
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System - pjc50
http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
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rpeden
This is long, and it's a lot to digest, but I find it pretty applicable to
software systems.

And it's funny how often we see software teams twiddling at the edges of a
system, spending a ton of time on things than don't meaningfully impact the
system's overall success. To give a concrete example, I've seen teams with
crappy, slow, and unnecessarily expensive system architectures spend a _huge_
amount of time on decisions like "should we use Vue, or React?".

Granted, there will be occasional times when your front-end framework _is_ a
make-or-break leverage point. But usually it's not. Maybe the problem is that
the teams who are doing this yak shaving aren't authorized to alter the
overall system. And so they spend their time arguing about the things they
_can_ change. :)

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agumonkey
yeah that is exactly the kind of thinking that I found missing in both college
and the few jobs I had. There was very few deep/hard thinking about systems. A
frightening amount of tinkering and superstition.. and endless meetings.

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plainOldText
Worth nothing Donella H. Meadows has authored a highly rated book on systems,
_Thinking in Systems: A Primer_.

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fmihaila
The OP submission is actually included as chapter 6 in the book.

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sewercake
I love reading about Systems Theory. It's exciting, and, as other commenter's
have mentioned, full of 'aha' moments. But, concretely, what has it done?
Where has it gone? I am not being facetious, I'm genuinely curious what
concrete benefits, systems, decisions, etcetera, have had 'systems thinking'
as the catalyst.

Part of me thinks that many articles and ideas floating around the space are
simply over abstractions, like saying the connections between neurons look
similar to galaxies, and our universe. It sounds profound, and clearly, there
is _some_ pattern there, but then, what does that pattern give us? Is it
predictive? Descriptive? Or just simply a pattern with no use outside of
increasing 'meaningfulness'.

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widowlark
This is one of the most influential papers I have read in my life. I have
found Meadows to be insightful and forward thinking. I hope we can learn to
apply these teachings to the world around us.

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cecilpl2
This is long, insightful, and brilliant. I had a new "wow" moment at least
three times just skimming through it.

Saved for later when I have time to read it in detail.

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ewjordan
Extremely interesting take, with a lot of good stuff to think about.

I'm unclear about the claim that less economic growth would be better, though,
and the author seems very committed to it. I wasn't able to find the article
they reference as explaining how less growth is what we really need (J.W.
Forrester, World Dynamics, Portland OR, Productivity Press, 1971), and it
comes from almost 50 years ago, which might as well be another economic era
altogether.

Does anyone know what the arguments are, what assumptions they require, and
whether they still apply today? My understanding is that "less growth is
better" is a distinctly minority take amongst modern economists, but the rest
of this article seems very intelligently laid out, so I'd like to dig deeper.

I've always thought that for any dial we have, there's always an optimal
setting, whether it's tax rates, growth rates, birth rates, etc., and blindly
pushing one way or the other (like both political parties tend to do) is not
helpful, or at the very least merely indicates different value systems.

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lcam84
The book is called "limits to growth", and it's a work of the Club of Rome.
You can watch this video to have an idea of their work [1]. At first it's a
very strange idea, afterall we work and consume everyday in order to grow the
economy. But every healthy system as a homeostastic point, a point where it
doesn't need to grow, only to be maintained. We are now a fat society and we
need to get our health back, we need to degrow. We need to work much less
hours and consume much less. Reducing working hours is a great leverage point.
People will start to have time to care about the community, and take care of
their own health. Maybe have more time to take a walk instead of using the
car. This can improve health and environment but will not contribute to
economic growth, healthy people that don't use cars are not good friends of
economic growth based on GDP. English is not my mother language, Ursula Le
Guin had an eloquent post about this on her blog, but was removed to be on the
last book. The post is called "Clinging to a Metaphor" (the metaphor is
economic growth) and the book is called "No Time to Spare". [1]
[https://youtu.be/kz9wjJjmkmc](https://youtu.be/kz9wjJjmkmc)

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westurner
"The Limits to Growth" (1972)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth)

"Thinking in Systems: a Primer" (2008)
[https://g.co/kgs/B71ebC](https://g.co/kgs/B71ebC)

Glossary of systems theory
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_systems_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_systems_theory)

Systems Theory
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory)

...

Computational Thinking
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_thinking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_thinking)

Which of the #GlobalGoals (UN Sustainable Development Goals) _Targets_ and
_Indicators_ are primary leverage points for ensuring - if not growth -
prosperity?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals)

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snapspans
What a beautiful way to say "after thinking about it": _" in the light of a
cooler dawn"_.

