GTD

Trade wars, arms races, price wars, and climate free-riding — any situation where individual incentives destroy collective gains.

Nuclear standoffs, debt-ceiling brinkmanship, and subsidy races: each side wants the other to back down, but a head-on collision ruins both.

Climate accords, currency unions, and technology standards: everyone gains if all commit, but each fears being the only one who did.

Standard-setting wars (VHS vs Betamax), central bank policy coordination, and treaty venue fights: agreement beats deadlock, but who gets their preferred terms?

Penalty kicks, tax audits, and military feints: any pursuit-evasion contest where being predictable means losing.

Arms-control talks where neither side actually wants to disarm, or trade negotiations where both prefer protectionism. The handshake photo-op hides genuinely opposed interests.

Allied nations sharing intelligence, or firms with complementary products: cooperating is best for you regardless of what the other does.

Bystander effects, alliance burden-sharing (who funds the peacekeepers?), and open-source maintenance: the public good appears only if somebody pays the private cost.

Driving on the same side of the road, adopting a common technical standard, or settling on a common trading currency: nobody cares which convention wins, only that one does.

Market entry (two firms entering the same niche destroy margins), route choice in congested networks, and export specialization between neighboring economies.

Attacker-vs-defender resource allocation: cyber offense vs defense, smuggling vs interdiction, election targeting. Fixed pie, opposed interests.

Foreign direct investment into weak-institution states, supplier prepayments, and sovereign lending: value creation requires exposure to opportunism.

OPEC output quotas, semiconductor fab capacity, and commodity markets — competition where capacity decisions are the strategic variable.

Airline fare wars, streaming subscription pricing, and gas-station corners: when products are near-identical, undercutting is irresistible and margins evaporate.

Incumbent vs entrant capacity races, Saudi Arabia's swing-producer role in oil, and any market where one player credibly moves first.

Debt restructurings, trade deal concessions, and labor negotiations: how a pie gets divided depends on each side's walk-away value and patience.

Spectrum auctions, government procurement, and ad-exchange bidding: winners pay what they bid, so optimal bids balance winning against overpaying.

eBay proxy bidding and the theoretical core of ad auctions: paying the runner-up's price removes any reason to shade, so bids reveal true values.