Clarity for the Deviance of Dominance

Open dominance displays attract coalitions of opposition. This is because dominance is inherently traitorous.

Conquest is not done for the benefit of the conquered. It is always worth fighting to the death to avoid conquest; if the putative conqueror knew you were willing to fight to the death, they would realize conquest is impossible. Either they lose or you're dead and there's nothing left to conquer. Spent effort and took risks for no reward. Even mortals aren't dumb enough to try that. 

A fortiori. You get what you pay for. When you submit to conquest you pay for conquest, and get more conquest. You get more and more conquered until you die anyway. When they say cowardice is merely a slow death rather than a fast one, this is what they're talking about. In short only negotiate with hostage-takers as a stalling tactic, else you're merely encouraging more hostages.

Further, cooperation is always possible. Aside from conquest in and of itself, the conqueror can achieve whatever he desires by producing something the conquest target desires and engaging in that weird "trade" thing.

If the conqueror genuinely wanted to benefit their victims, they would, likewise, do that "trade" thing. "I want you to have X." "How are you going to get me X?" "I have some right here. *hands it over*" Damn, wasn't that easy? The conqueror's choice of method is inherently self-condemnation.

Thus
1) conquest is never necessary
2) conquest should always cost more than it pays

As usual, deviance only works because mortals are flagrantly stupid. It's an idiot tax. You can conquer someone only if they are too dumb to understand that you are conquering them or too dumb to understand what that means, and thus they don't spend as much on resistance as they could afford. Or, I suppose, if they hate themselves and their desire is to have their desires frustrated. 

Accounting truly is a superpower. The fully-realized accountant is immune to conquest. 

 

Social dominance is merely conquest in miniature. Microcosm conquest. All the same logic applies. Thus if I plainly state that I am better than you and you should therefore let me choose where we eat dinner, you don't. Even mortals aren't foolish enough to fail to recognize treachery that plain.

The dominance hierarchies of the mortal races are based, therefore, on deception. Again, self-condemning. "We have to lie about this." As a result, having high status is inherently antisocial. Defective. Deviant. Ultimately humans cannot maintain a complex society because they revere parasitism. So-called civilization arises when mortals make an unprincipled exception due to being forced to bow to physical necessity, but the resulting wealth, in their perception, thinks they can afford to return to the comfortable embrace of the vampire. No need for those icky exceptions anymore!

Dominance instincts survive at all because although evolution is vastly more intelligent than a mortal, it's still too dumb. The short-term can beat the long-term when the long term never shows up. Midget fight. There are no mortal phenotypes which don't attempt dominance. If everyone starts by tying their right hand behind their back, there will be a winner - the lefty. This doesn't show that tying your hand behind your back is okay.
Thus the fitness contest is about winning the dominance struggle, rather than preventing it. 

 

The only sane purpose of conquest is genocide. If someone is as useless and destructive as a small child, but has no prospect of growing up, should you have to put up with them? No, of course not. However, you can't force someone to grow up. You can only force them to not exist. 

Having to put up with them would itself be a form of conquest. Self-defence is not defecting on cooperators. Rather than especially bad, it is especially good to defect on defectors. The realm or jurisdiction that's throwing a tantrum has already initiated the conquest dynamic, the only question now is kto kogo. If they started it, you deserve to end it. Initiating conquest is self-condemnation, as above. If you go ahead and realize that judgment, you're fundamentally supporting them and their ideas about themselves. You can, and should.