Laissez-Faire Activism

This chapter reconsiders the structure and governance issues of corporations and enterprises more generally as a concrete example of how a complexity approach changes the way we think about policy. It shows how a small change in the ecostructure, especially when applied at the formative embryonic stage of emerging institutions, can fundamentally change society from the bottom up, without massive state intervention. It argues that over time in some important sectors of the economy where social goals are important, existing for-profit and nonprofit enterprises can be replaced by socially friendly for-benefit enterprises, which are designed to allow social goals to be achieved in a sustainable way from the bottom up. The goal of the policy being advocated is to encourage the development of an institutional environment that is friendly to bottom-up policy solutions so that new socially focused enterprises can emerge and develop.

How Macroeconomics Lost the Complexity Vision

This chapter tells the story of how macroeconomics developed as a separate field in an attempt to add aspects of complexity to the standard model with the aim of improving policy advice, but how those aspects of complexity were quickly lost it again. Instead of dealing with the macro economy as a complex system, macro economists focused on dotting is and crossing ts. The chapter begins by clarifying the difference between macroeconomics and microeconomics. Microeconomics builds a theory up from the individual elements—from the micro level to the macro level. It starts from assumptions of rational individuals and then analyzes how they would coordinate their actions, and what role the state should play in that coordination. Macroeconomics developed as a separate branch of economics when J. M. Keynes’s work was integrated into formal models in the 1930s and 1940s.

Twin Peaks

This chapter provides an overview of the book’s main themes. It discusses the notion of a complexity frame, which is a fundamentally different policy frame provided by complexity science. The central policy choice in a complexity frame is not the market or the government. The goal of policy in the complexity frame is not to choose one or the other. Instead, policy is seen as affecting a complex evolving system that cannot be controlled. But while it cannot be controlled, it can be influenced, and policymakers have to continually think how to work with evolutionary pressures, and try to guide those pressures toward desirable ends. Within the complexity frame, top-down control actions are a last resort. Their use suggests that you have failed in your previous attempts to get the ecostructure right.

The Lost Agenda

This book has discussed new techniques and methods to address the societal challenges we face. These new approaches change the way policy is framed. The book is an attempt to provide a new compass for policy discussions. This chapter discusses why the complexity frame matters; the evaporation of the optimism that existed in the twentieth century about our ability to deal with major societal challenges; the need for the government to create an ecostructure conducive to allow people the institutional space to self-organize in new ways to solve social problems; and how the complexity policy frame encourages individuals on all sides to be civil.

Complexity

This chapter focuses on Stephen Wolfram, an early advocate of the importance of complexity science. He founded the Journal of Complex Systems back in 1987, and saw the transformational aspect of computer analysis long before it was generally understood. But his ego and his disdain for standard scientific conventions kept him and the complexity science he favored outside the mainstream scientific establishment that discourages such grandiose claims. In 2002, his self-published book A New Kind of Science was seen by the scientific community as the delusions of a former wunderkind. It is argued that Wolfram’s book represents the insights of a brilliant visionary about “a new tool of science”—computational tools that earlier scientists could hardly have imagined. These computational tools provide not only new tools for analysis, but also a new vision of how to frame thinking about complex processes. It is the blending of the computational tools and the vision that makes up complexity science.

How Economics Lost the Complexity Vision

This chapter tells the story of how in economists’ struggle to develop a model that captures the essential aspects of the economy, the way in which policy is framed to the general public got screwed up. What do we mean by screwed up? We mean the way the general public is led to believe that when economists support a certain policy, that support is based on their scientific knowledge and theory. This becomes a problem since economists often come to diametrically opposing policy views; some support market fundamentalism and others support government intervention. If their arguments come directly from the same scientific theory, both can’t be right. The answer to this puzzle is that economists’ policy views don’t come from scientific theory but from different interpretations and assumptions of the same scientific theory.

Government With, Not Versus, the Market

This chapter argues that the duality of market versus government is a product of the standard economic policy frame itself. That duality disappears in the complexity frame—but inevitably other contrasts appear. Within a complexity frame, both the more active top-down “government” solution and the less active bottom-up “market” solution are seen as having evolved from the bottom up. Within this frame, the policy solution is an element of the system, not outside it. Thus, if the solution includes direct government involvement, it is as “natural” a solution as one with less government. More government control simply reflects a more primitive bottom-up choice of society. The policies incarnate in that choice may well ossify and become a locked-in way of governing, but they do not exist outside of society. The existing government is simply a bottom-up solution to previous problems.

Getting the Ecostructure of Government Right

In the complexity frame, governmental policy is best thought of as operating in ecostructure space where institutions are designed. Its goal is to foster the creation of an ecostructure space that encourages creativity and bottom-up initiatives that create the institutions within which incentives are created and goals are formalized. The goal in the complexity frame is not to foster any specific ecostructure, but to let the ecostructure emerge, adapt, and evolve, and that includes changing government itself. This chapter discusses alternative forms of government, and how if one is going to use top-down policies, the structure of government institutions might be changed to better achieve the desired results.

The Complexity Policy Frame

This chapter spells out the complexity policy frame in more detail. It begins with a brief introduction to complexity science, since it is the basis for the policy frame itself. It then outlines the complexity policy frame that sees the entire social system as a complex evolving system, and spells out a role for government within that frame. While this new frame agrees that the system cannot be controlled, it does accept that government policy is crucial for the system to work and sees government as playing a role in the system’s evolution. One aspect of policy involves attempting to make that role better—people, through government, and in partnership with private institutions, help influence the evolution of the economy in ways that they believe will be positive. This is a much more difficult policy role for government than any envisioned by the standard policy model, which sees government as outside of the system correcting for market failures.

Getting the Ecostructure of Social Science Education Right

Social policy is, in large part, shaped not in the halls of Congress but in the classrooms around the country where policymakers, academics, and the general public receive their training, and where they have embedded in them the policy frame they use. However, a large separation of humanist and science training has created a standard policy frame that has lost the heart of the humanist. To offset that separation, social scientists with humanist tendencies need more mathematical training, while social scientists with more scientific tendencies need more humanist training. Complexity theory is starting to bring the two back together. By embracing the use of high-level mathematics to analyze issues that are excluded in the standard frame, it reintegrates humanist cultural and social issues back into the policy frame. This chapter reflects on how the education of policy makers might evolve to include the complexity policy frame in its considerations.