Singularly optimized systems aren't robust

I have spoken a bit about the Invisible Hand – Adam Smith’s metaphor for the unseen forces that balance markets and distribute income in free society.

I have seen it in action (we all have regardless of knowing it or not) and it works to our benefit and detriment depending on who we are, what decisions we make and what money we have.

It’s a system, that we’ve tried to optimize for personal gain, which does work, especially if you have a lot of money. But the market is a gamble, which is played by a bunch of people who are unwittingly risk adverse – they want the game spun to optimize their chance of winning.

The system is so sensitive to the slightest turn of the screw that big things, which are complex to predict, send it into collapse.

We see this pattern repeated in many systems, because the human race has been so successful at Analysis and optimization, we push it to the max, everywhere, never thinking as to why some things always seem to incorporate “waste” or “lag time”.

The reason is, we are human. We need some lubrication in our systems. We don’t work like machines. We need to build in the ability for things to not go as planned. We need to understand that we don’t get 8 hours of work from and 8 hour day all of the time. We need to have systems that are robust enough to care for (food, medical attention) the poorest as well as the wealthiest among us.

I’m talking about Capitalism but with Social Responsibility built into our plan, our laws.

We cannot rely on business to do it. Business has the goal of optimizing capital. Fine. Good. But government cannot have the same singular goal. It needs to maintain balance in the economy and take care of every citizen. Its goal needs to be running a sustainable, durable, robust system that helps people and works with business in a balanced way.

It means businesses need to pay taxes. It means the wealthy need to pay taxes.

And in our other systems – food supply, medical supply and yes, toilet paper supply, we need to be able to build programs that makes sure the poor and elderly have access to necessities.

We shouldn’t need to go into massive special modes to ensure we can survive a pandemic. Or a market change that freaks out wall street. It should be part of our planning.

We know we’re not perfect. So why not plan for it?