Trying

FAFO on GitHub

I am thinking here about extractive capitalism, about chronic disease, about climate and weather, about Dark Agile, about racial and class prejudice, and about whatever’s troublin’ you, bunkie.

Almost everything that interests us is a complex system, not least because almost everything that interests us involved one or more people, and each person is itself a complex system. Many of us here share the disability that causes us to want to change how one or more complex systems operate. Many of us have spent years trying to make that happen. The relationship between cause and effect in a complex system is, as I understand it, essentially unknowable, at least according to some thinkers. And yet, we all see patterns in the whirl, and we have often been able to surf those patterns, at least for a while. Often we have seemed to change things, again at least for a while.

And yet, it seems—and perhaps I should emphasize seems—that complex systems have what seem—again—like components that are themselves less complex, perhaps even calling into the other classes, clear, or complicated. (And, one supposes, there are bits in there that seem chaotic or confused. I certainly am.)¹

There are parts of the human body that seem almost clear: these muscles pull here and the arm works like a sort of hinged system. Of course, when we try to work out just how those muscles work, and how they are controlled, things quickly get a lot more difficult. Still, if we break a bone or tear a muscle, our doctors can often hep repair the damage.

There are other concerns with our body that seem to resist fixing. Chronic diseases often respond for a while to treatment and then stop responding, as if the body is trying to preserve this undesirable situation.

There are things a company does that can often be improved. We can often find ways to optimize the assembly line or the shipping patterns. We can sometimes point out all the delays in getting something done, and remove those delays, resulting in useful results sooner and at lower cost.

Other times, the whole company seems to resist some seemingly sensible change, as if the company wants to preserve this obvious dysfunction.

We seem to make progress for a while on social matters, improving laws, making things more equitable, and then it seems as if a large segment of society is dedicated to preserving these situations that most of us see as really needing improvement.

Our whole economic system seems to work well for a while, with prosperity coming to be within the reach of all, or most, and then seemingly suddenly, the bulk of the wealth is back in the hands of a few and we seem to have reverted almost to feudalism or worse. Granted, we never really got close to equity, but for a while there it seemed that we were on the way. Today, a strong minority seem to be pushing us backward.

You can pick your poison. Wherever we look, the changes we’d like to make in our own lives, and much worse, the changes we’d like to make to improve society, seem to be resisted more and more strongly the closer we get to making the change we want. I think there is a reason for that, and it’s a daunting one.

Complex systems, the ones that we can recognize as systems, like ourselves, our companies, our countries, our planet, have what seems almost like a living desire to stay as they are, and often, to grow. I think it is part of the essential nature of such systems: they “want” to be organized, and they “want” to be organized much as they are.

Yard Sale Model

There is a fascinating economics simulation that I can’t find right now. I’ll try to find a link and include it. Failing that, maybe I’ll code it up myself. It’s called the yard sale model, and it goes like this:

We start with a number of agents all with equal wealth. We select two agents at random and an amount of money equal to a fixed percentage of the wealth of the smaller of the two. We flip a fair coin and transfer that much from loser to winner. Seems fair, doesn’t it? Everyone will tend to win and lose half the time so it should all average out.

But it does not. The longer you play, the wider becomes the disparity between individuals. Play long enough and one player has all the money. Remind you of anyone?