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A Second Step (to Systems Thinking)

When we want to change, build, or improve something we often only look one step in. That is, if we take action A we will get result B. End of story.

That’s only the end of the story because we stop looking.

Sometimes we only look that far because of a lack of imagination. Other times incentives are misaligned. Or when change comes at us too quickly. We also often only look one step in because considering more steps is difficult or impossible. The attempt to go beyond those problems is sometimes called “second-order thinking.”

Here are some recent events and proposal that clearly involve more than a single step when it comes to outcomes. Let’s look at ways the first step can result in unintended second steps and ways to change how we assess outcomes. Continue reading “A Second Step (to Systems Thinking)”

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Should We Reevaluate the Precautionary Principle?

In March 2011 a 9.0 magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami which led to the automatic shutdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan. While the reactor’s shutdown sequence started well, waves from the tsunami breached the nuclear plant’s seawall to flood and disable backup generators. Without the generators cooling the reactor’s nuclear core there was a meltdown and radioactive leakage. In this extreme series of events, what was the best way forward?

The Japanese government took action and required approximately 154,000 people to evacuate, the seemingly safe choice.

But was seemingly safe the right choice? Continue reading “Should We Reevaluate the Precautionary Principle?”

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Universal Basic Income (Part 2)

This is a continuation of the Universal Basic Income (UBI) discussion, mostly focused on the impact on entrepreneurship and personal choice of what work-related activities to pursue. (If you missed it, here’s UBI Part 1.)

As in the previous posts, I think we should pause in the face of large top-down decisions. While things can look good in theory, these large-scale changes often bring unintended consequences. How should we look at the systems we will replace? Might there be second-order effects in the case of UBI as well? What system changes will emerge?

What are some entrepreneurship-related unexpected results we could see from top-down UBI in the US? Continue reading “Universal Basic Income (Part 2)”

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Universal Basic Income (Part 1)

I’ve avoided discussing unintended consequences from one of the big policy debates of today — Universal Basic Income. Until now. This is a big topic so I preemptively titled this post as part one.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a general term that describes mostly government programs that distribute a periodic sum of money to citizens without otherwise considering their income. UBI has been proposed as everything from a tool to reduce poverty to a way to guard against the social impact of job loss caused by automation.

Each group outlines ways UBI could work a little differently. But many questions remain, including how will a particular country’s overall social system change? What are the second-order effects? Could UBI work in one place and not another? Could UBI work at one time and not another? Let’s first look at some UBI experiments and their initial pros and cons.

Continue reading “Universal Basic Income (Part 1)”