# Thinking in Systems ## Metadata * Author: [Donella H. Meadows and Diana Wright](https://www.amazon.comundefined) * ASIN: B005VSRFEA * Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005VSRFEA * [Kindle link](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA) ## Highlights Systems theorists used to think that self-organization was such a complex property of systems that it could never be understood. Computers were used to model mechanistic, “deterministic” systems, not evolutionary ones, because it was suspected, without much thought, that evolutionary systems were simply not understandable. — location: [1355](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=1355) ^ref-23964 --- Complex systems can evolve from simple systems only if there are stable intermediate forms. The resulting complex forms will naturally be hierarchic. — location: [1411](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=1411) ^ref-7557 --- Hierarchies are brilliant systems inventions, not only because they give a system stability and resilience, but also because they reduce the amount of information that any part of the system has to keep track of. — location: [1414](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=1414) ^ref-8423 --- Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Every word and every language is a model. All maps and statistics, books and databases, equations and computer programs are models. So are the ways I picture the world in my head—my mental models. None of these is or ever will be the real world. — location: [1470](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=1470) ^ref-44488 --- Beguiling Events A system is a big black box Of which we can’t unlock the locks, And all we can find out about Is what goes in and what comes out. Perceiving input-output pairs, Related by parameters, Permits us, sometimes, to relate An input, output and a state. If this relation’s good and stable Then to predict we may be able, But if this fails us—heaven forbid! We’ll be compelled to force the lid! —Kenneth Boulding,2 economist — location: [1492](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=1492) ^ref-8801 --- The behavior of a system is its performance over time—its growth, stagnation, decline, oscillation, randomness, or evolution. — location: [1517](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=1517) ^ref-31581 --- System structure is the source of system behavior. System behavior reveals itself as a series of events over time. — location: [1527](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=1527) ^ref-35287 --- behavior-based econometric models are pretty good at predicting the near-term performance of the economy, quite bad at predicting the longer-term performance, and terrible at telling one how to improve the performance of the economy. — location: [1554](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=1554) ^ref-52925 --- Linear Minds in a Nonlinear World Linear relationships are easy to think about: the more the merrier. Linear equations are solvable, which makes them suitable for textbooks. Linear systems have an important modular virtue: you can take them apart and put them together again—the pieces add up. Nonlinear systems generally cannot be solved and cannot be added together.… Nonlinearity means that the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules.… That twisted changeability makes nonlinearity hard to calculate, but it also creates rich kinds of behavior that never occur in linear systems. —James Gleick, author of Chaos: Making a New Science3 — location: [1559](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=1559) ^ref-20588 --- Many traditional societies have some version of the Native American “potlatch,” a ritual in which those who have the most give away many of their possessions to those who have the least. — location: [2286](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=2286) ^ref-24388 --- tax laws written (unbeatably) to tax the rich at higher rates than the poor; charity; public welfare; labor unions; universal and equal health care and education; taxation on inheritance (a way of starting the game over with each new generation). — location: [2288](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=2288) ^ref-45531 --- It measures effort rather than achievement, gross production and consumption rather than efficiency. — location: [2474](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=2474) ^ref-42543 --- He suggested, at a time when oil imports were soaring, that there be a tax on gasoline proportional to the fraction of U.S. oil consumption that had to be imported. If imports continued to rise, the tax would rise until it suppressed demand and brought forth substitutes and reduced imports. If imports fell to zero, the tax would fall to zero. The tax never got passed. Carter also was trying to deal with a flood of illegal immigrants from Mexico. He suggested that nothing could be done about that immigration as long as there was a great gap in opportunity and living standards between the United States and Mexico. Rather than spending money on border guards and barriers, he said, we should spend money helping to build the Mexican economy, and we should continue to do so until the immigration stopped. That never happened either. — location: [3107](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=3107) ^ref-6771 --- Aid and encourage the forces and structures that help the system run itself. Notice how many of those forces and structures are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Don’t be an unthinking intervenor and destroy the system’s own self-maintenance capacities. Before you charge in to make things better, pay attention to the value of what’s already there. A friend of mine, Nathan Gray, was once an aid worker in Guatemala. He told me of his frustration with agencies that would arrive with the intention of “creating jobs” and “increasing entrepreneurial abilities” and “attracting outside investors.” They would walk right past the thriving local market, where small-scale business people of all kinds, from basket makers to vegetable growers to butchers to candy sellers, were displaying their entrepreneurial abilities in jobs they had created for themselves. Nathan spent his time talking to the people in the market, asking about their lives and businesses, learning what was in the way of those businesses expanding and incomes rising. He concluded that what was needed was not outside investors, but inside ones. Small loans available at reasonable interest rates, and classes in literacy and accounting, would produce much more long-term good for the community than bringing in a factory or assembly plant from outside. — location: [3130](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=3130) ^ref-49402 --- Garrett Hardin has suggested that people who want to prevent other people from having an abortion are not practicing intrinsic responsibility, unless they are personally willing to bring up the resulting child!7 These few examples are enough to get you thinking about how little our current culture has come to look for responsibility within the system that generates an action, and how poorly we design systems to experience the consequences of their actions. — location: [3161](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B005VSRFEA&location=3161) ^ref-43995 ---