Human Development Dynamics: Network Emergence in an Agent Based Simulation of Adaptive Heterogeneous Games and Social Systems

In the context of political modernization and economic development, the complex adaptive systems framework can help address the coupling of macro social constraint and opportunity with individual agency. Using a simple evolutionary game approach, we fuse endogenously derived socio-economic system dynamics from Human Development (HD) Theory with Prisoner’s Dilemma spatial intra-societal economic transactions. We then explore a new human development dynamics (HDD) model behavior via quasi-global simulation methods to explore technological progression on economic development, cultural plasticity, social and political change. Using network analysis, we then investigate the impact of technology proliferation on communications ease and the resulting compression of social space on individual wealth and political preference formation. As economic and social capital is created, past transaction histories tend to reinforce future success, and networks emerge and solidify at different rates depending on technology. Increasing social connectivity in small populations has an immediate and positive impact on wealth creation, yet those effects become negative as technology proliferates and population size increases. This suggests not only diminishing marginal returns to increasing communications’ payoffs to individuals but moreover crowding out effects. We believe complex adaptive or evolutionary systems approaches are necessary to understand both near and potentially catastrophic, far-from-equilibrium behavior and societal outcomes across all human scales of modernization.