Complexity, it’s an ironic enigma cloaked in politics.
If you think that opening line’s hard to follow, you can get your head on straight by reading some terrific articles published by Ashvin Pandurangi on his new Simple Planet Blog mockingly located at www.peakcomplexity.blogspot.com.
The irony struck me about 30 minutes into Ash’s latest piece, A Complexity Manifesto, that it's taking entirely too long to comprehend this wonderful piece on complexity discussing how the world is overly complex but yet it's quite possible that the solutions are really very simple.
And I let Ash know that it’s NOT his fault! His articles are well written, substantive, and well… long. And further more, he’s right! Yet, I found myself running short on time and skimming/ glossing over his solutions to get to the end. I’m sure you’ve been there yourself, perhaps it was the first time you tried to read Freedom’s Vision? Snore, head nod, chin bounces from chest…
This is the exact same problem I (and everyone else) have in presenting SIMPLE solutions to the complex problems confronting our nation and economy. The solutions don’t seem so simple, not that the solution is complex, but that to address an overly complex system you must describe how you’re going to solve that complexity, and it’s NOT simple! Are your eyes glossing over yet?
In fact, the biggest critique of Freedom’s Vision is that it doesn’t fit into a 15 second sound bite! A valid critique, one for which I have not yet found the answer – can anyone help? [Please submit your proposal in triplicate, not to exceed 78 pages, in .pdf form to any of the following four email addresses, thank you!]
Here’s just a portion of the response Ash gave to my blatantly over-simplified critique:
“The system itself is designed to make increasing complexity the least path of resistance. I recently wrote a short piece called "Tweaks at the Margin", where I just focused on the fact that our leaders want to keep making small tweaks here or there to our existing systems, because its politically and economically convenient in the short term. The bush tax cuts debate, financial reform, HC reform, stimulus, monteary policy, etc. are all examples of that mentality. Ironically, adding on more complexity becomes the simplest thing to do.”
And with that one simple paragraph, Ashvin really has summarized a big part of the complexity paradigm. Yet paradoxically, I wonder which was it that came first, the chicken or the egg? Could it be that I was wrong in thinking the root cause of over complexity was the never ending growth mantra created by the central banker debt-backed money paradigm that created all the complexity in the first place! Not to mention the obscure ownership trail of the completely private "Federal Reserve" where all dollars lead back to only a few private individuals! But perhaps I’m over-thinking it?
Remember article after article about the Math of DEBT, Death by Numbers, Debt Saturation, the Diminishing Productivity of Debt, and how the math simply doesn’t work? Well, it turns out that I was using far too many facts, figures, graphs, simple arithmetic (like addition), and words mostly not comprehended by the masses. This was thoroughly too complex, as effective cerebral cortex metabolic absorption transfer rates are entirely blocked, it turns out, by having too much corn syrup in a person’s diet.
What I discovered today by reading Mark McHugh’s blog, Across the Street, is that I should have been using Sesame Street characters with my charts! It’s true! This one simple chart eloquently captures exactly what I’ve been trying to say all along – that incomes cannot support debts! But I know you probably didn’t read that, and most of us have far too many histamine producing, free-floating, vascular inflaming corn based particles in our bloodstream to comprehend it, so take a look at the chart and it will all make perfect sense!
Ahhhhh… what a great chart, and a great article for the masses! So simple, so short, so un-complex-like! And here I was about to resort to pictures of half-clad beauties carrying assault rifles just to get the masses’ attention. But I’ll leave that for our political candidates and those with Presidential aspirations. Me and Ash can now rest easy knowing that simple solutions are soon going to be flooding our inboxes, mine can be found at www.economicedge.blogspot.com, or www.swarmusa.com, or time4changenow@comcast.net, or nmartin@swarmusa.com, and Ash can be found at www.simpleearth.blogspot.com (his Peak Complexity blog), OR, you can go to “My Blog List” at my blog, www.economicedge.blogspot.com, and scroll down 3.6 pages (depending on screen size and resolution), looking in the right hand margin and you’ll find it there – that is if you can still remember what “it” is that you’re looking for. Glad we could simplify the situation for you.
PS - I hear that insuline can help. Thank you for supporting our corporate sponsors and don’t forget to send the .pdf in triplicate, thanks!