Opportunism (Self-Interest Seeking with Guile)

Opportunism is self-interest seeking with guile—the strategic pursuit of advantage through cunning, deception, or exploitation of informational asymmetries and contractual incompleteness. It is not the assumption that all people behave opportunistically all the time, but that some people behave opportunistically some of the time, and the distinction cannot be reliably made in advance. Because ex ante screening is impossible, governance structures must be designed for the worst case: protecting against opportunistic behavior even when the counterparty happens to be trustworthy. The concept is controversial—accused of cynicism, reductionism, and a dark view of human nature—but Williamson defended it as empirically necessary: absent the opportunism assumption, governance structures have no explanation. AI introduces novel forms: auto-exploitation (workers extracting value from future selves) and informational opportunism (exploiting the gap between smooth AI surfaces and genuine quality).