Evolutionary lore has it that sometime in the late Triassic period certain members of the order dictyoptera:blattaria began to develop economic specialties, by which they were quickly transformed into the new order dictyoptera:isoptera. What had been the presocial cockroach became eusocial termite.

In the language of sociobiology, a termite mound is the superorganism of the superorder dictyoptera. Residents of these rich social structures are granted many advantages; but their individual survival is critically dependent on the presence of each economic specialty in its necessary proportions. Termite workers are defenseless in most species; and, in some species, termite soldiers’ jaws are so developed that they cannot feed themselves.

Should any small group of termites become isolated from their mound, it is unlikely that they could develop the array of economic specialists requisite to their survival. Evolution has foreclosed all possibility of the termite’s return to the splendid individualism of his cousin roach.

Insects naturally generate chemical pheromones by which they inform one another as to how their hive/society might be improved; and their world is made dynamically stable by its united progress toward ever more beneficial states. It would seem that homeostasis in the form of some highest economic state is as natural to the true superorganism as biological homeostasis is to the individual organism.

Insects’ technologies are of course immutable characteristics of their respective species. Thus the parameters of the optimal states on which their economic activities focus must be fixed as well; and no need would ever arise for changing the chemical nature their information-carrying particle. Confirmation on this point arrives from experiments by which counterfeit pheromones are injected into insect colonies, whereupon the colony dissolves in chaos.

Economic specialization has proven to be a successful evolutionary strategy in the affairs of only the most primitive beings. Of the class mammalia, the only known eusocial animals are two lowly species of mole rat; and their superorganisms comprise a paltry few score individuals. It is nonetheless tempting to view the subspecies homo sapiens sapiens as having evolved societies in which the ape’s dexterity is infused with some sort of possibly divine inspiration to achieve the efficiencies of a hive.

But, as these experiments have been on-going for less than 10,000 years, it is not yet possible to know whether this societal mammal will leave any trace on the evolutionary record. All we know is that his several successes have been brilliant but rather short-lived, with each splendid empire having calcified to the point at which an enervated civil population was overrun by a feral gang. The possibility of an enduring, dignified combination of man with Leviathan remains uncertain.

Eusocial insects are biologically programmed for excellence in their peculiar economic specialty; but primates, not having evolved much beyond biological interchangeability, must be trained for their specific roles in society. Politics are whatever might be necessary to compel performance of the spectrum of roles that are conducive to civility.

Human beings settle upon their economic specialties by accommodations among need, choice, and aptitude. Possibilities for accommodation are partly structured by the wages attending various economic specialties; and wages are in turn dictated by a specialty’s potential contribution to the highest, hence singular, economic state that is possible given current technology. Our assertion that some sort of economic singularity is biologically imperative to a superorganism’s preservation reinforces our neoclassical dispensation wherein general economic optima are the homeostasis of human society.

Human technologies, unlike those of biological superorganisms, are always changing; and human societies must therefore always be searching for the new optimum upon which to focus their economic activity. Prices suggest themselves as the pheromone of human interaction because these information-carrying particles are highly compelling indicia as to where the economic optimum might be found. If SFEcon is correct in computing prices from the premise of optimality, then it is to be expected that prices will change to indicate changes in optimality’s locale. Acts of war by counterfeiting an enemy’s currency reinforce our premise when this strategy succeeds to a point of creating chaos in the enemy’s home industries.

In sum, all high cultures, insect and mammalian, exhibit economic complexity supported by interlocking systems of economic specialists. The division of labor within a superorganism is always governed by some process that evaluates opportunities for social improvement; and these valuations must be transmitted among individuals by some information-carrying particle. Termites transact chemical pheromones in order to inform one another of what needs doing, while people exchange money for this same purpose.

These observations indicate that economic order is co-definitional with the superorganism. And they are equally indicative that the notion of economic order has no meaning in connection to any presocial animal, nor to any eusocial individual.

Finally, let us ask how is it that termites have made a success of economic specialization since Triassic times, while people are still trying to get the hang of it. We might note that money, unlike the true biological pheromone, can be counterfeited — hence the earnestness of our inquiry into value’s ultimate, trans-monetary, nature.