# kaal:claim:3782203-014

**Claim.** It is impossible to set up formal rules that keep a group behaving cooperatively in the long run, even if those rules are policed perfectly; the spirit of the law matters more than the letter of the law.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- long run repeated interaction
- even under perfect enforcement

**Source quote.**

> It is impossible to set up formal rules for a group to keep them behaving in a cooper- ative manner in the long run, even if the rules are policed perfectly.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *A Technical Perspective on Decentralization* (2021), Folk Theorems of Game Theory, page 9

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, A Technical Perspective on Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782203

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `ab8a22d0dbb026a09212a4c85963f3c05787cf80775e8613ae3724e3883e7a56` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202021%20-%20A%20Technical%20Perspective%20on%20Decentralization.pdf

**Failure mode.** perfect-policing-insufficiency  (family: collective-action-and-coordination-failure)

**Topics.** institutional-design

**Keywords.** folk-theorems, formal-rules, cooperation, spirit-of-the-law

**Related claims.**

- restated_by: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782220-030

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.