Complex Systems
Messing around with societies doesn't end well
Like most everybody, I have thoughts about this monumental week. Only six days ago, Donald Trump was shot while speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania. On Monday, he announced that J.D. Vance of Ohio would be his running mate. Last night, Trump accepted his third consecutive nomination as the Republican candidate for president.
I had the opportunity to chat with Elizabeth Farah and Josh Turnbow on WorldNetDaily’s live stream of the final night of the convention, so check it out here. I might clip the best parts later, but you can hear some of my thoughts throughout the stream:
In between writing articles and watching convention speeches this week, I’ve been working on my cars. One week ago today, my Nissan Altima started acting up, and I eventually found that the radiator had cracked. The replacement was delivered last night, so I installed it this morning and everything seems good as new.
I’ve also been struggling with issues in my Honda Odyssey’s air conditioning system. I’m more hesitant to mess with Freon than other systems, so I took it to the professionals, but they couldn’t find the problem either. There was clearly a leak somewhere, so they disconnected and reconnected every valve and joint. After all that, the compressor blew out, which created yet another problem. I went to the junkyard this week and found another compressor and I’m working on replacing that this weekend.
I enjoy working on my cars, despite the frustration, because every new problem teaches me something new about the way they work. These two projects have given me a greater understanding of how air conditioning cools the interior as well as how a radiator keeps the engine from overheating. Even so, I am still very much a novice.
Society is full of complex systems. Economies are multifaceted and depend on dozens, even hundreds of variables. Political systems can be volatile, and news and entertainment media have their own vast systems as well. At the center of our systems are human beings, which often defy all logic and reason.
The conceit shared by socialists, communists, and modern technocrats is that these systems can be controlled. Just change the interest rate a quarter of a point here, pass a new regulation there, and we can get the desired outcome, right?
Obviously not. Modern technocracy often resembles a cargo cult more than an auto mechanic fine tuning a machine. The one thing we can be sure of is that human nature doesn’t change. Human beings will always be driven by self interest, or at best, the interest of their families and communities. Political systems that ignore human nature — socialism, communism, and even libertarianism, to a degree — will always fail.
Many of the problems we see in society today stem from political leaders trying to control social and economic systems. Like an amateur auto mechanic who knows just enough to be dangers, technocrats play games with the lives of entire populations. The best political system is the one that doesn’t try to control the world. Let the market work, let people be free, and most things will sort themselves out.
Unrelated to the point you made, the poor AC performance combined with a blown out compressor is something I’ve seen when the airflow is blocked, either on the intake (more likely) or the outflow. AC systems need the airflow to provide heat to the (cold) coil or else things get wacky. I’d check the cabin air filter, located under the passenger glove box…good luck this weekend!
NOT ALL COMPLEXITY IS BAD
Complexity itself isn’t the issue. In nature, water cycles, nutrient systems, waste management, and scarce resource equilibrium are all achieved through organic yet almost infinitely complex systems. It is a common mistake to consider organic systems simple. They are highly complex.
They are also amazingly efficient. And that raises the real question: are our modern supply chains and production systems needlessly complex?
Answering that question requires us to ask what Is causing the complexity. In nature, complexity that results from an organism adapting to the billions of stimuli in its environment tends to be very efficient. But when a single new element is introduced that overwhelms the normal adaptation of the organism, complexity ensues that is highly inefficient.
Government mandates, therefore, create needless complexity. Sophisticated markets, a proliferation of raw material sources, and many fiercely competitive applications, do not lead to simplicity, but rather produce an organic (therefore efficient) form of complexity.
https://bengordoncambridgecapital1.medium.com/understanding-the-dynamics-of-modern-supply-chain-networks-fa3fa9966619