| Contrary to popular belief, the yellow jacket queen does not control the colony. The members do not receive instructions from any central source; instead they act according to higher-level rules that seem to be ingrained in their brains. In spite of this, the colony's overall behavior is coherent, even though it is not governed centrally. The colony behavior is determined by the individual actions of all the yellow jackets in the colony. The behavior of the colony is actually quite intelligent, doing everything from feeding the young, to going to battle, or taking care of housekeeping such as removing dead wasps.
The parallel to weather derivatives trading is that YellowJacket Weather, like the marketplace, also does not have a central controller. Actions are not controlled by a central website; instead all participants act on their own, according to their own principles, and interact with each other as peers. In this case the YellowJacket system (i.e., marketplace) displays coherent behavior. There is order to the system because the participants (i.e., traders, brokers) act according to rationality and market forces.
|
