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Tag Archives: complexity
Population growth and food: A systems perspective
Population growth and food: A systems perspective In this age of the Anthropocene, it is necessary to look inward as well as outwards to find systemic solutions. People may or may not be “a plague on earth” as David Attenborough has stated, but we are without doubt the dominant force on this planet. Some introspection […]
Systems Thinking and How It Can Help Build a Sustainable World: A Beginning Conversation
Systems Thinking and How It Can Help Build a Sustainable World: A Beginning Conversation In Brief Humanity stands at a precipice. Overpopulation, resource scarcities, degraded ecosystem functioning from pollution and biodiversity loss, and anthropogenic climate change are damaging the life-supporting capacity of the planet. Diminishing returns on fossil fuel energy investments, combined with their dwindling […]
The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority
The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority (Chapter from Skin in the Game) How Europe will eat Halal — Why you don’t have to smoke in the smoking section — Your food choices on the fall of the Saudi king –How to prevent a friend from working too hard –Omar Sharif ‘s conversion — How to make a market […]
Why do we need to think and act more systemically?
Why do we need to think and act more systemically? The power and majesty of nature in all its aspects is lost on one who contemplates it merely in the detail of its parts and not as a whole. — Pliny the Elder An increasing number of people are beginning to understand that the world we participate […]
Why Systems Fail
Why Systems Fail Since failing systems are incapable of structural reform, collapse is the only way forward. Systems fail for a wide range of reasons, but I’d like to focus on two that are easy to understand but hard to pin down. 1. Systems are accretions of structures and modifications laid down over time.Each layer […]
The Worst Threat We Face Is Right Here At Home
The Worst Threat We Face Is Right Here At Home The Federal Reserve is ruining us Last week, volatility made a long-overdue return to the US and global equity markets. It began with a 2-day back-to-back violent drop. Day 3 saw a big rebound, swiftly followed by two more days of gut-wrentching losses. And then […]
Carmot Capital: “The Next Crisis Won’t Be A Flash Crash; It Will Be A Flash Flood”
Carmot Capital: “The Next Crisis Won’t Be A Flash Crash; It Will Be A Flash Flood” THE STRAIGHT FLUSH CRASH AN ILLUSION OF SIMPLICITY, AN ENTANGLEMENT OF COMPLEXITY Lately, there has been talk of so-called “elevated” markets. Equity markets, real estate markets and bond markets are indeed reaching new highs regularly. But how long will […]
Wisdom, Experience and Just-In-Time Thinking
Wisdom, Experience and Just-In-Time Thinking I try to remind myself each generation considers itself smarter than the previous iteration. If you follow the bouncing logic ball, this means the next (younger) generation believes itself smarter than its present day cohort. In essence the millennial generation of today feels superior to those older than them while […]
Old Age and Societal Decline
Old Age and Societal Decline People grow old and die. Civilizations eventually fail. For centuries amateur philosophers have used the former as a metaphor for the latter, leading to a few useful insights and just as many misleading generalizations. The comparison becomes more immediately interesting as our own civilization stumbles blindly toward collapse. While not […]
A Video Game Analogy to Our Energy Predicament
A Video Game Analogy to Our Energy Predicament The way the world economy is manipulated by world leaders is a little like a giant video game. The object of the game is to keep the world economy growing, without too many adverse consequences to particular members of the world economy. We represent this need for growth […]
Give it Another Century and We Will See How it Goes
Give it Another Century and We Will See How it Goes I got push back from readers when I dissed some flavorless suburban condo complexes in the context of urban agriculture on my blog. My observation was meant to be simple. We’re on a trajectory of ever larger, more complex, and highly leveraged institutional “solutions” to endemic social and economic […]
Global Climate Change & Its Link to Soil Organisms
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE & ITS LINK TO SOIL ORGANISMS When people think of the consequences of global warming, most jump to the melting ice caps and death of beloved polar bears. We know that as our Earth undergoes climate change, it’s adversely affecting the ecological balance in complex ways. For the first time, however, a […]
Nonlinear Complexity – Too Much for Most People to Comprehend
Nonlinear Complexity – Too Much for Most People to Comprehend QUESTION: Dear Mr. Martin Armstrong. Good day to you Martin. I know you are a very busy man, but I still like to send you emails time to time, hoping that you may read my email and respond to me. In regards to your recent post […]
Too Good For Too Long
Shutterstock Too Good For Too Long Over-extended systems contract quickly & violently I’m writing this from my home in Sonoma County at the end of an intense week of witnessing firsthand the devastation caused by the many current fires burning in northern California. While it’s hard to focus on anything other than the moment-to-moment developments […]
Could Market Complexity Trigger The Next Crash?
Could Market Complexity Trigger The Next Crash? Complex systems are all around us. By one definition, a complex system is any system that features a large number of interacting components (agents, processes, etc.) whose aggregate activity is nonlinear (not derivable from the summations of the activity of individual components) and typically exhibits hierarchical self-organization under […]
