Offense is generally more powerful than defense, so for cooperation to be a winning strategy each unit can’t have enough power to win with a first strike. The group of others needs to be big enough that it survives to punish defection.
This means that for there to be peaceful cooperation leading to a merger there can’t be too few. Too few make defection and war very probable, so it is better to have most individuals than most small groups.
This is the defense against the tragedy of the commons—having many motivated to prevent any impingement on common goods by an individual.
The number of entities needed depends on the power of offensive technology—for example, if a device were invented to make nuclear missile launches undetectable and invisible until impact, stability would depend on no nation being willing to use them and able to afford enough cloaking devices and missiles and intelligence to disable all other nations’ similar weapons. If those weapons cost ~20% of world GDP to both make and maintain (unrealistic, I know) then we wouldn’t want any nation to have near 20% of the world’s GDP. More would be a recipe for war—unless by more we meant about 100%, in which case there wouldn’t be a conflict.
100 is better than ten.
One is also better than ten.
Offense is generally more powerful than defense, so for cooperation to be a winning strategy each unit can’t have enough power to win with a first strike. The group of others needs to be big enough that it survives to punish defection.
This means that for there to be peaceful cooperation leading to a merger there can’t be too few. Too few make defection and war very probable, so it is better to have most individuals than most small groups.
This is the defense against the tragedy of the commons—having many motivated to prevent any impingement on common goods by an individual.
The number of entities needed depends on the power of offensive technology—for example, if a device were invented to make nuclear missile launches undetectable and invisible until impact, stability would depend on no nation being willing to use them and able to afford enough cloaking devices and missiles and intelligence to disable all other nations’ similar weapons. If those weapons cost ~20% of world GDP to both make and maintain (unrealistic, I know) then we wouldn’t want any nation to have near 20% of the world’s GDP. More would be a recipe for war—unless by more we meant about 100%, in which case there wouldn’t be a conflict.