The President, Social Security, and Complexity
The Times had a fine graphic today showing how many times particular words had shown up in the President's various State of the Union Addresses. There was a huge circle for Social Security (many mentions!) for the speech the other night, and this textual analysis by Todd Purdum:
Reprising the themes of his second Inaugural Address last month, Mr. Bush cast his proposal for personal investment accounts for Social Security in sweeping terms, as part of the “guiding ideal of liberty for all” that has led to the first round of elections in Iraq. But if the goal of “ending tyranny” that he announced at his inauguration two weeks ago is “the concentrated work of generations,” his latest proposal is also only a first step, its ultimate fate in doubt.
By now, no one should be surprised at Mr. Bush's penchant for thinking big, or speaking grandly. . . .
Here's why the President's approach to social security has something to do with complex systems:
1. For any given system, complexity is conserved across various scales, and there is always a tradeoff between scale and complexity. So governments can't provide tailor-made governance at a fine scale for individuals, but they can act effectively at large scales — moving mountains and armies. Governments are like large Navy vessels. They do best when they have a simple, large-scale environment to deal with.
2. Only variety can defeat variety. So only Special Forces sorts of operations can effectively deal with terrorists.
3. But large-scale effectiveness can defeat variety. A platoon of tanks can easily roll over a forest. A monopolist of gigantic scale can take over a marketplace, even a wildly complex one. This is possible only if the large-scale actor (the tank, the monopolist) doesn't really care about the complexities and interdependencies of the system it is flattening.
4. The Administration does not appear to be worrying about the possible fallout (nonlinear! unpredictable!) of completely changing the social security system. It is confident that it has a Good Idea here, and it is bound and determined to push it through, no matter what. In a sense, the Administration is like a tank planning to flatten a forest. The sensitivities and needs of the forest are of no concern to to this armored vehicle — it merely wants to get the job done and move on.
The Administration must not care about the complexities and interdependencies of the system it plans to flatten.