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Nafeez Ahmed on Synchronous Failure and Post-Pandemic Systems Change
Nafeez Ahmed on Synchronous Failure and Post-Pandemic Systems Change
As the pandemic grows, governments and communities are not only struggling to minimize loss of life and protect our fragile healthcare and economic systems, they are wrestling with questions about how we can recover when this storm eventually passes.
But how many people are thinking about the larger context of this crisis? How many recognize that this pandemic—or some other shock to our interconnected and brittle global systems—could trigger a massive “phase change,” and utterly remake the world as we know it?
I spoke with investigative journalist and systems thinker Nafeez Ahmed about these critical questions.
Nafeez and I discuss frameworks for understanding how the pandemic relates to the larger, systemic environmental, energy, economic, and political challenges we face—including Thomas Homer-Dixon’s concept of “Synchronous Failure,” Joseph Tainter’s “Collapse of Complex Societies,” C.S. Holling’s “Adaptive Life Cycle,” and Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine.” But far from being an abstract, academic exploration, Nafeez and I explore the real-world implications of these forces at play, and provide a call-to-action when we re-enter a world that has been transformed by COVID-19.
Please give it a watch or if you’d rather give it a listen on your favorite podcasting app, we’ve also released the interview on Crazy Town. Oh, and share with your friends and loved ones if you find it worth a listen.
Goldman Issues Shocking Warning On Systemic Threat From Supply-Chain Collapse
Goldman Issues Shocking Warning On Systemic Threat From Supply-Chain Collapse
Having desperately avoided any discussion of a worst-case coronavirus scenario – or frankly any scenario that did not involve all time highs for stocks – for over a month, suddenly the market is obsessing with what a complete paralysis of China could mean for the world, not just in terms of millions in small and business companies shuttering and the financial sector collapsing under the weight of trillions in bad loans, but specifically how global supply chain linkages could cripple commerce across the world as corporations suddenly find themselves unable to find economic alternatives if China indeed goes dark.
However, as long-time readers may recall, the problem with trying to model supply chains shocks, especially in today’s “Just In Time” world, is that this task is virtually impossible as such a simulation very quickly reaches impossible complexity, something we first described in 2012 in our article “A Study In Global Systemic Collapse“, which referred to the FEASTA article titled “‘Trade-Off: Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion” which showed that contagion within supply chains could quickly lead to wholesale, systemic collapse due to non-linear bifurcations between sequential phase states.
Not for nothing, this is how we described the study back in 2012: “think of the attached 78-page paper as Nassim Taleb meets Edward Lorenz meets Malcom Gladwell meets Arthur Tansley meets Herman Muller meets Werner Heisenberg meets Hyman Minsky meets William Butler Yeats, and the resultant group spends all night drinking absinthe and smoking opium, while engaging in illegal debauchery in the 5th sub-basement of the Moulin Rouge circa 1890.”
And while there was far more in the report, one section was notable – the one discussing how relentless central bank intervention has made the global system far more brittle, or as Taleb would call it, extremely not anti-fragile:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How Systems Collapse
How Systems Collapse
This is how systems collapse: faith in the visible surface of abundance reigns supreme, and the fragility of the buffers goes unnoticed.
I often discuss systems and systemic collapse, and I’ve drawn up a little diagram to illustrate a key dynamic in systemic collapse. The key concepts here are stability and buffers. Though complex systems are never static, but they can be stable: that is, they ebb and flow within relatively stable boundaries supported by reserves, i.e. buffers.
In ecosystems, this ebb and flow is expressed in feedback loops between the weather, environment and plant/animal species which inhabit the ecosystem. Ideal weather/food conditions may spark a rise in an insect population, for example, which then enables an increase in insect-predator populations (fish, birds, frogs, etc.) which then increases the consumption of the insects and reduces the impact of the higher insect population.
Fluctuations within this dynamic generate feedback that tends to reduce extremes and restore dynamic equilibrium.
In the human sphere, ideal weather increases crop yields which then enables a larger human population. When lean years replace fat years, the populace suffers from a lack of calories and births decline and deaths from disease rise as weakened individuals are more vulnerable to infections, etc.
In this example, reserve supplies of water and food are buffers that smooth out periods of want and instability. Suppose the populace depends on a river for irrigation and human consumption (cooking, bathing, etc.). If the river runs low, the populace relies on wells for reserves of water. In good harvests, grain is set aside for lean harvests; the wells and grain stores are buffers which can be drawn down to restore stability to a stressed system.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
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 arrangements that are not necessarily positive.
The reality that cannot be spoken is that all the financial systems we believe are permanent are actually on borrowed time. One way we can judge 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.
Another is to look at the extremes the system reaches without returning to “normal”: for example, interest rates, which rather than normalizing after seven years of suppression are being pushed to negative rates by increasingly desperate central bankers.
The key insight here is that financial systems and indeed economies function as natural systems. Central planning/central banker manipulation appears to control the system, but this control masks the reality that the system is increasingly fragile and prone to collapse, not just from internal dynamics but as a direct result of central bank manipulation.
The warning signs of fraying resilience are all around us.
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 the Darwinian structure of this critical slowing down and loss of snapback (what we might call a loss of reslience).
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“Global System Catastrophe” Is Key Threat To Human Civilization
“Global System Catastrophe” Is Key Threat To Human Civilization
– Oxford Scientists Cite “Global System Catastrophe” Among 12 Plausible Threats To Civilization
– “Global System Catastrophe” More Of A Possibility Than Most Western People Suspect
– Study Described As A “Scientific Assessment About The Possibility Of Oblivion”
– Other Threats Include Nuclear War, Environmental Degradation, Geological Events and Out of Control Technology
Recent research undertaken by scientists in Oxford University to identify possible threats to human civilisation has identified “system-wide failures caused by the structure of the network” as one of twelve major threats.
Global economic collapse, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology have been named alongside nuclear war, ecological catastrophe and super-volcano eruptions as “risks that threaten human civilization” in a report by the Global Challenges Foundation.
The world’s economic and political systems face systematic risks because of their intricate and interconnected natures. The researchers say more work needs to be done to clarify what parts of the system could collapse and destroy western civilization.
The authors of the study say it is about “how better understanding of the magnitude of the challenges can help the world to address the risks it faces, and can help to create a path towards more sustainable development.”
The foundation was set up in 2011 with the aim of funding research into risks that threaten humanity, and encouraging more collaboration between governments, scientists and companies to combat them.
Apart from failure of the systems of civilization the report also looks at the threats posed by the following:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
