A recent paper has studied how smaller societies work to mitigate risk by sharing resources. Published by Associate Professor Athena Aktipis and Professor Lee Cronk from Rutgers, the study identifies key principles that improve the disaster resilience of these communities, via access to pooled resources which individuals can draw upon in the event of an unexpected emergency.
Speaking of the importance of the study, Aktipis says “Humans have had to deal with risk throughout our whole evolutionary history, and we have a few different management strategies, but it really hasn’t been investigated from an evolutionary perspective. It is an unexplored aspect of human nature – how do we manage risk when things go wrong?”
Focusing on the observations from twelve distinct societies, the paper identifies a set of seven principles which define the rules around the sharing of these communal resources, including considerations like an understanding that participants shouldn’t be expected to help others until they’ve met their own needs, and the sharing of resources should be transparent, so as to ensure fairness and reduce cheating.
Source:
https://news.asu.edu/20210527-helping-each-other-avoid-and-recover-disaster
