[ZeroGravitas]

The prisoner's dilemma is a toy example where everyone wants the same thing, but they can't achieve it without some external mechanism. Many regulations in the real world fall into this category, ensuring your competitors can't do things you don't want to do and thereby force you to do it to compete (and they in turn don't want to do it, but if their competitors do it...).

[forbiddenvoid]

This is not a good example, and is part of the problem with these types of discussions.

Not everyone wants the same thing in the prisoner's dilemma. The prisoners all want one thing and the prosecutors want something different. If everyone wanted the same thing here, there would be no dilemma.

That's the case with 32 hour work weeks. Employees want them - but employers don't. So there is a misalignment of incentives. And employers specifically have much more power in the situation because there is a significant imbalance in risk between the two. The external mechanism is needed here in order to accommodate and mitigate that power balance.

The mechanism could be legislation, it could be collective action in the form of a union, etc. But it's specifically because not everyone agrees, and the disagreement comes with a power imbalance that the law is necessary.

[ZeroGravitas]

The definition of the prisoners dilemma is that it is symmetrical, the only two parties involved are the prisoners and they want the exact same thing, and have the exact same motivations and payoffs and still can't agree on the best course of action.

Thats why it is a good toy example of this issue.

It is a confusing name for it, since in reality there are often mechanism to punish "snitches".

I prefer to think if it as two people wanting to make a trade without a framework to enforce any contract law. You both want to swap your items that are valued more by the other party, but since there's no mechanism to force you to be honest, you're both motivated to steal the other person's goods and not deliver yours. And so you both do that, and the trade doesn't happen, leaving you both poorer.