The shadow of the future
Cooperation survives only while the relationship is likely enough to continue.
Often misread asTreating the shadow as a matter of how long the relationship has already run, so long-standing partners are assumed to be safely cooperative.
How to see it
What keeps you honest is what comes after
The shadow of the future is the weight that whatever happens next puts on what you do now. Your reason to behave today is what the other side will do tomorrow in response. The longer and more valuable that future is, the more a one-off gain today costs you, and the less attractive defection becomes.
The checkOnly the expected remaining future does any work. A twenty-year relationship that both sides know ends next month casts almost no shadow at all.
Try itThink of a supplier you will use exactly once more and then never again. Ask what changes about your incentive to settle the final invoice promptly. Whatever changed is the shadow, and it is the remaining future doing it.
Games that show it
Know these first
Leads on to
Easily confused with
Sources
- Axelrod, R. (1984). Basic Books. Source of 'the shadow of the future'.