We might view human social organization in general in this lens: social organization exists to maximize the extraction of energy from the environment to the group and individual (X), and the efficiency of the conversion of extracted energy into offspring (E). This is identical to the claim that social organization exists to maximize the fitness of the group (Wilson and Sober 1994) and/or the individuals which compose the group (Nowak et al. 2010), given an energetic definition of fitness.

Ricklefs and Wikelski 2002)]. In this context, Pianka (1970) argued that, “…natural selection will usually act to maximize the amounts of matter and energy gathered per unit time.” Brown et al. (1993) likewise offered an energetic definition in which fitness is “reproductive power, or the rate of conversion of energy into offspring.” This reproductive power was taken to be a function of both the rate of assimilation of energy from the environment and the rate of conversion of energy to offspring (but see (Kozlowski 1996)).