The multiperson prisoner's dilemma

It is easy to say "Big companies are evil. Division leaders are stupid. The people at DOE are the C students. Support staff is worthless. The county council consists of a bunch of idiots."

All these things have been said and have been believed by some.

All of these things, besides being untrue, are unproductive.

A more productive approach seems to be to assume that each person listed above is acting in what they perceive to be their own self interest. Each person is acting under what they perceive to be the rules governing their portion of the game.

This 'everyone is a rational player and is playing in different games' approach seems to be strongly predictive of what is happening and what is likely to happen.

Today's question - Why is it in the rational interest of anyone listed in the first paragraph to try to defend the people who talk to them in the ways that are listed in the first paragraph?

The phrase 'biting the hand that feeds you' comes to mind.

Moved up from 2 November 2007