Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for April 29, 2023

Better both mad instead of one mad and one happy.

Madness

If 60-40, Calvin would get $3 and Hobbes $2 out of the five-dollar prize. As for 25%, $1.25.

Hobbes will get enough tuna for $2.50, right?

Traffic is definitely a place you shouldn’t compromise.

That’s why it’s called a compromise. You have to make sure no one is happy.

Why is Calvin being so b!tchy??

He’s not gonna win.

That would be pretty good and quick for Congress

Well Hobbes could have just eaten Calvin and taken 100% so Calvin should be happy.

“If the wind changes, your face will stay like that.” “Cool!”….

They’ll both be mad when the poster doesn’t win.

Just as long as I get 80% for reading it.

Today’s strip follows on from yesterday’s in which we saw Hobbes doing the drawing while Calvin was lying down so that Hobbes could imagine Calvin lying bleeding in the road after a traffic accident and draw him that way. I replied to someone else’s comment by saying that Calvin does intend to share the cash with Hobbes and that I thought we would see that strip next Tuesday. I have since checked this and found that I was wrong. The strip that I was thinking of – in which Calvin imagines a newspaper report about him winning the competition and sharing the cash with Hobbes – is due to appear on Thursday.

“A good compromise leaves everybody mad”? I guess there was a compromise with the panel borders.

“He Who Pleases All Pleases None”. ~ Aesop. “Who?” ~ 97% of the Younger Generations. “Sad” ~ The Count

I am convinced that most people are ignorant of gaming theory. To them everything is a zero sum game.

In a zero sum game, the sum of the winnings is canceled by the some of the losings. So, if one team wins by a score of 3 to 1 the other team loses by a score of 1 to 3. If three people play poker and each starts with $50 each then at the end of the game, they walk away with $150 total – it just might be in different pockets. Money doesn’t magically appear of disappear.

Zero sum games are characterized by having a WINNER and a LOSER. The objective is to run up the score then run out the clock.

People have a difficult time understanding that there is such a thing as a positive sum game. Wait a minute! Somebody has to WIN and somebody has to LOSE. That’s true if counting concrete objects like dollar bills or runs scored. If, on the other hand, you count VALUES, then the game makes sense.

I raise mules, you raise grain. I lend you my mules to plow your field, you give me grain to feed my mules in return. My cousin owns a small horse ranch in Virginia. Every year he works a week on a neighbor’s farm harvesting hay. He gets paid in hay.

The objective of a positive sum game is to keep playing it as long as you can.

Concentrate on values, and you can arrange a win-win which is a lot better than compromise.

There are also negative sum games where everybody loses. War is the ultimate negative sum game: nobody wins a war; one side manages to lose it to a lesser extent.

The objective of a negative sum game is don’t play. If you are forced to play, get it over with as soon as practical.

Dessert Strom with its 100 hours of ground conflict was about as close to a “good war” as we’re probably going to get. The only better war I know of is the “Pig War” between the Untied States and Canada (the U. K. back then). Look it up. The only casualty in the conflict was the pig.

No, mainly you.

Argument sounds a bit like the company that takes credit for worker initiatives.

True, that. Sometimes I wonder how irritating it must be for executives of big companies to have to keep sharing the company income with all us nose picking employees, just because we work for them. SO sad for them. (yeah, sarcasm)

When a tiger offers you 50%, you take it…or else.

A compromise with evil lets evil win.

Good for Hobbes… standing up to Calvin and his alter-ego rights.

Sad, but true.

Ideas are free. Craft is valuable.

Ah, the pedantic whimsies of fairness…

The key to compromise is to convince the other guy that you’re the sucker.

Eventually they do “split” something relating to the poster… chunky spaghetti sauce!

Compromise is always disappointing to those driven by greed.

Live and learn, Calvin; live and learn.

As Mr. Marx opined, ‘So what’s wrong with 50-50..?’

That last statment is so true. I’d love to hear stories about “mediators”.