What to Do With a Surplus

A population of individuals that generates more resources than are immediately needed can do various things with its resource surplus to achieve a better perfromance in a variable environment. Using simulations with neural networks living in an environment we discuss four different strategies and their consequences: storing food in individual stores, sharing resources, exchanging resources, and contributing resources to a central store that then redistributes the resources to the entire population.

[1]  R. Hinde,et al.  The Possibility of Cooperation@@@Cooperation: The Basis of Sociability.@@@Cooperation and Prosocial Behavior.@@@Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. , 1990 .

[2]  Charles D. Laughlin join Deprivation and Reciprocity , 1974 .

[3]  Domenico Parisi,et al.  In What Kinds of Social Groups can “Altruistic” Behaviors Evolve? , 1997 .

[4]  D. E. Stuart,et al.  The Significance of Food Storage Among Hunter-Gatherers: Residence Patterns, Population Densities, and Social Inequalities [and Comments and Reply] , 1982, Current Anthropology.

[5]  Elizabeth Cashdan,et al.  Risk And Uncertainty In Tribal And Peasant Economies , 1989 .

[6]  T. Ingold The Significance of Storage in Hunting Societies , 1983 .

[7]  Joseph A. Tainter,et al.  Evolving Complexity and Environmental Risk in the Prehistoric Southwest: Proceedings of the Workshop “Resource Stress, Economic Uncertainty, and Human Response in the Prehistoric Southwest,” Held February 25–29, 1992 in Santa Fe, NM , 1995 .

[8]  T. Ingold,et al.  Some Major Problems in the Social Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers [and Comments and Reply] , 1988, Current Anthropology.

[9]  Michelle Hegmon,et al.  Risk Reduction and Variation in Agricultural Economies: A Computer Simulation of Hopi Agriculture , 1989 .

[10]  C. Laughlin Deprivation and Reciprocity , 1974 .

[11]  Bruce Winterhalder,et al.  Diet choice, risk, and food sharing in a stochastic environment , 1986 .