Abstract
In their search for "primitive man", anthropologists
of the 1970s constructed an "original affluent society"
in the Stone Age, when peopele led a life of leisure and relative
superabundance embedded in the harmonies of nature. These early
subsistences economies have been reconstructed as based on principles
of risk minimization and leisure preference. Here, we show that
risk minimization is just one element in a wider spectrum of coping
with risks and the danger of ruin. In subsistence economies, long-term
survival requires a broad spectrum of different behavioral patterns.
In situation of scarcity or danger, the acceptance of calculated
risks can increase the chance of survival per saltum. Under less
extreme conditions, risk prevention by portfolio formation is
generally more effective as a strategy to reduce fluctuation.
Risk prevention can finally be made more profitable by suitable
technological management of fluctuations. Thus, a risk spiral
as a dynamizing principle in the development of complex societies
is generated: The reduction of a particular risk leads to new
types of uncertainity, which in turns require further (risky)
innovations. This mechanism creates a permanent innovation pressure
responsible for the restless transformation in complex societies.