Supply side sustainability: A hierarchical theoretical model for incorporating technology [Timothy F.H. Allen, ISSS 1998 Plenary Session, July 21/98]

These notes are a rough transcription, prepared as each individual presenter and/or commentator spoke at the ISSS 1998 conference. Gaps and errors have likely occurred. For more accurate citations, please consult the original presenters. These notes have been contributed to the ISSS by David Ing, of the IBM Advanced Business Institute (sabi@systemicbusiness.org).

Tim Allen, U. of Wisconsin

Talk about emergent systems:

• Differentiate between systems which evolve vs. ones which emerge.
• (More in another talk later)

• No new species: the population has merely behaved.

• Thermodynamic emergence.
• Biology discusses evolution a lot, but not emergence.

• e.g. a filled toilet will produce a whirlpool, which is emergent from the air and water; a partly-empty toilet just dribbles.

Evolution solves a problem, then moves to the next problem, and the next problem ...

• Creates a flat hierarchy, which is complicated (as opposed to complex).

• elaboration not of structure, but of ?
• Complexity emerges from hierarchy.
• Need the elaborate structure, pay in advance from energy.

• The amount of material you get is concave function.
• Pick the lowest apple on the tree, but usually quit before you need a cherry-picker.
• Society tends to work evolutionary
• Before the average product gets to you, the marginal product turns down first.
• The Spanish, bringing gold from the new world, stopped when the marginal product turned down.

• e.g. health care system.
• Before 1920, a trip to a doctor was a bad thing.
• In the 1940s, got benefit from anti-biotics
• Now, diminishing returns from heart transplants.
• Same for engines

Historical technologies:

• 1000 B.C., strength from irrigation society.
• When you blow harder in a forge, it produces more heat (up to a point)
• There' s a lot of places where iron is available, as compared to brass.
• Iron age was used for agricultural instruments, not weapons.
• 192 B.C., iron used to cut down forests
• Economic sustainability doesn't matter until you get a lot of humans around.
• Mosaics of patches (fires in small areas) in a contextual matrix (a large forest).
• Human unfortunately remove all of the context (i.e. cut down the entire forest).
• 145 B.C. Greeks were building walls, irrigating -- which is equivalent to what trees do
• Unfortunately, Romans put Greeks into slavery after Punic wars
• Greeks had the design right
• 362 A.D.: Roman expansionary period, lots of roads
• 406 A.D. and 476 A.D., the western Roman empire declined.
• It wasn't the barbarians: in Gaul, it was the same Roman who changed his name to a Germanic name
• Because the Romans taxed up to 60%, they invited the barbarians in, gave up civilization, and were only taxed 10%
• 562 A.D.: Justinian wars took most of the Mediterranean, but at a huge cost.
• 737 A.D.: Byzantine empire, run out of silver.
• Radically reduced size of the government, by giving large areas of land.
• Soldiers killed generals to return to empire.
• 1028 AD: Byzantine Empire was solid, Arabs took everything else around
• Fewer people in Arab states than any other time in history.
• Starting taxing Armenia -- bad old tax-and-spend
• 1030 AD: Byzantine Empire almost gone.

The Principles of Supply Side Sustainability

• A tree is wonderful thing: can last 200 to 500 years.

• Manage for the whole ecosystem function, not the resource.
• Don't just put gas in a car, you also need oil.
• Make sure the ecosystem is oil.

3. Systems with a workable context will subside the effort for ...

4. Always use positive feedbacks to achieve system change.

• That means that commerce in modern society.
• Government can only control the size of its own infrastructure if it is a catalyst rather than a mover.

• Agriculture: capture the sun
• Imperialism: capture your neighbour's sun
• Industry: capture fossil sun
• Problem after WWI was the soldiers returning, promoting fascism.
• Americans did GI bill instead
• Information: stretch the energy
• Information quality?
• 90% of the Internet is information pollution.
• Getting to limits of Moore's law, doubling computer power every year.

• Ph.D. students are like civil-service exams: little is well taught, and 50% will be obsolete in 5 years.
• Academics are good at standards, but not effectiveness; Business is good at effectiveness, but not at standards.

Question

• Can't see beyond quality issue.
• Carl Sagan was motivated by the 1939 World's Fair, the last show of industrial society, which is focused on growth.
• Scared.
• Feel that 6 billion people could be wiped out by a virus.
• If could shorten blips so that two parts of curves cross:
• Growth by intercession: more complicated and complex, simultaneously.
• Maybe sustainable, but can't afford not to try.

• Kaufman and Sabelli: Need both positive and negative feedback.
• Universities and businesses are a mutualism: both universities and businesses change, neither will stay the same as their are.

• When Romans had a famine, 10 miles inland from the ocean, there's nothing they could do about it.
• Having a daughter in the first world is an ecological disaster: she requires the resource of 20 people in the third world.
• NAFTA has problems, but it does move jobs -- not necessarily the way we like it -- but this is a more global system.

• Industrial revolution idea: the shuttle runs on 1970s technology.
• Distances are too big, there aren't enough resources on our planet.

• Supply-side is not about energy, need to look to whole ecosystem.