I came across that post too.

I know plenty of people agree with it. I don’t.

This isn’t some made-up riddle. It’s a classic problem in economics and psychology — the Ultimatum Game.

It’s been around since the 1980s, designed primarily to study human behavioral patterns.

The rules are simple. There’s money on the table (usually $100, not a million). One person is the allocator. The other can only accept or reject.

If they accept, the two split the money according to the proposal.

If they reject, neither gets a cent.

What traditional theory predicted, and what the actual experiments showed, were radically different.

The “rational actor” assumption in classical economics holds that, as long as both parties are rational (exactly what the blogger I follow analyzed), getting one dollar is better than zero.

Something is better than nothing, right?

So for the responder, as long as any money is offered, they should accept.

And for the allocator, since the responder will take anything over nothing, just offer the bare minimum.

Offer them one dollar, pocket 99 yourself — the other person should take it.

Why on earth would you give them two, or three?

That’s the rational-actor hypothesis.

But real experiments tell a different story. In practice, once the share offered drops below 20–30%, the majority of responders flat-out reject it.

Nothing rational about it.

People simply feel: this isn’t fair.

When confronted with outrageously unfair terms — and the humiliation that comes with them — people would rather sacrifice their own gain just to punish the allocator.

It’s not rational. But it is righteous.

This experiment has been replicated across different cultures, different stakes, and different populations. The conclusion is remarkably consistent:

Rejection rates vary somewhat by culture, but “rejecting unfairness” is a near-universal value confirmed by researcher after researcher.

You can see this experiment play out in real life too.

Some people do nothing at all — by sheer birth or luck, they become the allocators.

And most of us? We’re just the responders.

The allocator holds the power of distribution, and that alone lets them dominate every round of the game, accumulating vast wealth.

Ordinary people, meanwhile, are often left at their mercy.

The allocators have a whole army of rational actors ready to provide apologetics: something is better than nothing. One percent is still more than zero.

And if this particular responder won’t take it? Well, “if you won’t do it, plenty of others will.” Other responders will accept, won’t they?

In the end, the allocators always manage to claim even more.

So what can we — the workers — do about it?

Flipping the table. That’s how.

Forget “something is better than nothing.” Making sure you get nothing too? Even better.

That’s why, when capital offers excessively harsh terms, labor simply stops working.

I don’t work — I only lose my modest wages. But you capitalists stand to lose far more.

So the minimum wage capital offers had better clear the psychological threshold at which labor will walk.

This game isn’t confined to the working class at the bottom, either. Hollywood screenwriters have gone on strike over it.

When the terms of distribution strip you of dignity, when they feel absurd and humiliating — you can flip the table.

That is labor’s last line of leverage.

And so in the original experiments, allocators took 63% on average, responders 37% — roughly a 2:1 ratio.

The stats get pulled by extreme values that drag the average down. If you look at the median instead, things balance out a lot more. The split is basically close to fifty-fifty.

Then there’s the series of follow-up experiments:

In places with developed market economies, distribution tends to be fairer — people are more inclined toward cooperation. In the U.S. and other Western countries, for instance, allocators on average give away 45%.

In experiments conducted in Mongolia, allocators offered only 10–20% on average — and responders usually had no choice but to accept.

On the other end, there are cases where allocators give away more than they keep. Among Indonesia’s whale-hunting tribes, which depend heavily on cooperation, allocators were even willing to hand over 58% — more than they took for themselves.

That’s driven by local culture. In small, tight-knit communities, no one wants to burn bridges.

But no matter the culture, I would never accept just 1%.

There’s a variant of the experiment, too: the allocator distributes however they want, but the responder is forbidden from flipping the table. They can only accept. In this rigged, exploit-me-if-you-can version, allocators still tend to give away 20–30%.

So 1% really is absurd.

At this point you might ask: but none of this mentions capital and labor — isn’t it about how two strangers split money?

Exactly. But think about it: do we really know those distant executives and big-shot investors sitting high up in the company?

They are the strangers.

Capital is skilled at keeping itself spotless and remote — perpetually out of reach. It’s always the HR person closest to us, or our direct manager, who does the dirty work.

Those distant strangers — you might not see them once in a year. They exist only in the company annual gala.

But they take the biggest cut.

We still have a duty to defend ourselves.

And, as I mentioned earlier: in the American experiments, allocators had to give away more. In the Mongolian experiments, giving away less didn’t trigger rejection. That may simply be because Mongolia is less wealthy. When there’s less money, you just have to accept.

Which only reinforces the point: we need to improve the distribution mechanisms across society as a whole. Make everyone, on average, more prosperous. When every person has some savings in the bank, when they have a cushion, they’re far more likely to say no to an unfair distribution scheme. Far more likely to flip the table.

On a personal level, each of us can prepare a fallback. Build some savings.

So that when someone lays a 1:99 absurd split on the table in front of us —

We can say it with composure:

Making sure you get nothing too? That matters to me.