I'll admit, I don't know enough about game theory to wrap my head around this. But, maybe there is something here that even my ignorant mind can catch: repeated interactions change the game. I've been positioning this whole conversation as one-off interactions. How does our understanding of freedom change in the context of an ongoing relationship? Freedom in the context of marriage might be a fruitful place to spend some time. Thanks for bringing me to this.

Scoresby

AskSN

When is freedom bad?

In cases where we have prisoner dilemma dynamics from mathematical branch of game theory.

Unconstrained, players will go for greedy 'defect' action. Which makes other players also retaliate with 'defect' action and everyone ends up worse off.

If you can limit possibilities of playing 'defect' action, it's easier to stay in pareto-optimal solution of everyone playing 'cooperate' action in which everyone is better of.