'A Theory of Social Interactions'
Instructions
Pay for the bills.(inevitable)
Adjust the amount of Entertainment, Allowance for the good kid, and Allowance for the rotten kid.
Distribute the money that you have.
See what would happen after that...
Introduction
You may have heard of several famous terms like 'selfish gene', 'marginal cost', or 'sunk cost'. They've summarized some empirical facts in a macro level but way too far from our daily life.
Rotten kid theorem is different. It starts the demonstration from a family scope. But also, you could have a vague glance of those renown theories through it.
The research analyzed the economic effects of family members' sociological interactions through some economical frameworks. The author pointed out an important concept of 'social income' which is a combination of one's earnings and something that has monetary value (such as reputation).
Many assumptions and limitations were used in the original research model. However, the conclusion was not something that could be controlled. It points to the instability.
In common sense, we think the 'good' would behave as good. The 'bad' would behave as bad. But it's not always the case.
Sometimes a rotten kid pretends to be friendly for multiple possible reasons, such as he cares about the life quality of entire family which is related to himself. Sometimes, even though parents punish a rotten kid because he has hurt his siblings, that might not stop him from keeping doing this as well. "An envious or malicious person presumably would feel better off if some other persons become worse off in certain respects. He could 'harm' himself in order to harm others."(see original research, Becker, 1974)
You may want to ask, what's the point of this research and the project I've done. It just shows the instability. No matter what parameters you think you could control, you still cannot infer what would happen next.
Have you ever played with a kaleidoscope? This simulator project is something like that. Each wisp of light and shadow is relevant to others and they gather, contribute to a unique moment.Like the human society, like numerous similar but different families.
"Man is a social animal." Seneca
About Author
Gary Stanley Becker (December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014)was an American economist and empiricist.
He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago. Described as “the most important social scientist in the past 50 years” by The New York Times, Becker was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. A 2011 survey of economics professors named Becker their favorite living economist over the age of 60, followed by Ken Arrow and Robert Solow.
Except for the contents above, which I directly quote from the wikipedia page. I want to emphasize that most of his research is really interesting, meaningful and profound to everyone.
Topics that he had discussed contain multiple sensitive social issues such as racial discrimination, crime, family organization, and drug addiction. Above all, human behavior is also another topic he was interested.
The difference of his research compare to others, I think it's that he used a professionally economic thinking to observe and explain many phenomena.
Chicago is a city like an eye of the storm of American sociology academia. Dr. Becker stood there at the intersection of economics and sociology as a wise person and left us much valuable research.
