Title of the talk

"Ready, Fire, Aim": Social Systems and Rational Choice

Author:

Michael A. Faia

Affiliation: 

- The College of William & Mary
- Soft-Eclectic Solutions

Abstract

"Frictions of space," although hard to measure, impinge on many forms of
mobility in society.  Zipf's principle of least effort, emphasizing cost
minimization, is a fruitful way to conceptualize the idea that high mobility
costs tend to be avoided.  Zipf's work parallels many elements of rational
choice theory (RCT) and linear programming (LP).  Further exploration of
least-effort, least-cost, and LP principles leads to the claim that LP
inquiries into cost minimization have implications for chaos theory.

We explore a migration process with two unknowns, facilitating geometric
illustrations.  Chaos events involve potential migratory streams that remain
empty, along with abrupt shifts of corner solutions.  Post-optimality
experiments give further evidence of such events.  In a model involving school
enrollments, we show that apparently minor policy constraints, construed as
emergent social norms, may create large shifts of optimal LP solutions.  We
speculate about the prospects of extending Zipf's hypotheses to mentalistic
phenomena.

Finally, we develop an LP model of social mobility containing utilities to be
maximized.  This analysis---although more experimentation is needed---leads to
the finding that a mobility pattern with realistic utilities may eliminate
nearly all "stayers."