While I have not read Hidden Order by David Friedman, he offers up this selection today on hawk-dove equilibria. I regard it as an error for such analysis to be silent on internal motives for behavior. In particular, lots of people wish to be virtuous, and work at it; and lots of people struggle against their vices. A great number of people are religious, and regard it as a duty to God to be virtuous. There are also many non-religious people that regard virtue as end in itself — goodness is a good, go figure. The equilibrium suggested by Friedman, I think, is more of an internal struggle than an external one. This internal/external dichotomy has problems, but there is certainly a role for ideology, broadly considered — and this is what Friedman is not considering. While there is an external, non-ideological struggle that takes place, and the incentives one faces are important in molding character and specific choices, it is more appropriate to use the hawk-dove equilibrium as a rough hypothesis or starting point in further inquiry, not a deduction from economic theory.
So, while his conclusions seem strong, I think they follow from weak premises.
What a minute! Did I, an Austrian, just criticize Friedman, a neoclassical, for being too a priori / not empirical enough? I think I did.
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There are incentives to go either way. You seem to think that a single incentive (moral preference) is powerful enough to render all others irrelevant. Many people are correct in not sharing your optimism.
The magnitude of the relation between concern for morality and actual type (hawk or dove) can be guesstimated but we could even do a proper empirical study. Let’s remember that a population can have both a high level of interest in religion and at the same time a high level of crime.
Friedman’s analysis only means to tell us how different chances in the structure of the population generate incentives in one way or another, which leads to the idea of equilibrium. For anything more we should try to establish magnitudes.
I’ve seen Friedman’s insight expressed much more succinctly on a bumper sticker:
“If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”
The main problem with Friedman’s analysis is that it neglects the issue of time preference. Violent, short tempered people typically have a very high time preference. They know their behaviour can lead to trouble, but they prefer beating the hell out of the other person now to controlling their temper and avoiding punishment later.
If a guy tries to provoke me in the street, I may really want to beat him up, but I restrain myself because I know that it can lead to losing my job, having a criminal record, etc. This doesn’t deter the high time preference criminal. He can only be deterred through self defence and swift retaliation. If his victim pepper-sprays him in the face, causing him considerable pain, after which he is arrested and held without bail, he will probably think twice about it in the future. Unfortunately many countries follow the opposite approach. Defence weapons are outlawed, violent criminals are usually bailed and receive relatively lenient sentences in the distant future.
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