Within the social ecosystem of the United States, we see stark asymmetries in the demands of the state, as representative of the social grouping, for taxation on the one hand and national service on the other. The tax codes at the national level are progressive in nature; those who have more in the way of resources pay more in the way of taxes. The same holds true for national service in the form of staffing the military; the few who volunteer serve at the pleasure of the many through their elected representatives. While democracy ostensibly provides for equality for all, forming a congregation that we have termed égalité, in fact it provides asymmetries in the demands it makes for altruistic behavior. The Social Security System offers another example.

Social Security was originally specified according to actuarial statistics. Hence, it should offer a relatively objective approach to the distribution of financial assistance to persons of retirement age. When originally specified, this was indeed the case. All workers paid a portion of their income into a trust fund. Persons of retirement age of 65 years were paid a stipend from this trust fund. Initially, the retirement age fell later than the average life span of a person within the system. So, the average expectation was that a person who paid into the system would die before receiving much back from the system and hence would probably not get back as much as had been paid in, if anything at all. Thus, the overall system was financially solvent. A problem occurred as people began to live longer. This skewed the relationship between those who paid into the system versus those who received aid from the system as measured by actuarial statistics. As time marched on, the general population has gotten older and some projections are that in the near future the system will become insolvent.

As the system progressed in such a manner as to require change, the feedback mechanisms provided within the social ecosystem proved ineffective. For example, the age of retirement, the amount of assistance and the amount paid in have not been altered so as to make the system sound from an actuarial viewpoint. One interpretation of this situation is the existence of significant asymmetries throughout this system, both in terms of how it performs and also in terms of the feedback loop that should control its operations. The asymmetry in operations derives from the fact that large numbers of people must pay into the system in order to fund the assistance payments for those that live long enough to collect. This assumed asymmetry was built into the definition of the system. As standards of living have improved, people are tending to live longer which means that more people collect benefits and they do so for a longer period of time. Thus the required asymmetry between those who pay and those who receive is becoming smaller. The other asymmetry is in the feedback loop. The policy purveyors who should make the necessary adjustments to keep the system solvent are elected officials. A preponderance of their electorate is comprised either of people who pay into the system or people who receive from the system. To fix the potential insolvency, most likely either the one group will need to pay more or the other group will need to receive less. Neither group, in the aggregate, appears inclined to elect policy purveyors who will potentially enact either corrective measure. What appears to exacerbate this disconnect within the feedback mechanism is that there is a tremendous time lag built into this interaction model. If a correction is not made on the revenue income side in the near term then the insolvency cannot be corrected without very onerous consequences for those who pay into the system. If no correction is made at all, then the similarly onerous insolvency consequences for those who receive from the system will not occur until some years down the road. This vividly illustrates the role of asymmetries in the determination of the well-being of many, or in reverse, in the establishment of threats to that well-being.

Personal interactions among individuals within a social ecosystem may exhibit significant asymmetries as well. In such cases, the asymmetries may derive from the level of stimulus for each party participating in an interaction. We’ve suggested that the stimulus for action on the part

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