Playing, Voting, and Dividing

Abstract

Playing, voting, and dividing are three everyday activities we all are familiar with. Having their personal chances of winning, their individual preferences, and their private valuations in mind, the players, voters, and dividers follow their individual strategies each. While everyone first and foremost is selfishly interested in his own advantage only, from the interplay of all actors’ individual interests, strategies, and actions there will emerge a collective decision, an outcome of the game with winnings or losings for all players, an elected president ruling over all voters, or a division of the goods among all parties concerned. By the end of the day, there will be winners and losers.