When Did Decency Become Weakness?

There is a big space between sucker and jerk and we are ignoring it.

This week, the New York Times Opinion section posed an unsettling question: are you a sucker or a jerk?

At first I laughed. Then I realized how revealing the question actually was.

When did those become our only two choices?

When did we start believing that every interaction is a contest between the person who gets exploited and the person who exploits? Between the rule-follower and the rule-breaker?

What happened to the third option? The decent person.

This is the person we all used to love: the driver who lets your car merge, the colleague who shares credit, the neighbor who quietly wheels your garbage to the curb. For generations, this wasn’t seen as weakness. It was simply what good people did.

Ask people what they want in a friend, a spouse, or a business partner, and they’ll describe someone kind, trustworthy, and generous. They don’t describe a jerk.

Yet politics and the rest of our culture seems to increasingly reward jerks and look down on everyone else. Drivers cut in line without apology. Executives boast about crushing competitors. Athletes cheat and mock anyone naïve enough to play by the rules. The people who admit mistakes, pay their taxes, tell the truth even when it costs them, or simply play fair are increasingly viewed as suckers.

The problem is that this isn't the kind of society most of us want to live in.

So why is this happening now?

It’s happened because incentives to behave well (and poorly) have changed. Social scientists call it the prisoner's dilemma and we are living through it today.

The prisoner’s dilemma is simple. Imagine two prisoners questioned separately. If both stay silent, both receive relatively light sentences. If both rat each other out, both receive harsher ones. But if only one stays silent while the other talks, the silent prisoner gets the worst outcome of all while the other walks free.

Each prisoner betrays the other because neither can trust the other to stay silent. They avoid the risk of being the sucker but both end up worse off than if they had simply trusted each other. The tragedy is that rational, self-interested behavior by each individual produces a worse outcome for everyone.

Healthy societies escape this trap of assholeness by punishing bad behavior, which then makes good behavior the rational strategy. But take away enforcement, and the smart move flips. Following rules you believe everyone else is breaking is no longer rational. You, too, become a jerk.

So why does this feel increasingly familiar in America?

Part of the answer is social media. Americans under forty now spend roughly three hours a day on social media. They see an endless stream of people lying, cheating, humiliating strangers, breaking rules, and being rewarded with money and attention. Ordinary acts of decency almost never go viral. It’s easy to conclude that the world is full of jerks getting away with murder and nobody wants to be the last sucker standing.

But people don’t just learn from what they see online. They also learn from the people at the top and what they are willing to enforce. When presidents, CEOs, and other public figures lie, cheat, and pay no price for it, they don't just get away with it - they change what everyone else believes is enforceable. Watch enough wealthy people dodge taxes, enough politicians escape accountability, enough CEOs enrich themselves without consequence, and cooperating starts to look like the sucker's payoff.

This is why healthy democracies devote so much energy to enforcing rules fairly. Independent courts, ethics laws, inspectors general, watchdog agencies, and equal justice under the law are what make cooperation rational. When people believe cheaters will be held accountable, they’re far more willing to cooperate themselves and society is better off as a result.

Most people are aren’t inherently jerks or suckers. They’re what social scientists call conditional cooperators.

They’ll play fair, but only if they believe enough other people will play fair too.

The New York Times gave us two choices: be the sucker or be the jerk.

Game theory offers a third and better option.

Build a society where decent people don’t finish last.

When you do that, most people will choose decency.

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