Inequality in nature and society. Scheffer, M., Bavel, B. v., Leemput, I. A. v. d., & Nes, E. H. v. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(50):13154–13157, December, 2017. ![Inequality in nature and society [link]](https://bibbase.org/img/filetypes/link.svg "link")
Paper doi abstract bibtex Most societies are economically dominated by a small elite, and similarly, natural communities are typically dominated by a small fraction of the species. Here we reveal a strong similarity between patterns of inequality in nature and society, hinting at fundamental unifying mechanisms. We show that chance alone will drive 1% or less of the community to dominate 50% of all resources in situations where gains and losses are multiplicative, as in returns on assets or growth rates of populations. Key mechanisms that counteract such hyperdominance include natural enemies in nature and wealth-equalizing institutions in society. However, historical research of European developments over the past millennium suggests that such institutions become ineffective in times of societal upscaling. A corollary is that in a globalizing world, wealth will inevitably be appropriated by a very small fraction of the population unless effective wealth-equalizing institutions emerge at the global level.
@article{scheffer_inequality_2017,
title = {Inequality in nature and society},
volume = {114},
copyright = {Copyright © 2017 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.. This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).},
issn = {0027-8424, 1091-6490},
url = {http://www.pnas.org/content/114/50/13154},
doi = {10.1073/pnas.1706412114},
abstract = {Most societies are economically dominated by a small elite, and similarly, natural communities are typically dominated by a small fraction of the species. Here we reveal a strong similarity between patterns of inequality in nature and society, hinting at fundamental unifying mechanisms. We show that chance alone will drive 1\% or less of the community to dominate 50\% of all resources in situations where gains and losses are multiplicative, as in returns on assets or growth rates of populations. Key mechanisms that counteract such hyperdominance include natural enemies in nature and wealth-equalizing institutions in society. However, historical research of European developments over the past millennium suggests that such institutions become ineffective in times of societal upscaling. A corollary is that in a globalizing world, wealth will inevitably be appropriated by a very small fraction of the population unless effective wealth-equalizing institutions emerge at the global level.},
language = {en},
number = {50},
urldate = {2018-02-01},
journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},
author = {Scheffer, Marten and Bavel, Bas van and Leemput, Ingrid A. van de and Nes, Egbert H. van},
month = dec,
year = {2017},
pmid = {29183971},
keywords = {inequality, collapse},
pages = {13154--13157},
file = {Scheffer et al. - 2017 - Inequality in nature and society.pdf:C\:\\Users\\rsrs\\Documents\\Zotero Database\\storage\\LPFPRNJB\\Scheffer et al. - 2017 - Inequality in nature and society.pdf:application/pdf}
}
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