[Mzyxptlk]

Sounds to me like Butcher fundamentally misunderstood human nature.

Experiments have been run in which 2 people are paired up: Alice is given $10 to divide up between her and Bob. Afterwards, Bob gets to choose: either accept the distribution proposed by Alice, or burn the $10. He cannot make a counter-proposal. Rationally, even $0.01 is better than nothing, so Bob should always accept the split. In reality, if Bob considered the split too unfair, he would rather burn the money (all of it, including his own share) than accept it.

The reason humans think this way is probably because such one-off encounters are rare, in an evolutionary sense. On the African savannah, Alice and Bob are in the same tribe (or maybe neighbouring ones) and will see each other again. If Bob accepts $0.01 this time, he's told Alice how little he's willing to settle for. The next time, she has no incentive to offer more. But if Bob rejects the $0.01 offer, and then the $1 one, and then the $3 one, then Alice might offer a 50/50 split next time. Now, after 4 tries, Bob has $5 instead of $0.04. The rational strategy in the one-off version of the experiment is awful in the repeated version. The latter (more realistic) version is what we are have evolved to optimize for.

PA is basically an online tribe. Alliances play multiple rounds and people are around for even longer. If you build a reputation of accepting shitty deals, you'll never get offered a good one. You should therefore always reject bad deals. Even if it costs you the round, there's always next one, and your rejection will force people to offer you more next round.

There are exceptions. In real life-or-death situations, you can compel people into accepting bad deals, if you have enough power. In geopolitics, this is what superpowers do all the time. Bully the little guy: we can have fleets of battleships in your territorial waters, but if you try to do the same in ours (or, god forbid, fire back at them), there will be hell to pay. Similarly, if Alice has a gun, she can make Bob do (almost) whatever she likes: the difference between being dead and accepting $0.01 is far larger than the difference between getting $0 and $0.01.

In Planetarion, of course, there is no real danger. Losing the round (or rather, not winning it) sucks, especially if you were trying to win, but ultimately, this is just a game. Sometimes, people will prefer picking an option that is objectively worse for them, not just to spite someone they hate (though that will be the explanation they use, even to themselves), but to force their enemies to offer a better deal the next timearound: and in PA, everyone is a potential enemy. And note also: the outcome of losing because of accepting a bad deal and losing because of refusing a bad deal is identical: you lose.