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Musings Report 2021-3 1-16-21 Why Nations Under Pressure Fail
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Why Nations Under Pressure Fail
Nations under pressure fail in two ways, mechanisms illuminated by systems dynamics.
What do I mean by "under pressure"? Pressure can come from many sources: invasion, war, civil war, prolonged scarcities of essentials, natural disasters, financial crises, droughts, pandemics and so on.
Pressure diminishes security and the availability of resources, and exacerbates inequalities as political favoritism rewards "winners" (elites protected or enriched by state intervention) at the expense of the "losers," i.e. the commoners, who bear the brunt of job losses, financial risks, scarcities and deprivations.
1. In ecosystems, as the entire population suffers a reduction in resources, average individual fitness declines.
This is why droughts and floods that lead to famine are typically followed by pandemics, as those with weakened immune systems succumb to diseases which spread quickly in refugee camps, crowded cities (where starving rural populations congregate seeking food) and towns where basic sanitation crumbles under the onslaught of reduced tax revenues, scarcities and higher death rates.
In the modern era, even if the populace has enough food, heightened financial and social stresses lead to mental health breakdowns and other manifestations of strife.
As average individual fitness declines, pressures mount on social, political and economic systems. If these systems are ineffectual, weak, brittle, sclerotic or optimized for corruption and incompetence, these second-order effects may be enough to push the nation into non-linear disorder. (Non-linear = small actions can trigger large consequences in unpredictable ways.)
2. Robust, resilient "anti-fragile" systems achieve their dynamic equilibrium (i.e. stability) from what Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine called "order through fluctuation." This is a concept that manifests in a number of fields, including self-organization and natural selection, in which the constant flow of random mutations generates a pool of fluctuations / variability which enable the organism / species to adapt successfully to change.
When there is relatively little pressure from environmental changes, species can remain unchanged for tens of millions of years. The variability of mutations continues but there are few selective pressures to favor a mutation over the existing genome.
In eras of rapid environmental change, organisms can undergo an explosion of genetic experimentation that leads to new speciation or major adaptations. Once the most successful adaptations have spread through the species, the rate of adaptation returns to a lower level of selective pressure and experimentation. This is the punctuated equilibrium model of selective pressure and rapid adaptation.
We can understand fluctuation / variability as competition: mutations compete with the existing genetic (and epigenetic) coding and the most successful version tends to spread through the population.
In human political systems, this constant flow of competing fluctuations / variability is dissent, the competition of ideas.
Ironically, the first response of human leaders in centralized hierarchies (monarchies, totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, theocracies, plutocracies, kleptocracies, etc.) when their nation comes under pressure is to consolidate power even further into the hands of the few and immediately suppress dissent of any kind as a threat to the regime's power at the moment when the leaders feel it absolutely paramount to maintain or increase their control.
The irony is that this suppression of dissent from any quarter (Left, Right or Center) is the suppression of competing ideas and the "mutations" / variability that generate systemic order and stability. Stripping their system of dissent is in effect stripping it of the dynamics of successful adaptation and rapid evolution--precisely the traits a system needs to navigate eras of rapid change and rising pressure.
This is why so many nations and empires fail when they come under pressure: as their subsystems break down and fail, rather than encourage the competition of ideas and variability that is dissent, they suppress it, effectively dooming their nation to a rigid, brittle inability to adapt and evolve.
I see these dynamics in play globally. Many and perhaps most nation-states will fail as these dynamics reinforce each other in a non-linear explosion of unintended consequences as pressures mount.
Highlights of the Blog
Podcasts:
Salon #35: The problem is that nobody knows what "Kuleana" means -- hint: it's a Hawaiian word...
Posts:
Designed To Fail, Failure Guaranteed 1/15/21
Is 2021 an Echo of 1641? 1/13/21
Five "Interesting" Financial Tidbits 1/12/21
2021: If It Wasn't For Bad Luck, We Wouldn't Have No Luck At All 1/11/21
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
For the first time in years, homemade potstickers with hand-rolled wrappers--no, not by me--I don't have the necessary dexterity.
From Left Field
The Lab-Leak Hypothesis: For decades, scientists have been hot-wiring viruses in hopes of preventing a pandemic, not causing one. But what if...? (via LaserLefty)
"A lab accident -- a dropped flask, a needle prick, a mouse bite, an illegibly labeled bottle -- is apolitical. Proposing that something unfortunate happened during a scientific experiment in Wuhan -- where COVID-19 was first diagnosed and where there are three high-security virology labs, one of which held in its freezers the most comprehensive inventory of sampled bat viruses in the world -- isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s just a theory. It merits attention." (New York Magazine)
Hundreds of thousands more US Covid deaths possible amid vaccine chaos: Scant funding and scattered logistics have slowed distribution process as coronavirus case numbers rise, painting a dire picture for the future (Guardian-UK)
Where Trump Came From—and Where Trumpism Is Going (via Jim E.) -- behind WSJ paywall....
Jobless, Selling Nudes Online and Still Struggling (NYT.com)
In 2020, culling of the car herd accelerated (USAToday) -- say goodbye to the Honda Fit, everyone wants an SUV or pickup...
'Peak hype': why the driverless car revolution has stalled-- finally, some refreshing skepticism of the official techno-fantasy faith...
The 'black swan' Covid catastrophe shows us just how fragile our world is: It is clear now that there is a big downside to an economic model that pays little heed to sustainability
Overconfidence Meets Impatience To Set Up The Crash Of 2021
Back to the Classroom: The Best Teachers are the Students Themselves
Facial Recognition And Beyond: Journalist Ventures Inside China's 'Surveillance State' (NPR) (via Nicole D.)
Bitcoin: Is It Too Late? Part 2 of 2
Madame Tutli-Putli (animation, 17 min) (via LaserLefty)
"There is nothing new on Wall Street or in stock speculation. What has happened in the past will happen again, and again, and again." Jesse Livermore
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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