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How Systems Break: First They Slow Down
How Systems Break: First They Slow Down
Alternatively, we can cling to a state of denial, and the dominant system will be replaced by archetypal systems that are not necessarily positive.
Understanding our current socio-economy as a system of sub-systems enables us to project how and when unsustainable sub-systems will finally unravel.
The reality that cannot be spoken within the conventional media is that all the primary financial systems we believe are permanent and indestructible are actually on borrowed time.
One way to assess this decline of resilience is to look at how long it takes systems to recover when they are stressed, and to what degree they bounce back to previous levels.
A compelling article on this topic was recently published by The Atlantic: Nature’s Warning Signal: Complex systems like ecological food webs, the brain, and the climate all give off a characteristic signal when disaster is around the corner.
“The signal, a phenomenon called “critical slowing down,” is a lengthening of the time that a system takes to recover from small disturbances, such as a disease that reduces the minnow population, in the vicinity of a critical transition. It occurs because a system’s internal stabilizing forces—whatever they might be—become weaker near the point at which they suddenly propel the system toward a different state.”
Recent email exchanges with correspondent Bart D. (Australia) clued me into theDarwinian structure of this critical slowing down and loss of snapback (what we might characterize as a loss of resilience).
Beneath the surface dominance of one system are many other systems that are suppressed by the dominant system.
As the dominant system weakens / destabilizes / slows down, these largely invisible systems compete to occupy more of the ecosystem.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Success Is a Source of Destabilization
Success Is a Source of Destabilization
We tend to assume our system for understanding the cause of failure must be sound, because we’ve experienced Roaring Success for so long.
Rip-Roaring Success is a funny thing: we assume it’s the goal of every person, household, enterprise and nation, but we overlook that rip-roaring success can be as destabilizing as failure.
Rip-Roaring Success can destabilize in a number of ways.
One is the result of human nature. Those who didn’t make it onto the Roaring Success Bus feel the gap widening most keenly. Indeed, psychological studies find we assess our wealth and social position not by the actual material prosperity we have, but by the narrowing or widening of the perceived wealth gap with our peers.
This is precisely the situation in the U.S. and China. Both economies are supposedly expanding smartly, but the gains are concentrated in relatively few hands; the Roaring Success Bus has few seats.
The vast majority perceive themselves as being left behind. That is highly destabilizing.
The second is a function of systems and human nature.
Every extreme eventually tends to revert to the mean, which is another way of saying that extraordinary growth rates of profits, stock market advances, etc. that characterize Rip-Roaring Success eventually return to merely average rates of growth.
This inevitably disappoints all who thought outlier rates of growth were permanent features of the system: Apple iPhone sales, China’s GDP, etc.
This disappointment greatly exceeds the actual decline in the rate of growth, and the oversized reaction tips the system out of stability.
The collapse in the price of oil can be seen as an example: once oil was no longer behaving as expected, i.e. holding to $100/barrel, the reaction was swift and outsized.
The third is a function of organizations and systems.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
