Large versus small systems: efficiency, productivity, and resiliency

POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Thursday, September 24, 2009 21:28
VIEWED: 815
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SIGNYM

Thursday, September 24, 2009 3:45 PM

personally think it's best if those separate small societies are radically different from one another in the way they operate and/or the fields they study, as it would lead them to different thought processes and create a greater diversity of ideas. I support maintaining a wide variety of cultures for the same reason.
-DT
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Good luck on that. Given that bigger systems tend to be more efficient, the general "drive" will be towards larger and larger systems. History is a good indicator of this trend. There ARE countering forces... primarily, disasters which force systems into smaller, self-sufficient units (with large loss if life, given our history of breeding past environmental/ technological carrying point!) but that kind of corrective factor is intermittent and stochastic.
So, in sum: I don't think it's gonna work. It's not economically favorable. Given that bigger systems tend to be more efficient-
-SIGNY
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Sig, you gotta give me the coordinates of your planet sometime, I'd like to visit ;)
-DT
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Larger systems...
Population size_ Larger population allows division of labor, greater technical advances, and a higher standard of living. Many papers on the topic. Technological level reversibly depends on population size; once population falls below a certain threshold the technology can no longer be sustained.

Geographic area_ Larger geographic area means higher likelihood of obtaining specific resources or being resilient to local disaster. Examples: tantalum, the floods in Georgia. Yes, you can get this by trade, but that means disparate groups have to have safe trade routes and common currency or common trading practices, common language and clock or calendar. Look at how far the 24-hour day has spread, and the seven-day week! In effect, they ARE tied together in a larger system, which rewards greater internal efficiencies.

Bulk handling_ Producing and handling items in bulk is much more efficient than producing and handling piecemeal. It doesn't make much sense to set up a production unit, make one or two items, and then retool for something else. Far more efficient to run the unit 24-7 until it wears down ... this is simply a ratio of the investment you made in your production capacity versus the output.

I could go on with several other factors, but... you get the point?

So, YES, larger systems ARE more efficient. Less labor is used to produce more goods. It is an obvious economic and historic fact.

You might be confusing that with being more resilient. Larger units are NOT more resilient, particularly if they have been tweaked to maximum efficiency. A maximally-efficient system is highly interdependent, with no internal redundancy, "spare parts", or resources laying idle. In that case, the system is subject to the slightest disruption in trade, power sources, internal dissent etc.

-SIGNY

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Sig, NONE of those necessarily imply an overarching organizational system... Or a requirement for one.

Remember my linux example? It's a bunch of small groups but well connected, each of them contributing to an end product, and that's actually highly efficient and streamlined. There's more than one way to do things. Some of us don't like bureaucracy.

Heck, you yourself once posted an equation in regards to energy for success/production where the organization factor seems to have a component of exponential decay associated with it. Either that or I'm still confused whether the energy represented the AMOUNT of energy to accomplish a task, or whether it was the amount of energy AVAILABLE from the factors together.

The current system is the spawn of industrialization, which took over from the old form of the artisan system. The industrialization won out because AT THE TIME, it was more productive to get many less skilled workers doing small parts of a greater task than it was for someone to do the entire task from start to finish. The reason for this is first the technology, greater numbers, as

BYTEMITE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 4:06 PM

Quote:
DT, BYTE_We might look to ecology for our paradigms. A monoculture is efficient but fragile.
- SIGNY

This is an interesting thought. Could you expand on this?

In any case, I think at least it can be argued that the organizational structure of linux development is not fixed? Perhaps the distaste I have for organized structure is that it lacks a fluid nature and adaptability. Similarly, the modern work environment and manufacturing environment could use less position/rank designation.

Sorry about your equation, I think you explained that before but I didn't remember.

SIGNYM

Thursday, September 24, 2009 5:28 PM

I'm curious as to how you collectively figured that a million or so people is an optimal size.

Sounds interesting.

BYTEMITE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 5:34 PM

Huh? I don't recall taking that position, mostly because it sounds too much eugenics and population control. You'll have to explain that a bit further.

SIGNYM

Thursday, September 24, 2009 5:44 PM

Oh, I thought I recalled that you and DT figured that a population of a million should be high enough to sustain a technology. The idea, I think, was not to limit population but to figure out what is the SMALLEST viable population group, with an eye towards dividing up larger systems into smaller, more manageable ones.

BYTEMITE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 5:51 PM

Ah, I didn't have the context. I don't know where the 1 million number comes from either, I hadn't heard of that.

Quote:
The idea, I think, was not to limit population but to figure out what is the SMALLEST viable population group, with an eye towards dividing up larger systems into smaller, more manageable ones.

This, however, is something that I would propose.

DREAMTROVE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 6:52 PM

I said a few million. Small countries work better. I'm not engineering anything, just observing. Europe runs better than the US, within the US, state govts. run better than the national govt.

Big empires are horridly innefficient, like the USSR. (or anything since Rome, or even before)

BYTEMITE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:50 PM

Or during Rome!

RUE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 8:04 PM

As I recall, resiliency comes about from redundancy plus many points of interaction - a web, rather than a chain. So resilient systems would seem, by their nature, to be inefficient.

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Silence is consent.

GINOBIFFARONI

Thursday, September 24, 2009 9:03 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I said a few million. Small countries work better. I'm not engineering anything, just observing. Europe runs better than the US, within the US, state govts. run better than the national govt.

Big empires are horridly innefficient, like the USSR. (or anything since Rome, or even before)

Unless you examine the city states of Italy, very chaotic, haphazard, and corrupt.

Many examples of small systems which failed completely

" I don't believe in hypothetical situations - it's kinda like lying to your brain "

" They don't hate America, they hate Americans " Homer Simpson

Lets party like its 1939

DREAMTROVE

Thursday, September 24, 2009 9:28 PM

1. City states require supporting agriculture
2. city states of a few million? Only a couple of these ever topped 100,000. I'm not even sure the City of Rome, during the empire, ever topped a million, but then it was supported by an empire. IIRC, at the time of the collapse, Rome had a population of around 40k