

How Super-Connectivity Kills Economics - maxprogram
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/how-super-connectivity-kills-economics/254786/

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andylei
> I see the explosive growth in interconnections driven primarily by the
> Internet as something that, if ignored, can lead to dangerous situations

> Unfortunately, as the world has grown less stable

the author implies that super connectivity has destabilized the world, but
that's an entirely unwarranted assertion.

he mentions a couple events (like the koran burnings which led to riots) with
small beginnings and big impacts, but these are largely anecdotal and easy to
counter. for example, i know a story where a guy eating a sandwich led to the
beginning of World War II.

but consider a couple of better measures of stability - large scale human
conflict and economic growth. we're in a period of relative global peace; no
major wars have been fought between large powers in decades. compare this to
the first half of this century (way before the Internet), when there were 2
WORLD wars in which the death tolls reached the millions. nothing even close
has even come close in the past 10 years. in fact, as connections between the
US and Russia have increased, they have made major war between the two nations
LESS likely.

consider economic growth. look at this US GDP chart
([http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1900_2010...](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1900_2010USb_11s1lo011lcn__US_Gross_Domestic_Product_GDP_History))
and tell me the economy is more unstable now than it was a century ago.

the reason the author is so off base is because if "super-connectivity"
increases the impact of positive feedback loops, then it must also increase
the impact of negative impact loops. as the world becomes more connected, it
becomes easier to become more flexible.

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yummyfajitas
I'm a bit surprised to see this - the typical criticism of mainstream
economics is that it assumes super-connectivity, e.g., perfect information,
minimal transaction costs, etc.

It'll definitely be interesting to see what promise to be new criticisms of
the current scientific consensus.

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mdda
I think the article has an interesting theme. However, the invention of the
telegraph/telephone hugely increased the connectivity of the world, and the
speed of the growth feedback mechanism. But economic theories weren't forced
to change...

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th0ma5
Look forward to the continuing series. I will be curious what kinds of
solutions outside of "just dig more into the complexity" there are out there
in people's minds.

