title: Emergence of heterogeneity and political organization in information exchange networks.
abstract: We present a simple model of the emergence of the division of labor and the development of a system of resource subsidy from an agent-based model of directed resource production with variable degrees of trust between the agents. The model has three distinct phases corresponding to different forms of societal organization: disconnected (independent agents), homogeneous cooperative (collective state), and inhomogeneous cooperative (collective state with a leader). Our results indicate that such levels of organization arise generically as a collective effect from interacting agent dynamics and may have applications in a variety of systems including social insects and microbial communities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801-3080, USA.
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Guttenberg
authors.forename: Nigel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Goldenfeld
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D007255:Information Services; D007313:Insecta; D008829:Microbiology; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D009938:Organizations; D011057:Politics; D013997:Time Factors