Unlike Tit for Tat, Always Defect, though a true ESS, cannot use local clustering to cross the knife-edge. On the contrary. Local clusters of Always Defect individuals, far from prospering by each other’s presence, do especially badly in each other’s presence. Far from quietly helping one another at the expense of the banker, they do one another down. Always Defect, then, unlike Tit for Tat, gets no help from kinship or viscosity in the population.
