You hate to see your strategy come apart on you just because someone else cheats. I mean, really! If cheating is going to be allowed, then we should all get to cheat.
They did some kind of study years ago. I’ve seen video. When you let one lab monkey get away with something, you have to let all of the lab monkeys get away with it or they scream and fling poop. Even monkeys have a sense of fairness. Unfortunately, the one monkey who gets away with the one thing ALSO has another instinct we all share. That instinct says, “If I have an advantage, I’ll bite you in order to keep the advantage.”
So there you have the conundrum- we all have conflicting instincts. Kara, for instance, is conflicted because she respects Paste for his competitiveness, and she also respects the fact that he’s pulling a fast one and needs to have his hair parted. In the absence of hair, maybe he needs his scalp parted.
It’s what drives civilization. Into a tree.