That's fascinating. I wonder how formalized and widespread this logic is -- did economists tell leadership, or did they just happen to organically hire spiteful leaders?

Anything except tit for tat loses in game theory, so it's just spiteful

This is such a weird example because of how not true it is

The most classic game theory example ever, the Prisoner's Dilemma, is solved by cooperation when played iteratively instead of one-shot

In general, lots of systems can reach an equilibrium of cooperation

That is tit for tat - cooperate first and then only defect if your opponent defects, otherwise keep cooperating.

Holding grudges is what Apple does.

I remember Jerry Pournelle on Twit.TV saying he reviewed the original Mac and said it was a bold vision but ultimately a toy. A great idea but with not enough RAM to make it really useful. Steve jobs saw the review and took action. Jerry said the 512KB Mac was excellent but that point it was too late.

He was black listed for life from having any early access to hardware for review and was never allowed to an Apple conference ever again. This was in place until Jerry's death 33 years later.

Remember in the 90s when he wrote a book about science fiction fans saving the world from the evil of "people who believe in climate change"?