It's not particularly original, but is a convenient single name to corral existing ideas about intractable lose-lose scenarios:
Prisoner's Dilemma, but at the societal level. Defaulting is the logical move for the one-shot game, but it does not produce overall benefit, and is not best in the repeated game.
Local optimizations, under imperfect knowledge. Small local maxima can halt progress. Eventually Goodhart's Law takes over, incentives break down, then shortcuts, grift and corruption come to dominate. Self-preservation and expansion of elites or bureaucracies are always hidden objectives.
Destructive patterns such as: Bait and Switch strategies, like Enshittification of business; Divide and Conquer applied by those with power to keep power.
"Strange game. The only way to win is not to play."
Ultimately these all boil down to coordination problems. The touted solution is to encourage transparency, rationality and cooperation. But bottom-up never gets successful momentum, people don't agree on objectives; top-down always results in tyranny, abuses of power and fails anyway. Vested interests and bad actors always subvert promising initiatives.
Prisoner's Dilemma, but at the societal level. Defaulting is the logical move for the one-shot game, but it does not produce overall benefit, and is not best in the repeated game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
Local optimizations, under imperfect knowledge. Small local maxima can halt progress. Eventually Goodhart's Law takes over, incentives break down, then shortcuts, grift and corruption come to dominate. Self-preservation and expansion of elites or bureaucracies are always hidden objectives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
Destructive patterns such as: Bait and Switch strategies, like Enshittification of business; Divide and Conquer applied by those with power to keep power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Wicked Problems, which are not solvable in the current context or state of knowledge. You can't get there from here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem
Ultimately these all boil down to coordination problems. The touted solution is to encourage transparency, rationality and cooperation. But bottom-up never gets successful momentum, people don't agree on objectives; top-down always results in tyranny, abuses of power and fails anyway. Vested interests and bad actors always subvert promising initiatives.