City Poker: A Sketch on Cooperation and Exit Rights
Cooperation is usually the smart move. But there is a catch: if you can leave the table whenever you want, selfish play starts to look strangely rational.
This is a sketch, not a thesis. I might be wrong in half the details. But the pattern feels real enough to write down.
The Poker Table Theory
Think of social life as a giant poker room.
If you know you will keep seeing the same players, cooperation is obvious. You share information, return favors, and avoid burning trust because the next hand is coming and reputations compound.
If the game is effectively round-based, though, the math changes. In a one-off hand, grabbing the pot and disappearing can beat being fair. Game theory has said this forever: repeated games reward cooperation, one-shot games reward defection.
Cities Let You Cash Out
Big cities quietly turn a lot of relationships into optional rematches.
You can switch jobs, apartments, gyms, friend groups, even coffee shops with almost zero social cost. If one interaction goes badly, there is always another table two blocks away.
That "replaceability" creates a weird incentive: extract value now, then rotate. Not always. Not for everyone. But enough to make emotional distance feel normal and shallow trust feel efficient.
Where This Idea Is Probably Too Simple
Cities also produce deep cooperation in small circles: teams, families, neighborhoods, niche communities. So this is not "cities are bad."
The narrower claim is this: scale plus anonymity increases the option to exit, and that option can tilt behavior toward short-term ego moves.
Sketch Summary
- Default rule: cooperation is still the better long game.
- City twist: dense environments make it easy to quit a relationship after one favorable round.
- Likely effect: more strategic distance, less baseline trust, more people feeling interchangeable.
Takeaway: The freedom to leave any table can make selfish play rational in the short term, and expensive for everyone in the long term.