Mechanism

Costly Punishment

TL;DR

Markets punish cheaters through coordinated withdrawal - customers stop buying, investors sell stock, regulators investigate.

Cheater Detection

The $2.3M Chipotle declined to spend annually would have cost $18.4M over eight years. The punishment for freeloading cost $500M+ in direct losses alone.

Punishing cheaters is costly. When a bat refuses to share blood with a cheater, the punisher pays a small cost (5% of their meal that could have gone to a cooperator who'd reciprocate) to impose a large cost on the cheater (starvation). The punishment must cost the cheater more than it costs the punisher, or it doesn't deter. Costly punishment creates a second-order problem: why should individuals bear the cost of punishing? The solution: punishment costs must be lower than the future cost of tolerating cheaters. You punish not because it's free, but because allowing cheating costs you more in the long run.

Business Application of Costly Punishment

Markets punish cheaters through coordinated withdrawal - customers stop buying, investors sell stock, regulators investigate. The punishment is expensive for everyone involved (customers lose options, employees lose jobs, shareholders lose value), but tolerating cheating would be more expensive as it degrades industry-wide standards.

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