Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows; Diana Wright

Author:Donella H. Meadows; Diana Wright
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Critical thinking - Simulation methods, Management, Applied Sciences, System analysis, Pollution - Economic aspects - Simulation methods, Development, Social sciences - Simulation methods, Environmental education, Critical thinking, Simulation methods, Population, Environmental education - Simulation methods, Science, Decision making - Simulation methods, System Theory, Sustainable development - Simulation methods, Business & Economics, Pollution, System analysis - Simulation methods, Decision-Making & Problem Solving, Sustainable Development, Organizational Behavior, Economic development, Population - Economic aspects - Simulation methods, Education, Social sciences, Decision making, Economic development - Environmental aspects - Simulation methods
ISBN: 9781603580557
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2008-12-01T13:15:33+00:00

the information, incentives, disincentives, goals, stresses, and constraints that have an effect on specific actors.

— FIVE —

System Traps . . . and Opportunities

Rational elites . . . know everything there is to know about their self-contained technical or scientific worlds, but lack a broader perspective. They range from Marxist cadres to Jesuits, from Harvard MBAs to army staff officers. . . . They have a common underlying concern: how to get their particular system to function. Meanwhile . . . civilization becomes increasingly directionless and incomprehensible.

—John Ralston Saul,1 political scientist

Delays, nonlinearities, lack of firm boundaries, and other properties of systems that surprise us are found in just about any system. Generally, they are not properties that can or should be changed. The world is nonlinear. Trying to make it linear for our mathematical or administrative convenience is not usually a good idea even when feasible, and it is rarely feasible. Boundaries are problem-dependent, evanescent, and messy; they are also necessary for organization and clarity. Being less surprised by complex systems is mainly a matter of learning to expect, appreciate, and use the world’s complexity.

But some systems are more than surprising. They are perverse. These are the systems that are structured in ways that produce truly problematic behavior; they cause us great trouble. There are many forms of systems trouble, some of them unique, but many strikingly common. We call the system structures that produce such common patterns of problematic behavior archetypes. Some of the behaviors these archetypes manifest are addiction, drift to low performance, and escalation. These are so prevalent that I had no problem finding in just one week of the International Herald Tribune enough examples to illustrate each of the archetypes described in this chapter.

Understanding archetypal problem-generating structures is not enough. Putting up with them is impossible. They need to be changed. The destruction they cause is often blamed on particular actors or events, although it is actually a consequence of system structure. Blaming, disciplining, firing, twisting policy levers harder, hoping for a more favorable sequence of driving events, tinkering at the margins—these standard responses will not fix structural problems. That is why I call these archetypes “traps.”

But system traps can be escaped—by recognizing them in advance and not getting caught in them, or by altering the structure—by reformulating goals, by weakening, strengthening, or altering feedback loops, by adding new feedback loops. That is why I call these archetypes not just traps, but opportunities.

Policy Resistance—Fixes that Fail

I think the investment tax credit has a good history of being an effective economic stimulus,” said Joseph W. Duncan, chief economist for Dun & Bradstreet Corp. . . .

But skeptics abound. They say nobody can prove any benefit to economic growth from investment credits, which have been granted, altered, and repealed again and again in the last 30 years.

—John H. Cushman, Jr., International Herald Tribune, 19922

As we saw in Chapter Two, the primary symptom of a balancing feedback loop structure is that not much changes, despite outside forces pushing the system. Balancing loops stabilize systems; behavior patterns persist.

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