Goats?

I ran across an interesting concept called Positive Goat Flow that I can't help but comment upon. In summary, Positive Goat Flow is achieved when you've gotten more people's goats than have gotten yours. The converse is, of course, Negative Goat Flow.

Economically, I think this is really interesting, especially in it's social aspects. In looking at the group of friends I tend to associate with, I thing that the Goat Flow of the group is probably 0 or really close to 0. I wonder if this holds true across groups of friends enough to propose a theorem. The cohesiveness of a group of friends over the long term increases as the Goat Flow of that group approaches 0.

If you stop and think about it, it kind of makes sense. If the Goat Flow of a group is high, the group probably contains assertive, type A people who would also have a higher conflict rate than is sustainable. Alternatively, a group with a very negative Goat Flow would contain more gullible, easy going type people who wouldn't maintain the bond of friendship over time. Of course, this assumes that the people more likely to get others Goats are assertive, self assured people, and that those likely go have their Goat gotten are quiet and demur. Who knows if any of this is true, but think of all the ways to extrapolate this even further. It's a gold mine of new social theory just waiting on a government grant. Now, where'd my grant request form go . . . . ?