The concept of "person" is evolving; are we all "economic agents"?
Person has a sociological definition. There is the legal definition (which includes corporations as persons) but there is also the definition on Wikipedia which I'll cite:
A person is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility.[1][2][3][4] The defining features of personhood and consequently what makes a person count as a person differ widely among cultures and contexts.
When I ask the question of whether we are all "economic agents" I am asking it as a person who primarily has lived in a capitalist environment. Because of the environment from which I evolved I may be biased so please excuse any bias you see in my post and feel free to contribute your own perspectives.
Economic agents are a concept which in my opinion constitute a means of modeling behavior. In my opinion moral or ethical behavior can be modeled using the same terminology we see in the definition below:
In economics, an agent is an actor and more specifically a decision maker in a model of some aspect of the economy. Typically, every agent makes decisions by solving a well- or ill-defined optimization or choice problem.
And now my definition or how I interpret this is that first the concept of individual as most people think about the concept is an illusion. Most if not all "individuals" are actually communities. What I mean by that is that the behavior of "individuals" is shaped by the environment. Specifically the community which the individual is a part of or wishes to remain in good standing with which is made up of many other individuals is a factor in behavior.
An economic agent whether you see it as a person, a business, a firm, a pseudoanonymous entity like Satoshi Nakamoto or a group account like a DAC, it is ultimately the goal of an economic agent to do decisions which will make a profit for itself as an entity. An economic agent is only able to make high quality decisions if it has access to high quality information. In the case of a business we have a board of directors, we have ethics commissions or spiritual consultants, we have a lot of different roles which allow the business to adapt toward profitable behavior. Behavior in economic agents is the result of weighing the consequences of different decisions with regard to the impact on the current and future operations of the business and choosing the behaviors which are deemed most profitable. Behaviorism shows that behaviors are shaped by environmental factors such as incentives (rewards), and a community rewards the behaviors which it would like to see more of. Communities can include markets which ultimately work along supply and demand (for behaviors).
Profit in a company is usually calculated monetary and recognized as beneficial to the shareholders. In a person there are stakeholders (all who invested in the success of that person) and these people can be thought of similar to how shareholders are thought of in the company. The person might seek monetary profit but profit for a person isn't only monetary (nor is profit for companies only monetary). Persons have reputations to build and maintain as do companies and persons must learn to manage resources in the most effective ways to generate long term sustainable profit (in whichever currency or form).
According to social exchange theory all social interactions are based around some kind of resource exchange. The assumptions behind social exchange theory is that each person is actually an economic agent. If an economic agent owns themselves and is not coerced in any way then each interaction with a person could be thought of as a social exchange. A relationship would be governed by the equation of worth (worth of the interactions) is equal to rewards (rewards from the interactions) minus the cost (costs of the interactions). In other words W=R-C where social rewards or economic rewards are weighed against social costs or economic costs. Of course we know most people are not rational all of the time or perhaps most of the time. We know also most businesses fail or do not profit most of the time.
The idea presented here is that a person seeks growth just as a business does. A person simply seeks growth in areas a business might not care as much about. To a person social growth might be more important than pure monetary rewards. A person might want to be perceived well by their community, or loved, or held in high esteem by their peers, an so on. These are "social rewards" which people earn by adopting the required behaviors. So these rewards aren't free or without cost because it is earned by adopting required behaviors. It is also lost if the required behaviors are not maintained, which means there are social costs for adopting unpopular or inappropriate behaviors according to community standards.
An economic agent whether a business or a person would value their stakeholders if they have the intention of expanding. A business which values it's shareholders gets as a result a higher share price, a higher market cap, and so on. Just as a cryptocurrency project (community) which values it's stakeholders will often see the price of it's tokens (if they are in limited supply) go up. Stakeholders want to see some return on their investment. Shareholders also want to see some return on their investment.
A distinction needs to be made in the form that ROI takes. A stakeholder who invested because they believe in the mission of the project or because they believe in the commnunity itself may want to see the community grow or see progress toward meeting the ideals of the mission objectives. A shareholder typically also might believe in the mission but they have been promised monetary rewards rather than merely social rewards. Put another way, if we look at Steem we could live with a lower price for the Steem tokens if we see the overall mission of Steem is having progress, if we see Steem is changing the world for the better, if Steem is saving lives, or creating social rewards for the participants which go beyond money. If however Steem isn't actually seen as improving the world, if the economic agents interacting on Steem are not growing and the ecosystem isn't evolving for the better then the social rewards just are not there.
In other words a person would post on social media platforms if they think it's making them more popular, or more loved, or helping them spread their gospel, or market their paintings, or make long term friendships and social connections (networking), but if these are not happening then the ROI in social rewards is what is missing and in that environment people begin to just want to see the token price going up.
REFERENCES
what is 'agent'?