I left this comment on Brad's blog and thought it worth repeating. The topic was Adam Smith, the innate desire to exchange, and an earlier post on specialization. Brad says without the innate desire to exchange. murder becomes feasible. (PARAPHRASE) My take:
One difference between murder and exchange is that exchange is repeatable.
If one posits an innate desire for repeatability then one is half way to a coherent theory of exchange. The desire for reasonable repeatability of life would convert the agent into a queue manager, and then build models using queuing theory.
Once we have queue management, then we have the open market. From the open market, getting to specialization is a lot easier. Summary: Innate desire for repeatability leads to open exchange leads to specialization.
If one posits an innate desire for repeatability then one is half way to a coherent theory of exchange. The desire for reasonable repeatability of life would convert the agent into a queue manager, and then build models using queuing theory.
Once we have queue management, then we have the open market. From the open market, getting to specialization is a lot easier. Summary: Innate desire for repeatability leads to open exchange leads to specialization.
Basically this is me always going back to a production spectrum model, a spectrum of transaction rates; and that leads to queuing theory. So what has developed civilization is our innate ability to queue properly, to ensure things happen at reasonable frequency. Queuing ability allows common inventory stockpiles to be maintained, it is the basis of cities.
