And yet people don't go around blowing up their competitors - except perhaps in the black market, where such behavior, while not exactly routine, also isn't entirely unheard of. There's an incentive structure to deal with that, too, you see, and the risk/reward payoff strongly favors following the rules. Especially if you're the sort of person who -could- take over an entire country in the first place.
It's a bit like democracy and civil war; if you can win the civil war, you'd be better off just winning the election.
And yet people don't go around blowing up their competitors
I don't know -- do you think the rate of blowing up your competitors in, say, XIX century USA was much different from the rate of poisoning your enemies in e.g. XVII century Persia?
There's an incentive structure to deal with that, too, you see
Yep, and there were incentive structures to deal with that in the pre-capitalist societies as well. Polities where everyone is free to poison anyone don't last long...
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