Strong competition leads naturally to class structure
09 April 2005

EVERY society has its classes - the rich, the poor, and the middle class in-between. Now it seems that the divisions may be a mathematical consequence of competition between people.

Sidney Redner and Eli Ben-Naim of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico created a mathematical model of society based on each person's "fitness" - a number that reflects their wealth or social status. When two individuals compete, the fitter wins, growing fitter, while the fitness of individuals who do not compete declines.

Surprisingly, social classes emerge naturally from such a model. When there were few encounters, everyone remained as a single class - the loose equivalent of an underdeveloped society. But stronger competition led to the natural emergence of a "hierarchical phase", with distinct groups resembling lower, middle and upper classes (www.arxiv.org/cond-mat/0503451).