One of the themes that keeps emerging in The Dao of Complexity is the way that power can lock in advantage, and lock out alternatives. The thesis behind laissez faire economics is that competition can lead to balance, with the ‘best’ surviving. This economic ideology, adopted in the late 1980s, has led to the deregulation of markets, and a completely eye-watering distortion in wealth and power; the differentials between rich and poor, between owners and workers, between ‘big’ corporations and the rest, continue to escalate.
People sometimes think that self-organising processes necessarily lead to balance, but that is not the interpretation from the science of complexity, and it manifestly is not the case in reality.
I read this in the Guardian Weekly on 26 July 2024:
Alphabet [the parent company of Google] currently ranks as the fourth most valuable in the world, worth more than $2tn. Google has a whopping 90% share of the global search market.
These numbers are astonishing. The world is so reliant on Google for information that “it’s practically infrastructure” and “too big to fail”, or even challenge. And, as author, Tom Faber, explains, “This gives the company enormous power over politics, social attitudes and the fortunes of countless businesses”. Google judges who we should trust and what information we receive. It can “influence countries’ elections” and is “inherently biased towards advertisers and away from consumers”.
One of the challenges I raise in The Dao of Complexity is how we can challenge this growing power differential, with the hands of the future not held by democratic processes but by corporations with no responsibility for people or planet. There is also a difference between what we should aim for and how we get there. To create a more balanced and resilient economy, one which does not exacerbate global heating and tackles growing inequality, we need to consider alternative approaches to the political economy. But making any change is likely to require those hold more wealth and power than many countries to relinquish their hold. I’m cheered when I read that Abigail Disney is pleading for greater taxes on the rich.