Neighbors keep an eye on each other:
Some families were given the task of keeping track of a nature preserve in China. (Governance by the People SCIENCE vol. 342 no. 6141 July 5, 2013 page 11 reviewing Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci USA 110. 10.10773/pnas.130133110 (2013)) The government agency kept track of how well they did such things as prevent illegal logging.
The organizers fell back on the Chinese skill at organizing into groups. The jobs of looking after different areas were given to groups or households that ranged in size from 1 to 16. The most effective groups turned out to be those with 8 or 9 households. Since that is right in the middle of the range, I suspect that the agency knew perfectly well what was going go happen. Small groups tended to lack the busybodies who could make sure everybody did their part and large groups were too busy for the busybodies to handle. At least that’s the way I see it. But the fact is that there is an optimal number of households that can work together, at least for that pupose.
Ten families seems to me to be just a bit small for an optimal mating pool. But that could be my prejudice. But I suspect we are fine tuned to thrive in restricted social organizations.
There have been 58 visitors over the past month.