The rule, exactly. Before an election each citizen chooses: to vote — or to take a payment and not vote in that election. The payment is a percentage of the median income, set by referendum; there is no fixed sum. One ballot is one vote, with no multiplier in the count; the vote is amplified only in that each ballot's share grows as others step out. The budget pays under law; a candidate never pays. Only a referendum of all citizens — simple majority, no quorum — introduces, changes or repeals the rule.
The protocol has been introduced nowhere and no pilot has been run: shares, turnout and outcome figures in the chapters are estimates, and the protocol promises nobody an election victory. If a chapter says otherwise, Exact Answers and the Charter are correct. For a candidate: ten questions and ten steps. For a citizen, a mayor, a finance officer, a donor, a journalist, a scholar, a lawyer: answers by role. Everything in force in one file: llms-full.txt.
Three Counter-Intuitive Results of Game Theory and AB-EXIT's Place in Each¶
Chapter: 03 — Theoretical foundations (paired with §13) File: 03_013b · v1 · 12 August 2026 (session 37)
13b.1. The prisoner's dilemma: Nash ≠ optimum — and how it is fixed¶
The best-known counter-intuitive result: an equilibrium of individually rational strategies can be the collectively worst outcome. Current elections are a multiplayer prisoner's dilemma: for each person separately it is rational either not to vote (Downs: the cost exceeds the influence of one vote) or to vote for "our" populist to spite the other side — and the sum of rational moves yields bad governance for everyone. The classic conclusion of the theory: one does not escape such a trap by appeals to conscience — one rewrites the payoff matrix. AB-EXIT is applied mechanism design (Hurwicz–Maskin–Myerson, §13): a payment for honest exit plus weight for conscious participation make each person's individually rational move coincide with the collectively useful one. The mechanism does not illustrate the paradox — it is designed so that Nash and the optimum coincide.
13b.2. Anti-Braess: why the new option does not break the system but unloads it¶
Braess's paradox: adding a new road can worsen traffic for everyone (the new option attracts a flow that overloads the shared resource), and removing one can improve it. Formally this is a ready-made objection to AB-EXIT: "you are adding a new option to the system — by Braess it will get worse".
The analysis shows the opposite. Braess arises when users of the new road create a negative externality on the shared resource (each new driver adds delay for everyone). In an electoral system the shared resource is the quality of the signal; the negative externality is created by the noisy vote (mobilised, manipulated, random — it dilutes the signal of the deliberate). Button B attracts exactly the flow that was overloading the resource — and takes it off the road for compensation. Every departure into B reduces the noise and increases the weight of those who remain: the new road is built so that only those whose presence on the old one was slowing everyone down leave by it. AB-EXIT is anti-Braess: an added option with a guaranteed positive externality.
The mirror consequence explains the failure of prohibitive reforms: "remove the road" (forbid, shame, make abstention or populist mobilisation harder) does not work in politics — the noisy flow does not vanish, it stays in the system, angry and mobilisable. The Braess intuition "remove the option and things improve" is unavailable in the electoral environment; only ours is available: add an option that pays the noise to remove itself.
13b.3. Axelrod's tournament: turning a one-shot game into a repeated one¶
Axelrod's counter-intuitive result (the evolution of cooperation): in a repeated game it is not predators that win but "nice, forgiving, but retaliatory" strategies (tit-for-tat) — under four conditions: a long shadow of the future, distinguishability of the partner's moves, cheap retaliation, and simplicity of strategy.
Current elections are a one-shot game: a single transaction with an anonymous mass once every few years. By Axelrod, in a one-shot game defection dominates — it is rational for the authorities to cheat, because the voter's answering move is distant, expensive and unreadable. All four conditions of cooperation are violated: the shadow of the future is short (after the election, freedom until the next one), the authorities' moves are indistinguishable to the voter (who is to blame for his life — the mayor, parliament, the exchange rate?), retaliation is expensive (a year to wait, an hour to go, zero weight), and the strategy is complex (following politics is a job).
AB-EXIT satisfies all four conditions for the first time: the shadow of the future — the choice is made afresh every cycle, the authorities are in a perpetual repeated game; distinguishability — the median and the dividend as a public score of the game, personal to everyone (the authorities' move is read in a number); cheap retaliation — return and vote against with weight ×1/(1 − exit): a tick instead of a revolution; simplicity — the voter's strategy reduces to "the number grew → I take the dividend and do not interfere (cooperation); the number stalls → I return and punish (tit-for-tat)". The thermostat of §13.9 is precisely the Axelrod mechanism: cooperation by the authorities evolves not from morality but from the fact that defection is, for the first time, guaranteed to be punishable and cheaply so. The authorities become "nice" for the same reason tit-for-tat wins the tournament: they are played with for a long time, their moves are visible, and they are answered.
13b.4. Summary¶
| Result | What it claims | AB-EXIT |
|---|---|---|
| Prisoner's dilemma / Nash | Everyone's rationality → the worst for all | A rewritten matrix: Nash = optimum (mechanism design) |
| Braess's paradox | A new option can worsen the system | Anti-Braess: the option removes the overloading flow, the externality is positive |
| Axelrod's tournament | Cooperation wins only in a repeated game with retaliation | All four Axelrod conditions met for the first time; the thermostat = tit-for-tat |
Related: §13 (Downs, Shapley, mechanism design) · §13.9 (the thermostat) · §13.12 (the Pantheon) · 08_045 · 08_048