Quote:
Originally Posted by athenian200
What you're saying, then, is that things tend to work towards balance? When there's resources available for people, they tend to move towards them even if they already have enough where they are? As if they slowly want to "diffuse" within the boundaries of their "container" rather than remain concentrated?
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Yes, that's kind of how it works. The explanation below should hopefully give a better idea of what I'm talking about.
Diffusion of particles through gas, liquid, etc. is something you've probably seen plenty of times, where, for example, some liquid or salt placed in water will slowly mix with it even without any stirring or movement. The general explanation for why this happens is that the molecules of water and whatever the water mixes with are randomly moving around in all directions, but because some parts of the mixture have more of one thing than another, the random movement of individual molecules or particles leads to movement overall from higher concentration to lower concentrations.
In general, what you described it as does fit the pattern, but the people aren't deliberately trying to spread out and even out, it just happens that way thanks to individual choices adding up. (Assuming that this way of thinking about it actually works and is useful.)