Prisoner's Dilemm Prisoners Dilemma By Nisen

The “Prisoners Dilemma” is a concept in which two criminals are arrested for a crime they committed, however, the police cannot charge them with the main charge. So they decide to convict them on a lesser charge and only put them in jail for a year each. These two prisoners cannot talk to each other, so the police come up with a plan to try to get them to incriminate the other. The plan is to get one of them to testify against the other, if so, the one who testified against the other gets no time in jail. The other criminal will have to serve 3 years. If they both snitch on each other they do two years a piece. Finally, if the both stay quiet they both get one year each (Nisen, para. 2-3). As Nisen writes, “In game theory, betraying your partner,
However, it might still be a strategy that the IRS can take to try to get the person to incriminate themselves. One strategy can be to offer a deal if they confess to cheating on their taxes. If they were to admit the crime they can give them a lesser punishment, be it less in fines or jail time depending on the crime. If they don’t incriminate themselves, they can face tougher punishment. However, if they don’t incriminate themselves and the IRS does not find sufficient evidence of wrong doing, the person can get away without any fines or other forms of punishment. In this case, the higher probability would be that the taxpayer will incriminate themselves in order to minimize potential burden on them. But as Jonathan Becher, writes, “The prisoner’s dilemma explains why people make decisions which are good for themselves but not for the team” (para. 2). So in theory, each individual will be after their own best interest, which makes sense as this is basically the backbone of economics. For the person being audited it would be to get lesser punishment and for the IRS it would be to get them higher