A Simple Model of Compromise

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
--Joshua (WarGames)

Let's say you that value liberty. You believe that all individuals should be free to pursue their interests without forceful interference from others.

Others in the society in which you live, however, believe in forceful interference. They recruit government as an agent of force in order to coerce others to do what they want.

However, because those who believe in forceful interference like to view themselves as 'civilized,' they usually don't unleash their government agents until first 'negotiating' with you. Of course, the best outcome for you would be a negotiation where you give up no freedom. The worst outcome would be where you give up all of your freedom and assume the role of a serf.

The spectrum of outcomes can be pictured as follows:

0% free<------------------------->100% free

Those who believe in interference have already told you that they are seeking a compromise. In negotiations, compromise is seen as meeting a counterparty somewhere 'in between.' On the scale above, a compromise would result in a negotiated level of freedom somewhere between 0 and 100 percent. For the sake of our example, let's define a negotiated compromise as meeting the counterparty exactly halfway between on the freedom scale above.
At the bargaining table, then, you face one of two choices: 1) walk away from the table and retain 100% of your freedom, or 2) compromise and give up 50% of your freedom.

If you compromise, your freedom is now 100*.5=50% of the original level.

Down the road, if there is a second negotiation and you compromise again, then your freedom is 100*.5*.5=25% of your original level.

If there is a third negotion and you compromise, then you have 100*.5*.5*.5=12.5% of your original freedom.

The general form of this model where you compromise in each round becomes: % freedom maintained = 100*(0.5)^n where n = number of times that freedom is negotiated.

After seven rounds of negotions, your freedom is less than 1% of its original level.

When negotiations involve the level of freedom that you maintain, compromise results in loss of freedom. In negotiations with multiple rounds, compromising in each round results in a loss of freedom the declines geometrically with the number of rounds.