The panic buying of fuel and subsequent shortages in the UK have given the Prisoner's Dilemma a new political twist, and it turns out that modern free market economics has a real problem with one of the key political tools of right-wing populists.
The fuel-buying version of the prisoner's dilemma goes like this: imagine a situation where a fuel station supplies 100 customers. There is a temporary slowdown in supply, such that if all 100 customers top up their tanks immediately, fuel will completely run out, whereas if they all wait until their tanks are nearly empty then there will be plenty for all. Now picture one of those drivers (X) whose tank is half full. There are 4 possible scenarios:
A) X refrains from filling up yet, as does everyone else, so supply is maintained.
B) X fills up but everyone else refrains, so again supply is maintained,.
C) X refrains from filling up but nobody else does and the fuel runs out, leaving X in real difficulties.
D) X fills up, as does everyone else, and the fuel runs out, but at least X's tank is (temporarily) full.
How X behaves (assuming they are a perfectly rational being) will depend on her/his degree of trust in others. If she/he believes that everyone else will behave with a social conscience and refrain from filling up until they need to, then unless they are an exceptionally selfish person (scenario B) they will refrain from filling up also (scenario A). However if X does not trust their fellow citizens then they will assume it is a choice between scenarios C) and D), in which case, clearly they should opt for D) and make sure they top up immediately. Which means that other drivers (seeing X at the fuel station) are more likely to make the same calculation, and the fuel runs out.
The problem is that a key technique right-wing populists discovered long ago is to turn citizens against each other, increase polarisation and decrease trust in order to scapegoat minorities and harden ones political base. In the US the polarisation is of Trumpers v never-Trumpers, but here in the UK we have, if anything, gone one better: brexshitters v remoaners. The referendum may have been years ago, but Johnson and his like have, if anything, sought to fuel the fires of mutual distrust by condemning the negativity of anyone who opposed Brexit. They did this with other issues too, such as the wearing of masks. To a large extent the UK government abandoned responsibility for containing the Covid epidemic some time ago, suggesting that it was down to 'individual common sense' to decide how the population should behave. Which was of course a recipe for turning us citizens against each other, but let the government off the hook.
So what is the relevance to the fuel shortages? Well, we have in this country (as, I believe in the US) a higher degree of mutual distrust than I can ever remember. People are quicker to get angry with each other over matters of what used to be seen as abstruse political jargon (before 2016 who even knew the European Supreme Court existed?) and certainly less willing to trust in each other's common decency and social conscience than ever before.
No, nowadays it's everyone for themselves and to hell with the [brexshitters, remoaners, anti-vaxxers, snowflakes, etc etc]. And the problem is, without a degree of mutual trust and social cohesion the modern sophisticated just-in-time supply chains collapse rather easily.
