Market Mysteries: Does individual rationality guarantee collective optimality?? Let's find out!

A Tale of Specialization, Coordination and Cooperation

Turn1

Companion paper

The model behind the game

Open as PDF

The easy way

Found an institution for centralized coordination (a state) by means of a democratic vote.

The problem

Every player is better off if everyone practices their own trade instead of producing in autarky. Yet autarky is a Nash-equilibrium of market-based/decentralized coordination. The expectation that no one would contribute their special input to the table leads to actions that confirm that expectation.

On the ballot

Found the Commonwealth1

Its one law: whoever puts into producing their special input gets at least 1.01 for it. When not enough players practice their own trade such that the table yields less than 1.01 /, the Commonwealth compensates the difference by levying a tax on everyone’s production that turn.

Why everyone votes yes

  1. Trying beats staying home, whatever the others do. On the table each is topped up to 1.01 . At home it makes 1, minus the tax (if not enough players practice their trade).
  2. Everyone sees the same thing, so everyone tries.
  3. With everyone at the table, each makes 3.5 , far above 1.01. Nobody needs topping up, so nobody is taxed. The guarantee never has to be paid.

Why 1.01 and not 1? At exactly 1, trying alone only ties with staying home, so everyone staying home would still hold. The extra 0.01 makes trying strictly better.

Each player, every turn

With the Commonwealth 10.5 once everyone practices their won trade with all their .
Without it 3 what autarky makes in the autarky equilibrium.

How the table would vote

1 The name follows Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), where a “commonwealth by institution” is a state that people found by agreeing among themselves, to escape a condition in which each acting alone leaves all worse off.

Save & load

Keep a reproducible record of the current game and every completed turn.

Save this run JSON audit file

Each file contains the current planning state, persistent settings, scores, individual beliefs and trusts, pledges, and detailed before-and-after snapshots for every completed turn.

Checking for the adjacent saves folder…

Saved games

The newest save appears first.

Open this panel to inspect available saves.

For automatic writes to the included saves/ folder, launch the game with python3 serve-game.py. When the HTML is opened directly, choose that folder once; browsers require this explicit permission.

Game Over

    Game settings

    Tune the automata. Saved values remain active after resets and page reloads.

    Level 2 settings

    Independent settings for the seven-player table. Level 1 is unchanged.

    Individual automata

    Each player learns separately how much others contribute. Initial participation chance sets their optimism. Learning rate sets the weight of each new observation and stays constant: older evidence gradually fades.

    Simple: choose initial participation chance and learning rate. Advanced: edit all four initial contribution weights. Only their proportions matter. Switching views preserves your values.

    Archived shared learning rate (inactive)

    Confidence grows when other players repeat their contributions, and falls when those contributions shrink. Everyone uses the same learning speed. Private pledge agreements are not revealed to other agents.

    10%

    Survival

    Everyone must consume enough across the chosen number of turns. A failed window removes an automaton; the Artist's death ends the run. Goods paid away do not count as your consumption. A minimum of zero switches the rule off.

    9
    3 turns
    • What that comes to
    • Needed per turn on average3
    • Autarky alone over 3 turns9

    Durable reserves

    Goods never expire. Automata cover the current health requirement, keep goods up to the reserve target, and consume the rest.

    Saving restarts the current game at turn 1.

    Turn — report

    The completed turn is recorded here while the next turn continues at the table.

    At the table—
    combined—
    Shared rate—
    Common goods—

    Player kept to tableWellbeing from selfWellbeing from tablePledge transferNet wellbeing

    Your turn —

    A short summary for the Artist seat.

    Net wellbeing that turn—