Surviving by Serving - the effects of rewarding usefulness

Abstract

Abstract

How can a complex production network organize itself when no participant knows the global plan? We investigate a simple principle inspired by markets: producers persist longer when what they make is actually used. We call this principle “Surviving by Serving” (SbS). In a deliberately minimal model, agents transform existing products into new ones and thereby build fluctuating production and supply networks starting from a single inexhaustible resource. We compare SbS with systems in which survival is not rewarded and with a control in which the same reward events are redirected to randomly selected agents. Within the tested model and parameter ranges, linking survival to downstream use enables faster and broader exploration of product space while retaining a larger share of what has been discovered. It also gives rise to more persistent, repeatedly active production pathways and more pronounced cyclic structures. In a targeted-reward experiment, selectively supporting suppliers of designated products can increase delivery to the desired region, without specifying the supply chains needed to reach it. These results do not establish a universal law of self-organization. They show, however, that a minimal local feedback between usefulness and persistence can substantially reshape collective organization in this model and motivate tests of analogous mechanisms in richer economic and biological networks.