Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System

[etienne]

Just found a great article by Donella Meadows.
https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/

Donella Meadows has worked on the Limits to Growth model, so she has a systemic view of our world. To stop AGW, we will have to change the system, but since the article has an important political content, I preferred to publish it here that in the policy and solutions.

PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM
(in increasing order of effectiveness)

12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards).
11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows.
10. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks, population age structures).
9. The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change.
8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against.
7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops.
6. The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to information).
5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints).
4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure.
3. The goals of the system.
2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises.
1. The power to transcend paradigms.

And:

7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops.
A negative feedback loop is self-correcting; a positive feedback loop is self-reinforcing. The more it works, the more it gains power to work some more. The more people catch the flu, the more they infect other people. The more babies are born, the more people grow up to have babies. The more money you have in the bank, the more interest you earn, the more money you have in the bank. The more the soil erodes, the less vegetation it can support, the fewer roots and leaves to soften rain and runoff, the more soil erodes. The more high-energy neutrons in the critical mass, the more they knock into nuclei and generate more.

Positive feedback loops are sources of growth, explosion, erosion, and collapse in systems. A system with an unchecked positive loop ultimately will destroy itself. That’s why there are so few of them. Usually a negative loop will kick in sooner or later. The epidemic will run out of infectable people — or people will take increasingly strong steps to avoid being infected. The death rate will rise to equal the birth rate — or people will see the consequences of unchecked population growth and have fewer babies. The soil will erode away to bedrock, and after a million years the bedrock will crumble into new soil — or people will stop overgrazing, put up checkdams, plant trees, and stop the erosion.

In all those examples, the first outcome is what will happen if the positive loop runs its course, the second is what will happen if there’s an intervention to reduce its self-multiplying power. Reducing the gain around a positive loop — slowing the growth — is usually a more powerful leverage point in systems than strengthening negative loops, and much preferable to letting the positive loop run.

Population and economic growth rates in the world model are leverage points, because slowing them gives the many negative loops, through technology and markets and other forms of adaptation, all of which have limits and delays, time to function. It’s the same as slowing the car when you’re driving too fast, rather than calling for more responsive brakes or technical advances in steering.

Another example: there are many positive feedback loops in society that reward the winners of a competition with the resources to win even bigger next time. Systems folks call them “success to the successful” loops. Rich people collect interest; poor people pay it. Rich people pay accountants and lean on politicians to reduce their taxes; poor people can’t. Rich people give their kids inheritances and good educations; poor kids lose out. Anti-poverty programs are weak negative loops that try to counter these strong positive ones. It would be much more effective to weaken the positive loops. That’s what progressive income tax, inheritance tax, and universal high-quality public education programs are meant to do. (If rich people can buy government and weaken, rather than strengthen those of measures, the government, instead of balancing “success to the successful” loops, becomes just another instrument to reinforce them!)

The most interesting behavior that rapidly turning positive loops can trigger is chaos. This wild, unpredictable, unreplicable, and yet bounded behavior happens when a system starts changing much, much faster than its negative loops can react to it. For example, if you keep raising the capital growth rate in the world model, eventually you get to a point where one tiny increase more will shift the economy from exponential growth to oscillation. Another nudge upward gives the oscillation a double beat. And just the tiniest further nudge sends it into chaos.

I don’t expect the world economy to turn chaotic any time soon (not for that reason, anyway). That behavior occurs only in unrealistic parameter ranges, equivalent to doubling the size of the economy within a year. Real-world systems can turn chaotic, however, if something in them can grow or decline very fast. Fast-replicating bacteria or insect populations, very infectious epidemics, wild speculative bubbles in money systems, neutron fluxes in the guts of nuclear power plants. These systems are hard to control, and control must involve slowing down the positive feedbacks.

In more ordinary systems, look for leverage points around birth rates, interest rates, erosion rates, “success to the successful” loops, any place where the more you have of something, the more you have the possibility of having more.

[kassy]

Or you could just read the science. In the 1950ies we knew this would happen and we still went for it.

The prime place to intervene is the self. Can you keep supporting the system or do you need to safe your grandchildren?

Can you keep on being a consumer of destruction?

[morganism]

(play the game. make your choices. see the results)

https://play.half.earth/

[Neven]

I want to put a cap on wealth first. How do I do that?

[morganism]

Neven , i like the idea of not having inheritable wealth. Studies in europe on elite families seem to have shown that that is the anchor for influence, and subversion of law for centuries. My most radical theory is to limit ownership of real property to 3 titles. Even more radical would for women to be the only title holders. If every woman was given a title to a house when they turned 18, they could vote with their feet, leaving a country if they didn't respect and protect them. If they wanted to travel, they could lease out their property (or their factory) to even a lowly man, or a business, if they had gotten a factory property (10 yr limit?) and use that income to build or lease in another country.

My personal fav is to go to the point where corporations can't own anything, and have to dissolve to the employees after 10 yrs, or after they have accomplished what was their purpose in their Charter.

IIRC, Corps where originally all incorporated to accomplish a specific task, usually an exploration/shipping, to share costs and insurance, or a charity. So basically what we would consider a Sub S type.
In the USA, first major conglomerate was the Five Companies to build Hoover Dam. They needed more than one comp to accomplish it, and allowed multiples to come together to get the job done (with no labor protections either, but another story. PBS has good vid on it)

If a Corp can't own anything, then they have no reason to go on forever, and consume everyone else around them. Properties, IP, R and D, licensing, would have much less influence over personhood then.
(well, that didn't work out in China, but that is Govt control)

This is one of the major dangers in AI. It is prob going to allow rich folks to live at least 200 yrs, and control more and more wealth, and concentrate ownership of more real property and IP, and reduce any competition, by lawyers or other less nefarious means. Regulatory capture has already happened.

[Rodius]

Neven , i like the idea of not having inheritable wealth. Studies in europe on elite families seem to have shown that that is the anchor for influence, and subversion of law for centuries. My most radical theory is to limit ownership of real property to 3 titles. Even more radical would for women to be the only title holders. If every woman was given a title to a house when they turned 18, they could vote with their feet, leaving a country if they didn't respect and protect them. If they wanted to travel, they could lease out their property (or their factory) to even a lowly man, or a business, if they had gotten a factory property (10 yr limit?) and use that income to build or lease in another country.

My personal fav is to go to the point where corporations can't own anything, and have to dissolve to the employees after 10 yrs, or after they have accomplished what was their purpose in their Charter.

IIRC, Corps where originally all incorporated to accomplish a specific task, usually an exploration/shipping, to share costs and insurance, or a charity. So basically what we would consider a Sub S type.
In the USA, first major conglomerate was the Five Companies to build Hoover Dam. They needed more than one comp to accomplish it, and allowed multiples to come together to get the job done (with no labor protections either, but another story. PBS has good vid on it)

If a Corp can't own anything, then they have no reason to go on forever, and consume everyone else around them. Properties, IP, R and D, licensing, would have much less influence over personhood then.
(well, that didn't work out in China, but that is Govt control)

This is one of the major dangers in AI. It is prob going to allow rich folks to live at least 200 yrs, and control more and more wealth, and concentrate ownership of more real property and IP, and reduce any competition, by lawyers or other less nefarious means. Regulatory capture has already happened.

Women are no different to men... so handing them power gives the same results as men having it.

Women don't have any special powers that make them better people than men... a complete myth on every level and doing stuff like you suggested changes nothing but who gets to abuse who.

[morganism]

There are fewer women psychopaths, and they tend to isolate the ones they have, not empower them.

[morganism]

The brazen optimism of Kathryn Murdoch’s plan to save Earth

Rupert’s liberal-leaning daughter-in-law thinks a doom-and-gloom attitude is thwarting climate action. She and Ari Wallach have a new documentary promoting a brighter future.
(...)
“A Brief History of the Future,” a six-part series that debuted on PBS last week, showcases “some of the people that are working really hard to make it go right,” she said, whether in food production, clean energy, pro-democracy or economics.
(snip)
Challenging the status quo is an approach the documentary applauds. In another segment, designer Pupul Bisht says imagining a different future is a “deeply political act … putting a lot of power in the hands of people who are, in the traditional system, left out of the equation.”

It’s a formidable statement. And given that people who have power typically do not volunteer to share it, viewers might understandably be left with a sense of the radical — or even the revolutionary?

“We don’t use those words,” Murdoch said. “If you’re talking of revolution, that means you’re toppling something.”

Wallach allowed that there’s “a role for protesting and external pressure.” But their documentary is more about effecting change from the inside, he said: “How do you make systems work? How do you build alternative systems to complement but not abdicate the current ones, right?”

“Our focus here was on creating something curious, hopeful and inviting regardless of a person’s background or personal politics,” Wallach wrote later in an email. “We see the unfinished work before us as deeply pragmatic for all of us instead of simply ideological.”

Which, to George Monbiot — a British journalist and environmental activist whose riffs on historical movements are featured in the documentary — is disappointing.

Any conversation about the future, he said, demands some straight talk about capitalism. “Capitalism is not the market. It’s an exploitative system laid on top of the market,” he told The Post. “People find it impossible to imagine the end of capitalism, because they don’t know what capitalism is.” And if you don’t confront capitalism, he added, “then the change you can achieve will be very limited.”
Advertisement

Monbiot, who has not yet seen “Brief History” — given the quantity of interviews he does, he admitted apologetically that he didn’t even remember this one — said it sounds like a well-meaning project. It is essential, he said, to fight against nihilism about our ability to act collectively by imagining radical new possibilities.

But, he said, it’s “not surprising” that a billionaire’s imagined future would leave capitalism intact.

“Those who wield the power always try to convince us that the system we have is the only system we can have,” he said.
(more)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/04/08/kathryn-murdoch-brief-history-future-ari-wallach/

[morganism]

The hidden catalyst behind the rise of the radical right in Europe’s depopulating regions

Earlier this spring, the European Parliament voted to overhaul its immigration policy to more evenly distribute responsibility among member states for managing the arrival of migrants and asylum-seekers.
Lurking in the details of the agreement, however, are provisions allowing for payments to third countries to block the entry of asylum-seekers to Europe – and, more ominously, preliminary plans for mass deportations.

Clearly, the EU’s dominant parties hear the footsteps of the anti-immigrant, populist right-wing parties, which are expected to make significant inroads in the EU Parliament elections June 6-9, 2024, and seek to reduce their appeal with stricter limits to those permitted to settle in Europe.

The idea of recapturing voters by appearing tough on immigration is attractive to established parties, but, as scholars of comparative politics and political behavior, we believe that this strategy won’t return many votes.
Younger voters leaving the countryside

While it is commonly held that the electoral success of far-right parties is due to a backlash against newcomers, all this focus on immigration obscures another potent force behind this trend: emigration, or the movement of people out of a region or country.

In a recently published study, our research team found a relationship between out-migration from counties and an increase in votes for populist radical right parties in 28 European countries during the mid-2010s.

Out-migration follows a familiar trend across the globe. As countries transition to postindustrial economies, younger generations leave the countryside and small towns for larger metropolitan areas seeking better educational and career opportunities. This phenomenon is especially prevalent in Spain, which has lost 28% of its rural population in the past 50 years. Facing similar declines, Italy recently resorted to paying people to move to its emptying villages.

Counties across the United States are also witnessing precipitous population loss due to a combination of low fertility and out-migration.

But while many people are aware of the economic ramifications this population flight creates, its impact on voters has been explored far less.
Rise of Sweden’s radical right

The case of Sweden illustrates how out-migration can benefit radical right populists. From 2000 to 2020, the country’s immigrant population increased from 11% to nearly 20%. During this time, over half of all Swedish municipalities experienced population decline as people moved to the country’s major cities of Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg.

Long dominated by centrist and center-left politics, Sweden is also witnessing a remarkable partisan shift.

The country’s oldest and largest party, the Social Democratic Party, has seen a gradual decline in popularity. Meanwhile, the populist, anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, once considered a fringe group with a fascist past, have made significant gains and now hold a fifth of the seats in the national Parliament.

As a result, the country is now governed by a center-right minority coalition that depends on the support of the radical right populists.

While immigration is a key political issue for the Sweden Democrats, our research found growing support for the party in areas relatively unaffected by immigration. In fact, looking at elections over two decades, we found that it was in municipalities that lost population that the radical right was able to score big gains.

What’s more, local immigration was much less of a factor behind this success compared with local out-migration. Tracking five election cycles, we found a persistent gain of half a percentage point in vote share for the Sweden Democrats for every 1% loss in local population – a significant pace over the long term.

Political leanings in depopulating regions

Two key forces explain these dynamics. First, as many studies have shown, the people who move from the periphery to urban areas are more likely to lean left. With their departure, the remaining pool of voters naturally contains a greater proportion of conservatives than before. But composition of the electorate is only part of the story.

The political leanings of voters in depopulating regions also changed, from center-left to populist right. Here, emigration played a key role. As communities lose more and more of their working-age population, they experience a decline in public services – due both to dwindling numbers and a shrinking tax base. As a result, schools and hospitals are shuttered, public transportation is cut and local businesses close.

Along with these quality-of-life declines, living in a place that so many people choose to leave generates a sense of status loss among those who stay. Our interviews with Social Democratic Party leaders revealed how local mayors felt they had to contend with a “collective depression.”

One mayor noted: “We like it here. But then someone comes from the outside and says that you’re a failure if you live here … so we are struggling against the public perception of what constitutes a successful individual. We constantly have to work on the psychology of the municipality’s inhabitants.”

Meanwhile, disillusionment with established parties provides fertile ground for radical right parties to exploit.
Quality-of-life declines

While centrist politicians may feel compelled to adopt anti-immigrant stances in response, copying the rhetoric of radical right parties risks alienating their base.

Further, we believe cracking down on immigration is likely to prove an ineffective political strategy in the long run. The Sweden Democrats’ success in depopulating regions is in part a protest against the political establishment.

But once in office, and without clear solutions to the local economic and quality-of-life declines that emigration has set in motion, party officials will likely face the same voter discontent fueling their current success.

Ironically, the forces that have increased the appeal of the far right’s anti-immigrant ideologies – falling birth rates, labor shortages and a lack of new businesses and services – are most feasibly addressed by increasing immigration.

By following the right’s lead to tighten borders, parties closer to the center may condemn industrialized nations to a political doom loop.

Instead, centrist parties may find it pays more dividends to focus attention on addressing the root causes of population decline and restoring public services in peripheral areas.

There are some examples of this already happening. During recent years, Swedish governments have introduced and gradually expanded a national support system for local commercial services, such as grocery stores, in vulnerable and remote locations. In 2021, Spain announced a US$11.9 billion plan aimed at addressing the lack of 5G telephone connectivity and technologically smart cities in rural areas.

Meanwhile, the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development is putting over $100 billion toward efforts to support rural areas in its 2021-2027 budget.

Such moves may counter a somewhat paradoxical trend that has seen fiercely anti-immigrant parties gaining ground in places least affected by immigration.

Either way, as parties in Europe and the U.S. prepare for crucial elections this year, understanding the complex interplay of demographic shifts and political dynamics is critical. As is acknowledging that emigration, often overshadowed by immigration rhetoric, is a key factor shaping the rise of the radical right.
The Conversation

https://www.rawstory.com/the-hidden-catalyst-behind-the-rise-of-the-radical-right-in-europes-depopulating-regions/


Emigration and radical right populism'



An extensive literature links the rise of populist radical right (PRR) parties to immigration. We argue that another demographic trend is also significant: emigration. The departure of citizens due to internal and international emigration is a major phenomenon affecting elections via two complementary mechanisms. Emigration alters the composition of electorates, but also changes the preferences of the left behind. Empirically, we establish a positive correlation between PRR vote shares and net-migration loss at the subnational level across Europe. A more fine-grained panel analysis of precincts in Sweden demonstrates that the departure of citizens raises PRR vote shares in places of emigration and that the Social Democrats are the principal losers from emigration. Elite interviews and newspaper analyses explore how emigration produces material and psychological grievances on which populists capitalize and that established parties do not effectively address. Emigration and the frustrations it generates emerge as important sources of populist success.

Recent years have seen a much-discussed rise in populist radical right (PRR) parties. Rejecting open borders and globalization and often disregarding fundamental tenets of liberal democracy, these parties have particular appeal among voters who oppose immigration and the cultural and economic dislocations it can bring (Halikiopoulou & Vlandas, 2019; Ivarsflaten, 2008; Lancaster, 2020). Immigration is clearly salient in radical right campaigns and election coverage (Akkerman, 2015; Dancygier & Margalit, 2020; Gessler & Hunger, 2022; Goodman, 2021). However, when it comes to the effects of local immigration on local PRR vote shares, results are mixed (Andersson & Dehdari, 2021; Cools et al., 2021; Golder, 2016).

Persistent focus on immigration has obscured another significant aspect of demographic change: domestic and international emigration. The permanent departure of locals due to emigration is a major demographic phenomenon with lasting impacts on the places left behind. One of these impacts is electoral. Emigration locales provide fertile ground for PRR parties and pose a significant challenge for traditional parties to retain their core voters.

Two mechanisms link internal and international emigration to PRR success—compositional and preference based. Emigrants are disproportionately young and motivated adults who seek educational and economic opportunities in cosmopolitan surroundings. The population that remains is less educated and more rooted in place (Anelli & Peri, 2017; Lueders, 2022; Maxwell, 2020), attributes linked to PRR voting (De Vries, 2018; Fitzgerald, 2018). As a result, when regions experience substantial out-migration, this compositional change can promote PRR success without altering voting behavior. Additionally, emigration can change voter preferences and thereby influence voting behavior. The departure of individuals of prime working age who would have supported the local economy, formed families, and contributed to a vibrant communal life makes emigration locales less livable. Emigration can thus adversely affect public and private services, leading to school and business closures and straining the viability of public transport and healthcare systems. Many that remain lack the skills sought after in urban centers and therefore cannot easily move themselves. Additionally, those who remain may suffer psychologically, feeling that emigration devalues the status of their hometowns and communities. This decrease in quality of life gives rise to grievances on which populist parties capitalize, especially if they can convince voters that they have not only been deserted by their fellow citizens, but also by incumbent parties.
(snip)
These analyses yield three findings. First, the departure of native Swedes to other Swedish municipalities is an important factor driving SD success. When measuring the number of departures relative to the total population at baseline, our estimates from a panel regression with two-way fixed effects suggest that the departure of 100 people from a municipality increases SD vote shares by about half a percentage point. This effect is substantively large, considering that the SD receive on average 8.3% in a precinct. The effects significantly outpace the impacts of immigration on SD vote shares.

Importantly, emigration effects do not simply reflect economic ones. We demonstrate that the estimated emigration effects are robust to the inclusion of variables measuring local economic decline, and a formal sensitivity analysis reveals that they are also not sensitive to unobserved confounding.

Second, while the compositional mechanism plays some role, the preference-based mechanism is also explanatory. For example, though we observe that the departure of voter types who are unlikely to be supporters of the SD does boost support for the party, precincts whose populations hold steady but are located within municipalities that experience emigration—and associated quality-of-life declines—see a rise in SD vote shares. Indeed, emigration has especially pronounced impacts on SD vote shares where we would expect it to be particularly damaging to public and private infrastructure. Newspaper articles, surveys of citizen satisfaction with public services, and elite interviews further reinforce that emigration produces grievances that populists can exploit and that traditional parties find difficult to counter.

Third, our analyses point to the challenges these demographic changes pose to established party systems (Berman & Snegovaya, 2019). We find that the Social Democrats are the principal losers to radical right populists in emigration locales. Once the incumbent party in much of Sweden, the Social Democrats have failed to respond to the problems of emigration. Newspaper data and elite interviews in turn illustrate the SD's ability to capitalize on this strategic failure.

These findings make several contributions. We advance scholarship on the political effects of emigration. This work has largely focused on international emigration and its effects on political and economic outcomes in autocratic or recently democratized countries (Adida & Girod, 2011; Hirschman, 1993; Horz & Marbach, 2020; Karadja & Prawitz, 2019; Kelemen, 2020; Miller & Peters, 2020; Sellars, 2019). Shifting scope to postindustrial democracies, we show that emigration in the form of internal migration is an important phenomenon in high-income settings and that it can portend political change here as well, undermining liberal democracy where it had long been attained.

In addition, we advance research linking demographic change to populist success. This research has focused on the disruption by immigration, but aside from a few contributions the consequences of emigration. Whereas immigration can bolster PRR parties through congestion effects and overburdened public services, we show that opposite forces can do the same. The emptying out of regions can produce frustrations with significant political consequences.
(more)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajps.12852

[johnm33]

Immigration, the UK with the land resources available could support about 15 million inhabitants where they get the best food raised by the best methods for healthy living. As the numbers increase more industrialised agriculture is needed and fully utilised these methods could supply about 60million as long as the majority is persuaded to eat a denatured malnourishing diet [as they have been]. There are rumours of a possible climate emergency when both approaches to food production will be challenged and as best as I can discover the food supply chain takes a very lean just in time approach and holds no reserves.
Last time there was a climate emergency the population dropped, then recovered [that is the numbers dying stabilised enough to make a census worthwhile] to around 2.5 million by 1500, it dropped according to medium estimates from 15million in the short space of a decade. It took a number of decades to bring all the cannibal families to account.
The notion that importing 6-700,000 annually is of some benefit to the UK long term seems borderline insane to me. We already have @40 times the numbers who could pass through a time of emergency, of course if you believe no such emergency is imminent your view may differ.

[morganism]

(hmm. Lack of shame and inhibition are what may be required to break thru gov walls. DOGE.)

Bringing Elon to a knife fight
Wishing for a more orderly disruption may misunderstand the nature of government reform

(...)
But we do need to talk about government reform, and while I’m sorry the conditions are quite a bit less than ideal, I think it's time we admitted they were always going to be. Democrats did not do this work. Many wonderful public servants made valiant efforts and scored some great wins, but Democratic leadership did not make it a top priority to clear out the underbrush that jams the gears of government. Elon’s ambitions should not serve as cover for Dems to continue to abdicate responsibility here. Until we know more about what DOGE is planning, I support Dems like Ro Khanna for pledging to work with them.

I am guessing that those most worried that DOGE will succeed have never tried their hand at reforming government. It’s hard. But easier, you say, with no respect for the law, and the DOGE team will be unencumbered by such details. But that’s not true. The lawsuits will come. A lot of the government tech community is skipping the hand wringing; they've basically just grabbed a bag of popcorn and are watching in real time as Elon and Vivek learn all the things they’ve known, lived, and absolutely hated for their entire time in public service. They don’t see DOGE as their savior, but they are feeling vindicated after years of shouting into the void. I am struck by how different the tone of the DOGE conversation is between political leaders on the left and the people who’ve been fighting in the implementation trenches. One group is terrified they’ll succeed. The other is starting to ask a surprising question (or at least I am): What if even billionaires can’t disrupt the system we have built?

(more)

https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/bringing-elon-to-a-knife-fight