Marcus writes: > > Phil Henshaw wrote: > > >..well, unless you rely on how a system 'out of control' will take care > >of itself > > > The basic mechanism is evolution. Fit organizations survive > and weak ones do not.
Except you leave out the long list of 'control' mechanisms where weakness is the enduring strength. A manager who knows when to let things develop unhindered is a far more useful person to have around than one that thinks the whole world needs to be micro-managed, for example. > As organizations become more fit, they control more of the ecology. Isn't the survival of the fittest concept that unfit organizations disappear, leaving the impression that surviving organizations are more fit, a organization replacement rather than improvement idea? As we've been discussing about civilizations, it's frequently the diverse cultures able to follow the lead of any part with a useful point of view that survive environmental change by adapting without replacement. Is that Darwinian selection?, or something else? > It's a basic requirement of any organization to fight for its > survival or get squeezed out. That depends partly on the environment. It's certainly valid in the present competitive environment which ensures that every business's profits will be used to multiply its competition, but might not necessarily follow were that not the case. > When dominant organizations stop > fighting, e.g. by forming cartels, they become fat and more vulnerable to attack or > systematic intervention by government (much the same kind of the same > thing). Of course the cartels can have strong influence over the > government and thus inequity can persist. Sure, what survives is not necessarily what's 'fittest' in any holistic sense, and prospering by restraint of trade (or holding power by slandering other people's ideas) produces a sick business. There's lots of motivation to shut competitors out of one's markets by any means available, but the line between healthy competition and unhealthy restraint of trade is fuzzy. Should businesses that ignore or hide their contributions to global warming, for example, be penalized by taxing their wares? Or should we just use the survival test to judge economic systems in which businesses dominate that ignore the value of the commons? I think price mechanisms measure some of the important things, and we need a variety of other measures so that people's choices can reflect their whole values. One major problem with this ideal is that there's something wrong with politics, a dirty business where people habitually cheat and slander each other while being exceedingly timid about admitting their uncertainties, rather than openly collaborating from different points of view... From my natural systems view it appears one thing missing is the assumption that every complaint probably has some valid basis, in that we all seem to have the same equal basis for our own views, i.e. that ultimately we all made them up based on an independent whole life experience of which no one else is aware! :-) > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
