Shall We Kill or Enslave Caesar? Analyzing the Caesar Model

When a society overthrows a ruler — call the ruler Caesar — what determines whether Caesar is killed or enslaved? This paper presents a model of killing versus enslaving Caesar, based on a new theory which unifies justice, status, and power. The model pertains to societies which value ordinal goods like bravery, yielding predictions for three of the five types of societies — justice-nonmaterialistic, status, and power-nonmaterialistic. Results cover members' gains, effects of own rank and group size, and relative gains from killing or enslaving Caesar. Further results suggest that Caesar will be killed only in a justicenonmaterialistic society, and from the noblest of motives — to achieve equal gains for members.