Systems Thinking

Systems Theory can and does take a lot of inspiration from living systems, from the scale of cells (possibly smaller) all the way up to a galaxy.

The most pertinent application of this is in seeing the economy as a living system. To integrate so-called 'externalities', to see the economy in terms of constant flux of conditions, is necessarily to reevaluate the way we see it working and what we want it to work for.

Definitely, I believe the economy as a system is best captured through a personal lens. It’s constantly changing and each change has a ripple effect which changes our personal systems. The economy as a whole is a macro system and we are operating within it as micro systems.

The goal should always be to minimize waste and add value. I have applied this to my personal life: instead of trying to make one huge change at once, I make a bunch of little changes in different areas.

I think that's just a way to look at the economy, and a better way for me is to look at structures. It's structures that create and explain - we aren't seeing a rise in mental health problems because everyone individually is just handling their stuff worse, as much as there are structures that explain them (sh**ier bosses, working harder and longer for less, cost of living etc). These all interact closely with us on a personal level, especially when capitalism likes to commodify / marketise everything it touches, but the structures are what reveal themselves to be impactful or predictive.

When you say to minimize waste and add value, there's a lot of work needing to be done to calibrate how we mean those words. What is value? Value to whom? Is it something we can or should quantify, always? How do we assess long-term value i.e. where interests conflict between now and the future?

A lot of these problems have analogies between the personal and the political, the micro and the macro, the psychological and the structural. For example, on a personal level, do I always know what I want? Is that always the same as what's good for me? Am I going to want the same thing next year that I do today? What if I want to want it, or think I want it, but don't actually? Trying to work out what constitutes 'the good' is also a difficult thing on the macro scale. Do we want or need perpetual, maximal growth, at all costs? Do we want or think our lives will benefit from all these new techs being forced on us, or do we collectively resent overproduction & artificial scarcity acting as the carrot & the stick?

You’re focusing a great deal I think on the outcomes of the system rather than the processes/purposes themselves. The purpose of economic initiatives and regulation isn’t to destroy or cause harm but that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t cause harm for some or most individuals. As far as what causing harm is supposed to mean in the grand scheme of things - it’s all relative. We’re still operating in an economy where we are competing for scarce resources and that probably won’t change for a long time.

The first step in coming up with a tangible, changeable system that would be applicable to your personal life is by using measurable goals.

I think the example you gave of your boss is a good one, that would be an example of our micro political system. As far as changing the macro, there would need to be one governing body with those interests at heart, that would need to be agreed on by a majority of people (democratic), and put into action with the scrapping of personal interest and will to only pursue the interest of the assembly. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work like this. It especially doesn’t work like this when we think about personal interests (financial gain, power, etc) and the interest of smaller groups that operate independently.

In the last 100 years we have had some major advancements as humans, which have made our lives pretty great. Just look at human life expectancy, it’s going up, not down. Vaccines and other medical procedures seem pretty beneficial. Is there some bad as well? Sure. There’s bad in everything. We all have to deal with it, I try to focus on things I can change instead of worrying about things I can’t

Life expectancy overall is no longer going up in the USA, I believe, and has been going down for the working class in for a while. Ask me for a source.

How do you know what the purpose of these economic initiatives is? We can usually at best speculate on how the stated intentions vary with the actual outcomes. Economics has certainly been used as a weapon. The IMF and EU have been economic colonialists at different times, forcing deregulation on Greece and a variety of countries. You can think of this as 'gunboat economics' - the tendency for capitalist nations to seek to open up new, foreign markets, which they have effectively done to the entire world.

Again, a lot of these resources aren't in fact scarce. Some of them are, but with many of them we have far more than we need. With overproduction comes the need to drive up demand and stockpile resources in order to leverage artificial scarcity. So a lot of these products we've been sold, that supposedly make our lives pretty great, aren't that useful or necessary and serve primarily to distract us and keep us relatively poor - by giving us things to buy that our neighbours have.

Changing the macro doesn't involve any sort of One World Government. Whatever project you'd want to pursue will vary according to economic and geographic and cultural factors. No one-size-fits-all anti-capitalist project. None of the credible ideologies to replace capitalism claim as such (and if their supporters do so, they do so in error).

You can have solidarity and mutual aid, while different areas live under different customs or rules.
That is in fact far more democratic than aiming to use only one set of rules for everybody, which in reality amounts to minority rule.

One idea it may be useful to call into question is that neoliberal capitalism is an 'unregulated market'. It's not at all - it's highly regulated, in favour of high finance & banking & all the other sectors that have oversize influence. It amounts to a planned economy.