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Emergent inequality and self-organized social classes in a network of power and frustration

We propose a simple agent-based model on a network to conceptualize the allocation of limited wealth among more abundant expectations at the interplay of power, frustration, and initiative. Concepts imported from the statistical physics of frustrated systems in and out of equilibrium allow us to com...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Mahault, Benoit, Saxena, Avadh, Nisoli, Cristiano
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5315399/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28212440
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0171832
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author Mahault, Benoit
Saxena, Avadh
Nisoli, Cristiano
author_facet Mahault, Benoit
Saxena, Avadh
Nisoli, Cristiano
author_sort Mahault, Benoit
collection PubMed
description We propose a simple agent-based model on a network to conceptualize the allocation of limited wealth among more abundant expectations at the interplay of power, frustration, and initiative. Concepts imported from the statistical physics of frustrated systems in and out of equilibrium allow us to compare subjective measures of frustration and satisfaction to collective measures of fairness in wealth distribution, such as the Lorenz curve and the Gini index. We find that a completely libertarian, law-of-the-jungle setting, where every agent can acquire wealth from or lose wealth to anybody else invariably leads to a complete polarization of the distribution of wealth vs. opportunity. This picture is however dramatically ameliorated when hard constraints are imposed over agents in the form of a limiting network of transactions. There, an out of equilibrium dynamics of the networks, based on a competition between power and frustration in the decision-making of agents, leads to network coevolution. The ratio of power and frustration controls different dynamical regimes separated by kinetic transitions and characterized by drastically different values of equality. It also leads, for proper values of social initiative, to the emergence of three self-organized social classes, lower, middle, and upper class. Their dynamics, which appears mostly controlled by the middle class, drives a cyclical regime of dramatic social changes.
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spelling pubmed-53153992017-03-03 Emergent inequality and self-organized social classes in a network of power and frustration Mahault, Benoit Saxena, Avadh Nisoli, Cristiano PLoS One Research Article We propose a simple agent-based model on a network to conceptualize the allocation of limited wealth among more abundant expectations at the interplay of power, frustration, and initiative. Concepts imported from the statistical physics of frustrated systems in and out of equilibrium allow us to compare subjective measures of frustration and satisfaction to collective measures of fairness in wealth distribution, such as the Lorenz curve and the Gini index. We find that a completely libertarian, law-of-the-jungle setting, where every agent can acquire wealth from or lose wealth to anybody else invariably leads to a complete polarization of the distribution of wealth vs. opportunity. This picture is however dramatically ameliorated when hard constraints are imposed over agents in the form of a limiting network of transactions. There, an out of equilibrium dynamics of the networks, based on a competition between power and frustration in the decision-making of agents, leads to network coevolution. The ratio of power and frustration controls different dynamical regimes separated by kinetic transitions and characterized by drastically different values of equality. It also leads, for proper values of social initiative, to the emergence of three self-organized social classes, lower, middle, and upper class. Their dynamics, which appears mostly controlled by the middle class, drives a cyclical regime of dramatic social changes. Public Library of Science 2017-02-17 /pmc/articles/PMC5315399/ /pubmed/28212440 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0171832 Text en © 2017 Mahault et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mahault, Benoit
Saxena, Avadh
Nisoli, Cristiano
Emergent inequality and self-organized social classes in a network of power and frustration
title Emergent inequality and self-organized social classes in a network of power and frustration
title_full Emergent inequality and self-organized social classes in a network of power and frustration
title_fullStr Emergent inequality and self-organized social classes in a network of power and frustration
title_full_unstemmed Emergent inequality and self-organized social classes in a network of power and frustration
title_short Emergent inequality and self-organized social classes in a network of power and frustration
title_sort emergent inequality and self-organized social classes in a network of power and frustration
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5315399/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28212440
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0171832
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