A jungle

This chapter studies a society consisting of a set of individuals and a set of houses. Each house can accommodate only one person and each person can occupy only one house. Different people may have different preferences over the houses, but everyone prefers to occupy any house than to be homeless.

This chapter analyzes a model in which the assignment of houses is determined by the individuals’ strengths; the concepts of property and ownership do not exist. A person who wants to occupy a house currently occupied by a weaker person can do so simply by presenting herself to the current occupant. The process is orderly: everyone knows everyone else’s strength, and on seeing that a stronger person wants to occupy her house, a person vacates it without a fight, which she knows she would lose.