REPLY High-Tech Company Dynamics (SD6092)

[George Richardson gpr albany.edu]

Posted by George Richardson <gpr at albany.edu>
> I am not sure that it is possible to model sustainability in the  long term.

"If it's possible to think about it, then it's possible to model  it."  The
 worry David has is that the modeling would not have much  predictive value, 
 just as our thoughts about distant futures don't  have much predictive value.

But the modeling of future scenarios may help to reveal insights  anyway.  
And if we are thinking about the future in order to help us  pick healthy 
policies for the present, then modeling may be a  necessary cognitive aid 
to thinking well, even if we can't predict.

> modelling is the sustainability of current technology and  inevitably if your
> do this you get an unduly pessimistic view of the future. Malthus  is the
> first of many examples of this.

Malthus was right in many crucial respects.  His structural insights  
were clear and right on target.  I think he gets a bad rap because  
most people have not read what HE wrote but just read what others say  
what they think he wrote.  Paying attention to Malthus's structural  
insights all through the industrial revolution would have helped  
millions of poor people, but that didn't happen.

> At any point in the last 300 years if you built a model of  sustainability,
> based upon the information available at the time that looked say 50  - 100
> years ahead, then it would inevitably predict that economic and  industrial
> growth was unsustainable in the long term. It is a good thing that  system

An interesting thought.  But the focus here is still on prediction  
rather than understanding.  If we seriously interpreted, for example,  
Limits to Growth as prediction then I suppose we'd all be farming  
right now if we could, trying to set ourselves up for the coming  
scarcity-induced decline.  I think we use World Dynamics and Limits  
to Growth to give us insights about the ways we should be thinking  
about current policy, rather than as prediction.  All that is to say  
that industrial revolution SDers would have been properly ignored if  
they'd tried to make predictions from their 19th century models, but  
we would have loved to hear their insights.

..George Richardson 
Posted by George Richardson <gpr at albany.edu>
posting date  Wed, 6 Dec 2006 13:49:55 -0500