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Response to Stillman 
    
Now the fun has really begun. I did expect some beating, and it feels like I am getting
some I duly deserve. Thanks for catching me.
    
I actually do have a hidden theory of social institutions. In it, three human interests
are translated into three socially recognized rights by three distinct social
institutions. This taxonomy allows analysts to use three different motives to build three
different branches of social science. And as an economist, I have some first mover's
advantage, thanks to our first guru Smith, and then Menger and Walras....
    
A need is something that an individual must meet in order to survive. The economic need is
to procure the means of self-sustenance. The political need is to ensure self-defense from
predators (external enemies) and cannibals (domestic enemies) who may inflict harms on
life, limb, property, reputation, liberty etc. The cultural need is that of self-
reproduction.
    
But one who lives in society cannot meet the needs in arbitrary manners. Thus one cannot
just rob or steal or cheat in order to meet the need of self-sustenance. The need becomes
a right when certain approved manners of  meeting the need are acknowledged. This rests on
some form of social contract. Thus the society may acknowledge the right of the individual
to pursue profit through trade in the market. Indeed, the institution may even facilitate
the right, in addition to permitting it. But clearly, it must also prohibit certain other
manners of securing self-sustenance.
    
The need for self-defense is impossible to meet unless the weak ones unite to erect a
strong collective defense. The state is an institution to erect a collective self-defense.
We can say that the state in its original intent provides security or defense to its
members. Altruism is the name of the action of scarifice that goes into providing security
to fellow members of the state.
    
Cultural need of self-reproduction includes the need to attract a mate for biological
self-reproduction, and to attract other assorted friends and admirers for spiritual
reproduction (of some memorable image in the minds of others). Various cultural
institutions provide opportunities to express oneself in creative ways (in every facet of
life, be it believing, thinking, singing, dancing, talking, cooking, building, walking,
and even mocking...). May be there is some culture also in beating.......
    
Now comes the answer to the beating. The economic right to pursue profit (with which to
ensure sustenance), and the political right to pursue power (with which to assure security
or defense) and the cultural right to pursue virtue (with which to attract others) must be
analytically developed into motives.
    
This motive must be formalized into matters of rational choice. Economists know what
rational economic choice is involved in pursuing one economic action versus another. But
does political science have an idea of political rationality (perhaps couched in terms of
power, or balance of power, the support of the constitutents, the disabling of the
enemy/adversary etc)? Does anthropology have a notion of cultural rationality to predict
why people chose one kind of dancing rather than another, or one kind of religion rather
than another and so on?
    
In short, I am very aware of power. But when people talk of self-interest, domineering,
altruism, admiration all in one breath, I tend to lose my forest to the trees, even the
leaves of the trees. I get lost.
    
I hope my bait worked. 
    
Now, please beat me with the power of a notion of political rationality, good enough to
present in math. Else I have something hiding in my ...... jungle!
    
Power is one, profit is one, virtue is one. But which one is the one? 
    
Regards, 
    
Mohammad Gani 
 
 
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