Responding on LinkedIn Global Foresight thread\u2026 on changes in the economic rules.<\/p>\n
The idea that economic change develops from local innovation, like biological evolution, is also a general rule for all other environmental processes. \u00a0Change is distributed and developmental in general, and *does not actually follow formulas*.<\/p>\n
The traditional natural science paradigm has tried to always explain things with formulas, as was so successful with mechanics and planetary motion. \u00a0 For complex systems with evolving parts like economics, it just doesn’t make sense.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a big subject obviously, but the kind of systems physics that truly informs economics is not that of Stephen Wolfram or any of the other old school systems theorists. \u00a0They all try to fix their inability to find general rules for nature by making smaller and smaller rules ones. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Nature doesn\u2019t seem to create physical processes from \u201csimple rules\u201d in any case. The evidence is not at all hard to gather, and quite the contrary. \u00a0What you mainly need to do is ask how things you observe work by themselves. \u00a0 If you don’t ask what rule *you’d* follow to predict them, but ask how they actually work, you get a starkly different view of what’s happening.<\/p>\n
What nature uses is \u201clocal developmental processes\u201d. \u00a0As we see them we always look for rules and generally find changing one.<\/p>\n
Nature\u2019s processes are far too complex and interwoven to be described by simple rules on any scale of organization, and every scale of organization in nature or in economies requires us to invent independent new modes of explanation.<\/p>\n
What we need is a way out of the trap of needing to rely on rules that trick us. We need to better understand how, when and why nature is experimenting with local developments that will inevitably change the way we\u2019ll need to describe how the world works. We need to learn how to pay attention.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve got a good method, well founded, but only works for me it seems, as others have yet to perceive the generality of it. It\u2019s basically that changes in size become changes in kind, and when they do the old formula won\u2019t show it because formulas don\u2019t change with scale, so you need to watch for either the general, specific, or intuitive, signs of \u2018dissonance\u2019 in how the old rules fit reality. www.synapse9.com<\/p>\n
So, I\u2019d generally agree with Wolfgang\u2019s comments on the change of scales in products and services, a visible trend toward more local products partly aided by more global communication. It also goes with energy becoming a more precious resource and transport becoming a bigger factor in prices.<\/p>\n
There seem to be a couple big catches though. One is that smaller scales don\u2019t get the advantage of economies of scale. Another is part of why the economies collapsed, a big new barrier to economic sustainability that I\u2019ve been unsuccessfully trying to explain to people for a while.<\/p>\n
Systems are organizational development processes, and as such follow developmental learning curves (reflecting nature\u2019s method of conserved addition). They both somewhat telegraph the future and approaching changes in direction.<\/p>\n
For the world economy there necessarily would be, and it seems we went past, a whole system point of diminishing returns for delivering energy products (i.e. most everything). From the ~1970\u2019s on, the use of investment began to provide less returns, creating more costly, complicated and scarce things instead of more inexpensive, easier and plentiful ones as before.<\/p>\n
Well\u2026 there\u2019s a down side to that for a system trusting that the most good for the investor is the most good for the system. It\u2019s no longer true, and hasn\u2019t been for some time.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re just not picking up on how the change in the proportions of nature\u2019s responses to us *indicate a change in kind* for economic development. Nature has a solution for that, switching to distribute investment earnings rather than concentrate them to create a mature vitality without growth, more local products and creativity.<\/p>\n
Following the old rules, multiplying scale is now producing more devolution than evolution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Responding on LinkedIn Global Foresight thread\u2026 on changes in the economic rules. The idea that economic change develops from local innovation, like biological evolution, is also a general rule for all other environmental processes. \u00a0Change is distributed and developmental in general, and *does not actually follow formulas*. The traditional natural science paradigm has tried to … Continue reading More devolution than evolution<\/span>