Posted by ""Jay W. Forrester"" <
jforestr@MIT.EDU> There have been several recent messages lamenting the lack of government interest in system dynamics. The discussions seem to expect that we should engage ""policy makers.""
I believe that those in government are not the proper target. Instead we should be addressing the public with clarifying insights about the major problems of a country. Those in government need a supporting public.
This is especially true because the results of a penetrating system dynamics study will usually show that popular policies are the source of the problem and that the solutions lie in directly the opposite direction from what the public expects. Under those circumstances, no so-called ""policy maker"" can move in the opposite direction from that expected by the individual's constituents.
The field needs a series of penetrating, provocative, insightful books that address uppermost issues of public concern. These books must be addressed to the public and have the clarity and content that will attract newspaper debate (or these days it may be Internet debate). I believe that journal articles in the professional press will not reach the appropriate audiences.
To illustrate, let me recall some of the reactions to the books, ""World Dynamics"" and ""Urban Dynamics."" Both books became subjects for discussion in such forums as the League of Women Voters and parent-teacher groups.
A member of the House of Representatives from Iowa told me he decided to run for Congress because of ""World Dynamics."" He established in each precinct of his district a man and wife team to convene discussion groups about the future. Unfortunately he developed Lyme disease and resigned from Congress soon after. ""World Dynamics"" and the successor book, ""Limits to Growth,"" led to Congressional hearings on growth.
""Urban Dynamics"" attracted sufficient attention in Congress that several members of the House and the Senate wrote a joint letter to the Executive Department requesting that further modeling be supported.
So far as I know, the system dynamics field has not produced successor books
about major political issues that have had a similar public impact. Perhaps
the system dynamics field is focusing too much on itself and its academic audience and not enough on public issues for the public.
The lack of public issue books is not because there have been no important subjects for such books. The headlines and the political debates reveal many possible topics.
In the United States, Social Security and Social Security reform have been a subject of perennial political debate with little light shed on the subject.
It justifies a book to establish the basis for public debate. For example, we had presidential candidates promising to put a ""lock box"" around the Social Security surplus, oblivious to the fact the the ""box"" contains only government bonds that, when liquidated, require new borrowing. The lock box idea seems to have been accepted like the fable of the emperor without clothes. There is much to reveal and to clarify.
Likewise, government debt, its future, its effect on unequal income distribution, its effect on future standard of living, and its making the US vulnerable to the decisions of other countries could be a book in the center of political debate.
Another hot topic would be imbalance in foreign trade.
Another is the effect of outsourcing production to low-wage countries and the future effect on welfare, living standards, and political unrest.
As has already been pointed out in the emails, there is much system dynamics activity that for various reasons remains hidden. Often, unlike those in academia, those doing the interesting system dynamics work in business and government do not have incentives to publish. Often the work carries government or corporate secrecy classification. Several years ago I was invited to lunch by a system dynamicist in a large European company. As we sat down in the executive dining room, my host said, ""I am sorry, but I can not tell you anything about our system dynamics work.
We can go to professional meetings and discuss anything we are doing in operations research or economics, but are not allowed to even say that we are interested in system dynamics."" On a less restricted basis, several years ago, and I know nothing of the present, the Central Intelligence Agency taught internal courses in system dynamics and had both classified and unclassified system dynamics models of the economic, social, and political dynamics of various countries. When I was asked to address the staff of the CIA, the lecture was attended by some 400 people from the director on down.
As others have said, our problem is the shortage of very advanced and skilled practitioners of system dynamics who are willing to carry system dynamics into the public policy debate, not among ""policy makers,"" but into the general public from which it will seep into governments.
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Jay W. Forrester
Professor of Management
Sloan School
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room E60-156
Cambridge, MA 02139
Posted by ""Jay W. Forrester"" <
jforestr@MIT.EDU> posting date Tue, 2 Jan 2007 21:43:20 -0500 _______________________________________________