will defect against her and e.g. start quiet quitting, or report her to her manager on damaging but made-up grounds.
• or in a different context: a lot of behavior at large American organizations seems to revolve around the desire not to get sued. Lots of positive interactions don't happen because of the possibility that if the other party defected they could sue, whereas if you preemptively defect you can protect yourself. But everyone is worse off than in a world where both parties could agree to co-operate.

I think these kinds of problems are at some times the dominant dynamic in a large organization (including, of course, being dominant over "doing the actual work that the organization supposedly does").

A final, important twist is this: in corporate America, the outcome of failing a prisoner's dilemma is getting removed from the game. As a result, over time, organizations gets filled entirely with people who defect. Knowing this increases your proclivity to defect. And so on.