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Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966 [ ]
p.256 (pdf page 269)
The war brought nothing really new into the world; rather it sped up processes of change which had been going on for a considerable period and would have continued anyway, with the result that changes which would have taken place over a period of 30 or even 50 years in peacetime were brought about in 5 years during the war. Also, the the changes were much greater in objective facts and in the organization of society than they were in men's ideas of these facts or organization.
p.261 (pdf page 274)
More damaging than the reduction in the number of farm animals (which was made up in 6 or 7 years), or he drain on the fertility of the soil (which could be made up in 12 or 15 years), was the disruption of Europe's integration of agricultural production (which was never made up).
• The gestation and maturation delay in building up breeding populations of animals or plants, causing the characteristic oscillations of commodity prices: 4-year cycles for pigs, 7 years for cows, 11 years for cocoa trees.8
(Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: a history of the world in our time, first published in 1966, second printing 1974, p.33 (pdf page 48))
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Donella H. Meadows, Edited by Diana Wright, Thinking in systems [ ]
p.104
Here are just a few of the delays we have found important in include in various models we have made:
• The delay between catching an infectious disease and getting sick enough to be diagnosed──days to years, depending on the disease.
• The delay between pollution emission and the diffusion or percolation or concentration of the pollutant in the ecosystem to the point at which it does harm.
• The gestation and maturation delay in building up breeding populations of animals or plants, causing the characteristic oscillations of commodity prices: 4-year cycles for pigs, 7 years for cows, 11 years for cocoa trees.8
• The delay in changing the social norms for desirable family size──at least one generation.
• The delay in retooling a production stream and the delay in turning over a capital stock. It takes 3 to 8 years to design a new car and bring it to the market. That model may have 5 years of life on the new-car market. Cars stay on the road an average of 10 to 15 years.
(Thinking in systems : a primer, Donella H. Meadows, Edited by Diana Wright, sustainability institute, 2008, QA 402 .M425 2008, )
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2075
*************************
* Blueprint or Scramble *
*************************
transcript excerpt from a talk given by LAWRENCE WILKERSON
Royal Dutch Shell has done a look.
They have some of the best strategists that I've run into
(and I was a strategist in the military) in a long time,
and their look says the future is a blueprint,
or the future is a scramble.
And they talk about how to 2075, how dwindling water resources,
dwindling petroleum resources, gas and oil,
and so forth are going to cause world leaders to have
to either cooperate and coordinate — "blueprint" — or fight each other
mercilessly for half a century or longer.
Royal Dutch Shell believes it's probably going to be the latter.
They call that "scramble".
We arrive at essentially the same point in 2075,
with a basket of energy sources,
some of which we probably don't even know now due to technological
innovation, with different countries in the world,
with different power relationships in the world;
we arrive pretty much at the same place,
whether it's the blueprint scenario or the scramble scenario.
There's just under the scramble scenario a lot of blood,
a lot of treasure, and a lot of dead bodies.
Frankly, Royal Dutch Shell strategists,
they won't tell you this, but I believe it's fair to say that
they think the political will and the leadership won't be here,
and so we're going to do the scramble and not the blueprint.
If you're an optimist, you can go for the blueprint.
LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FMR. STATE DEPT. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL:
Let me express my appreciation for all of you coming out tonight.
It's late, and we're on a college campus,
and this is really rare to get this many people out.
([ It shall be a combination of a blueprint and a scramble, ... ])
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Donella H. Meadows, Edited by Diana Wright, Thinking in systems [ ]
p.104
Changing the length of a delay may utterly change behaviour. Delays are often sensitive leverage points for policy, if they can be made shorter or longer. You can see why that is. If a decision point in a system (or a person working in that part of the system) is responding to delayed information, or responding with a delay, the decisions will be off target.
p.105
On the other hand, if action is taken too fast, it may nervously amplify short-term variation and create unnecessary instability. Delays determine how fast systems can react, how accurately they hit their targets, and how timely is the information passed around a system. Overshoots, oscillations, and collapses are always caused by delays.
p.107
In your new position, you experience the information flows, the incentives and disincentives, the goals and discrepancies, the pressures──the bounded rationality──that goes with that position.
p.108
Change comes first from stepping outside the limited information that can be seen from any single place in the system and getting an overview. ...
p.108
It's amazing how quickly and easily behaviour changes can come, with even slight enlargement of bounded rationality, by providing better, more complete, timelier information.
(Thinking in systems : a primer, Donella H. Meadows, Edited by Diana Wright, sustainability institute, 2008, QA 402 .M425 2008, )
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