There are bad actors - people who deliberately do or say the wrong thing for malicious purposes. There are also strategists who have learnt how to game the system. The net result appears to be a concerted, planned effort to create the problems we have in the world today, when in reality, they have mostly emerged is a result of complex issues - driven mostly by human behaviour and accidents - and that can’t simply be ‘engineered’.
There are players who are trying to (for example) avoid a move away from oil, but it’s naive to think that the conflict and environmental problems that it causes have a solution that could allow them to be ‘fixed’. There is a cost to everything we do, and there are always winners. Same goes for war, water or poverty.
I think your perspective is that the winners are taking home a disproportionate amount of the winnings - I agree.
Michael Jackson [1] is the another Systems Thinking guru, and argues that ‘wicked problems’ like these can never be solved, and it’s irresponsible to claim otherwise.
Instead, it’s only possible to improve the situation for those involved in it. It takes time, effort, leadership, a change in mindset - and almost always sacrifice - to instigate real change. You can’t just tell the bad guys to do the right thing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Jackson_(systems_scientis...
Can you point to a more detailed reading about his arguments for this position?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_System_Development
Michael Christopher Jackson n.1951 and Michael Anthony Jackson n.1936 Both British born. Both prominent in systems design and theory.
And who knows, their model could be correct. But the unwillingness to consider "tradeoffs" makes me think it's just political angst and not a serious take
1) A one time pill that not only cured any existing cancers in a user, but also permanently prevented any further ones. And to make it even better, it also is somehow relatively simple meaning it could be easily cloned and made extremely and globally affordable.
2) A complex (enabling a defacto monopoly on production), lengthy, and expensive treatment program that is 100% effective at curing any 1 type of cancer - that must be repeated per cancer and per individual as they emerge.
I do genuinely think that all big pharma execs would choose #2. They'd probably rationalize it as something like 'Well I'm curing cancer, and now I'll ensure we have the funds to continue working to solve even more illnesses, and everybody wins." So I'm sure in their minds they aren't villains, but that's because humans are just really really good at cognitive dissonance.
I guess the question then is: what major world problems can be fixed by eliminating / preventing bad actors, and what problems require a different solution?
I'm not claiming to know the answer
Do provide a concrete example so I can unpack it.
I'd bet even the authors of the 2 books you've hinted at wouldn't even make that claim. I'm sure they would see many of the problems listed as systems-level issues
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-tha...
Could you specify which ones? I'm curious who's profiting from hunger, poverty, economic instability, and unemployment -- and thereby perpetuating it (sounds like major speculation).
Maybe war gets propagated by nations military industries (though that's probably only sometimes true). The remaining problems listed (environmental damage, drug addiction, chronic disease) seems like second order consequences of other pursuits, not problems perpetuated for their own sake.
Whether they're first or second order consequences might seem like a semantics debate, but it's what distinguishes your model (problems are deliberate) from Donella Meadows model (externalities, collective action, structural issues, etc). And both models suggest very different solutions (police bad actors versus change structures/incentives)
> hunger
There's a huge agro-food industry that profits from hunger. Its profits depend on subsistence farming being impossible or illegal so that's what they do: outlaw peasant seeds (like in France), buy all land from the owners until the population can't feed itself and needs the supermarket to survive, arrange for economic structures that allow for massive foreign subsidies (eg. EU CAP) to compete with the few local farmers left...
> poverty, economic instability, and unemployment
Temp work is another major industry that can only flourish when better employment conditions are not available to the workers. For those who don't find work and/or caught in the judicial system for some reason, the prison industrial complex will make profit on their incarceration. Once incarcerated, some companies will employ prisoners without working rights and protections in quasi-slavery conditions, making a ton more money than if they needed proper salaries and safety conditions. To give an example, here in France prison labor is usually < 1€/hour compared to ~10€/hour minimum wage.
> drug addiction
European settlers in America used alcohol as a weapon against natives. Later, during the cold war, the CIA organized for crack cocaine to destroy black neighborhoods social tissue, while financing the "contras" fascist militias.
We could go on. I'm not saying reforming incentives is wrong, it's certainly part of the solution. But it would be very naive to think that alone is enough to change society because nobody would want to harm others. Fascists very much exist and very much want to harm others, not necessarily out of a profit motive but also sometimes out of pure hatred.
And even if we suppose bad actors are 100% responsible for the world's problems, the systems-level analysis (if I understand it correctly) would still suggest that the solution is "structural" (cut off all the leverage points that allow bad actors to manipulate institutions)
Say, in the case of the opioid crisis (which most of us agree was caused in large part from a bad actor), do we abolish pharmaceutical companies, or do we abolish the structural pathways (marketing, lobbying) that let them do bad things?
I lean towards the latter, but don't know if it's any more feasible than the former
Private prisons profit directly from incarceration rates (crime)
Sugar factories profit from selling unhealthy food.
now, to what extend do you think the majority of the world's problems are caused by (a) bad actors, versus (b) structural issues or resource constraints. 100%? 70%? 30%?
What we devote our attention to depends very much on that question (as well as what changes are easy to implement)
Sugar factories are only able to sell because people are willing to buy. So the question becomes: How to make people less willing to consume unhealthy food?
Examine where this intuition comes from. Firstly, the problem is not "too many people are committing crimes", it's "prisons are profiting from people committing crimes", which creates a perverse incentive. Secondly, as a result of this perverse incentive, judges and lawmakers are incentivized to write and enforce laws such that the business model of incarceration is maintained. So the question of "How to make people commit less crimes?" is misaimed; the problem isn't with the people committing the crimes, it's with the people defining what is and is not a crime.
But it still isn't clear that the other major problems mentioned (world hunger, economic instability, environmental damage, chronic disease, war) can be eliminated purely by eliminating bad actors
Regarding incarceration, when there is initiative to give prison time, instead of providing help (in case of light drug use) you get more people in prison.
Of course you can always say that it's up to people to make a final decision, but we arguing here that there are powerful interests groups that trying to influence the outcome of everyday decisions that lead us to before mentioned outcomes.
They make empirically false claims for what the local economic impact is going to be by being obtuse.
I know this because I was involved with meetings with one trying to move into my home town.
I got them to admit the first in public meeting but they punted on the second.
And if you think there's a direct connection between crimes and prison terms, you are just under informed.
There are lots of people in prison who have long paid for their crimes but are still there because they are victims of their time (Cash)
Keeping people in prison is incentivized for private prisons.
But do you see the value that comes from thinking about this as a structural problem? Until we completely cut off the pathway that gives private interest groups access to the levers of criminal law, bad actors will keep emerging
Oh no no, it already started with a flawed premise. There are big players that deliberately created many of those problems and that have much to profit with their persistence. You want to talk about change, please go ahead. Just don’t be blind to those who are responsible for the problems and the motivations behind them.