The world’s economy is an ungovernable, hyper-complex, and constantly changing matrix of relationships between companies, individuals, financial institutions, and governments. It has long moved away from being a straight forward exchange of goods and services for money. And perhaps most important are the side-effects of complexity, coupled with the globalization of industries like manufacturing, food, energy, and services.

We are moving into an economic era where the laws of complexity — more than classical economic theory — will be a better means to understand, or to predict, economic behavior at the macro level. At the most basic level, the interconnection of so much of our world’s economic infrastructure — stock markets, banking, capital transfers, governmental loans, manufacturing investments, outsourced
manufacturing, processing of raw materials and energy production — has led to a greatly increased likelihood of disastrous oscillations in the various interconnected market sectors.

The only question is whether there is any solution to the danger inherent in this new world order other than decoupling and decomplexifying? Are we capable of taking the steps necessary to decrease the risk of catastrophe? By Stowe Boyd

Related conversations:

David Weinberger
Don Tapscott

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