Why You'd Rather Lose Than Be Treated Unfairly
The ghosts of Bucharest, a meditation on Stoic justice, and the emotional games we play in the name of what's “right.”
I’m walking around Bucharest as the sun sets. This Romanian city is filled with gorgeous, well-kept buildings. It’s also filled with sublime decay. Boarded up mansions heaving in on themselves. Chipped paint and broken windows. Nature reclaiming the land.
Why, I wonder, are these places sitting here abandoned? Surely there are people who want to return these places to their former glory, or, at the very least, turn them into something else.
I soon learn that these places have been in litigation for years and the reason surprises me.
The Communist regime (1945–1989) abolished private property, kicking wealthy people out of their homes, or allowing them to rent a room in the property they used to own. Then the State split up the rest of the home and rented rooms to peasants, whom they moved into the city to work in the factories as it tried to industrialize the nation.
After the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was executed in 1989, people had a right to claim back their property – and here’s where things get messy.
The original owners of a property had a right to it – but so did the renters who lived there. The new government gave them the option to buy their rentals at very low prices. And so, tens of thousands of lawsuits ensued. Meanwhile, people did not invest in maintaining the property while it was in dispute.
Of course it’s more complicated than this.
Some properties were given back to people who no longer lived in the country, so they sat empty. For other properties, an owner or heir couldn’t be found, but people didn’t want to purchase it because “What if someone comes back and claims it?” Or someone gets the legal right to a property but can’t afford to renovate it according to historical preservation standards, so they’re waiting for it to collapse so they can build something new.
As I’m walking around, looking at these ghostly palaces, I think about those money experiments that expose how our emotions rather than logic guide our thoughts and feelings and actions.
The Ultimatum Game
In 1982, while Ceaușescu made plans to tear down Bucharest’s historic neighborhoods so he could build his North Korean-inspired Palace of the People, German economist Werner Güth published a paper that turned how we think about human behavior on its head.
Economists had previously theorized that human beings acted in their best interests, which seems weird if you spent any time amongst humanity (I guess they were stuck in their ivory towers?).
In Güth’s ‘ultimatum bargaining game,’ he demonstrated how we often go against our own interests if we perceive something to be unjust.
In what is commonly referred to today as ‘the ultimatum game,’ Player A gets $10, for example, to divide up between him and Player B, whose role is to accept or reject the offer. If he rejects, both players get nothing; if he accepts, both players get to keep whatever was offered.
Let’s say Player A offers Player B $1, and plans to pocket $9. Player B rejects it as a bad deal for himself. It doesn’t seem fair that he would get only 10%. But now they both have $0. Player B harmed himself financially because he felt Player A was being unjust.
Now that I know about this game, I’m more conscious of making wise decisions. And yet…
Why does the rational choice feel unjust?
Logically this knowledge should make it as easy to make small decisions as large ones – what’s in my best interest? What’s in the best interest of the other person/people? What is it that I actually want? Is there a way for both of us to get what we want?
What if what you want is to live in the family home the Communist Party evicted your grandparents from? Hypothetically, let’s say one of the rooms is available. You could live there and share the building with people who purchased their rentals.
But that doesn’t seem fair.
You’d be getting what you said you wanted – to live in the family home in Bucharest – but that’s not what you want anymore. Your priorities have changed. You don’t just want to live there, you want it all.
Or maybe what you always wanted was justice for what was done to your family. For the hunger and blackouts brought on by austerity. For the loss of dignity and theft of livelihoods. For the fear and frustration. For the intense surveillance and forced silence.
Someone has to pay. Even though the biggest culprit died by firing squad on Christmas Day, 1989.
These vendettas are understandable. They’re not reasonable. In the name of justice, no one is winning with these buildings. Player A and Player B continue to lose as the floorboards rot and grass grows through the windowsills of empty buildings.
Are we losing by holding out for the win?
We all play these games, with ourselves and with others. We get frustrated when others seem to get special treatment, when we feel cheated, when it seems like we’re working harder or caring more. We get mad when people don’t pull their weight – famously when they leave laundry or dirty dishes lying around.
But it’s not really about the dishes. It’s about what the mess represents. We might be mad at that incident, or pattern of incidents, but what really upsets us is the feeling we’ve been disrespected. Taken advantage of. Unloved. We’re thinking with our emotions.
Rationally, if we want a clean house, we’d put away the laundry and do the dishes ourselves. But our reaction isn’t about the task – it’s about what feels unfair. So we play emotional games where no one wins.
How to untangle ourselves from this behavior
Life is not fair sometimes. Often. And reacting emotionally often feels easier – in the short term – than living by our values. But what’s at stake in the longterm?
If my grandparents’ home was taken from them, I’d be tempted to fight for it. In their honor.
And yet nothing is that simple. What if they died decades ago and I now live in another country, with no plans to return?
Would I sue the current government? Or is another way to honor them to allow families to live in their home?
Is my goal to honor – or to punish? Sometimes, it’s both. Sometimes, the justice we seek serves a greater good.
When we hear the word justice, we often picture courtrooms or period dramas with swords. But for the Stoics, justice wasn’t about punishment or “getting what you deserve.” It was about living well with others – choosing fairness, wisdom, and compassion over ego and pride.
Justice is a virtue, not a vendetta. Not cruel or one-sided retribution, but the cultivation of a world in which everyone can live with dignity.
Even when the system is a mess, we can still choose fairness. We can act with kindness and consider the whole. This doesn’t mean giving up your rights – it does mean thinking beyond yourself.
We say we want fairness. But years pass. Paperwork piles up. Keys never turn in the locks. Ferns grow in the stairwells.
If the home stays empty for decades – if Player A and Player B both lose – is that victory?
Sometimes, we’re not just holding on to a home. We’re holding on to a story – one where we were wronged. Where someone else must make it right before we move on. And that’s where it gets messy – there are always multiple perspectives.
The tenant who lived in those walls has a story. So does the heir who grew up hearing what was taken.
Stoicism would ask them both to zoom out: “What would justice look like if I were in their place?”
What do you need to let go of?
As I sip my cappuccino outside a café shaded by trees, I think of how modern and convenient this city has become. You can book a train online, use contactless payments everywhere, order an Uber on your phone.
At the same time, across Bucharest, vacant residences remain frozen in time – waiting for a decision about who deserves to be there. These buildings can’t move forward, because they’re still tied to a past that hasn’t been released.
What parts of your life are like that?
What conversation are you not having because you’re waiting for someone else to go first? What dream, relationship, or change feels blocked because you’re hanging on to the past?
Letting go isn’t surrender. It’s repair and growth. Even without the closure you hoped for, it’s choosing to build again.
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