Employment and transport
Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2000 7:50 am
Hi John!
Thanks for asking the question. It is of the kind I address routinely as a
futurist.
>rest of the region will help. One view is that they will, because they
>provide better links to markets etc and encourage new businesses to set up
>locally. The converse is that better links will give the local workforce
>access to higher wages in the surrounding region so that local employers
>will be unable to recruit without raising costs, and the local economy will
>be hurt.
The answer is almost certainly that both will occur to a degree. The
question you raise relates not so much about either activity, but rather
focuses on the difference. You could easily have an excellent model of
economic growth related to transportation and a second excellent model of
labor migration and labor price inflation related to transportation which
were quite accurate. However, when you focus on the "net" between the two
you are taking the difference between two relatively large numbers and the
quality of that "net" will always be far less accurate than either of the
base models.
I would also suggest that the problem is too complex and with too many key
assumptions to lend itself to rigorous, detailed modeling. The accuracy of
your models ouput (in decimal places) will vastly exceed the accuracy of
your assumptions. Put simply, your model will never be very accurate and
while it will select a winner (economic growth vs. disaster) I would
suggest the value of that answer is quite dubious.
That said, I believe SD can provide a lot of insight into the issue. It
provides a great framework for bringing dissenting parties into agreement
as to what is important in this problem and for, hopefully, stimulating
analysis and creative thinking targeted at finding actionable items to
shift the outcome from disaster and toward success. I.e., not for
predicting an answer, but rather for shifting the behavior in the desired
direction.
I personally believe that a properly formulated higher level model will
stimulate more understanding in this case than a detailed one. (And dont
assume that the protagonists in this argument understand both sides of the
issue.)
I welcome this question for it should stimulate some interesting disussion!
(P.S. I am doing addressing a similar "economic development" issue in March.)
Good Luck!
Jay Forrest
11606 Highgrove Drive
Houston, Texas 77077
Tel: 713-503-4726
Fax: 281-558-3228
E-mail: jay@jayforrest.com
Thanks for asking the question. It is of the kind I address routinely as a
futurist.
>rest of the region will help. One view is that they will, because they
>provide better links to markets etc and encourage new businesses to set up
>locally. The converse is that better links will give the local workforce
>access to higher wages in the surrounding region so that local employers
>will be unable to recruit without raising costs, and the local economy will
>be hurt.
The answer is almost certainly that both will occur to a degree. The
question you raise relates not so much about either activity, but rather
focuses on the difference. You could easily have an excellent model of
economic growth related to transportation and a second excellent model of
labor migration and labor price inflation related to transportation which
were quite accurate. However, when you focus on the "net" between the two
you are taking the difference between two relatively large numbers and the
quality of that "net" will always be far less accurate than either of the
base models.
I would also suggest that the problem is too complex and with too many key
assumptions to lend itself to rigorous, detailed modeling. The accuracy of
your models ouput (in decimal places) will vastly exceed the accuracy of
your assumptions. Put simply, your model will never be very accurate and
while it will select a winner (economic growth vs. disaster) I would
suggest the value of that answer is quite dubious.
That said, I believe SD can provide a lot of insight into the issue. It
provides a great framework for bringing dissenting parties into agreement
as to what is important in this problem and for, hopefully, stimulating
analysis and creative thinking targeted at finding actionable items to
shift the outcome from disaster and toward success. I.e., not for
predicting an answer, but rather for shifting the behavior in the desired
direction.
I personally believe that a properly formulated higher level model will
stimulate more understanding in this case than a detailed one. (And dont
assume that the protagonists in this argument understand both sides of the
issue.)
I welcome this question for it should stimulate some interesting disussion!
(P.S. I am doing addressing a similar "economic development" issue in March.)
Good Luck!
Jay Forrest
11606 Highgrove Drive
Houston, Texas 77077
Tel: 713-503-4726
Fax: 281-558-3228
E-mail: jay@jayforrest.com