all based on how people choose to be with each other and how human nature enters into how they make their
choices.
To explain what I mean by that I’d now like to show you a few more timeless and universal drivers of changes in
internal orders. I explained a couple of these in my exploration of international relations, especially those between
the US and China, so I apologize if they are redundant for you.
As mentioned, the most important thing that drives changes in domestic conditions is how people are with each
other, which is primarily a function of human nature. These interactions have logical cause/effect relationships that
drive them. The following are a few more of the most important ones.
2) The Balance of Power Dynamic
It is up to the parties of any relationship to choose what kind of relationship they will have, but they have to
mutually agree. For example, they can choose whether to have a win-win cooperative-competitive relationship or a
lose-lose mutually threatening relationship, and to be allies or to be enemies, though it takes actions by both of
them to determine what type of relationship they will have and then be smart to make it work well. If they choose
to have a primarily win-win cooperative-competitive relationship, they must take into consideration what is really
important to the other and try to give it to them in exchange for them reciprocating. In that type of win-win
relationship, they can have tough negotiations done with respect and consideration, competing like two friendly
merchants at a bazaar or two friendly teams at the Olympics. If they choose to have a lose-lose mutually
threatening relationship they will primarily think about how they can hurt the other in the hope of forcing the other
into a position of fear in order to get what they want. In that type of lose-lose relationship they will have more
destructive wars than productive exchanges. Having win-win relationships is obviously better than having lose-
lose relationships, but they are often very difficult to have, which brings me to the prisoner’s dilemma dynamic.
When two competing entities have comparable powers that include the power to destroy the other, the risks of a
fight to the death are high unless both parties have extremely high trust that they won’t be unacceptably harmed
or killed by the other. That is true in affecting domestic orders as well as world orders.
Imagine that you are dealing with someone who can either cooperate with you or destroy you and that you can
either cooperate with them or destroy them, and neither of you can be certain what the other will do. What would
you do? Even though the best thing for you and your opponent to do is cooperate, the logical thing for each of you
to do is to destroy the other before being destroyed by the other. That is because survival is of paramount
importance and you don’t know if they will destroy you, though you do know that it is in their interest to destroy
you before you destroy them. In game theory being in this position is called the “prisoner’s dilemma.” It is why
establishing mutually assured protections against existential harms that the opponents can inflict on each other is
necessary to avoid deadly wars. Establishing exchanges of benefits and dependencies that would be intolerable to
lose further reinforces good relations. Because a) most wars occur when it isn’t clear which side is most powerful
so the outcomes are uncertain, b) the costs of wars are enormous, and c) losing wars is ruinous, they are extremely
dangerous and must only be entered into if there is confidence that you will not have unacceptable losses, so you
must think hard about what you will really fight to the death for. Sometimes the existential issues for the two sides
can’t be resolved and a war (internal or external) is unavoidable.
The odds of having peace rather than war depends on the willingness of people to abide by the rules that exist,
the willingness to be mutually agreeable in adapting them when circumstances require adaptation to avoid war,
and the threat of mutually assured destruction—i.e., the more these things exist the greater the chance for
peace, and the less they exist the greater the chance for war. That is true both internationally and domestically.
For example, the rules of the game in many systems (e.g., the current established democracies) limit how much
harm one side can inflict on the opponent and how they can inflict it, so if the rules are adhered to, the fights
between them are like two teams who are allowed to beat but not destroy the other. As a result it is possible for the
defeated team to regain strength and come back fighting. However, in some societies now and in many cases in
history, the domestic order fights were fights to the death because the winner wanted to make sure the loser was
down for good. History also shows us that we can’t necessarily rely on systems and people who have rules and
abide by them not to surprisingly throw them out and fight brutally. Many who assumed that the rules and civility
would continue and that they would be safe suffered from surprisingly quick changes that cost them their freedoms
or their lives (e.g., the 1933-45 change in the domestic order in Germany as it affected the Jews, the 1949 change