Joel E Lewis

A great article about systemic instability, financial markets, and the the deficit.  Here is one taste:
The Obama administration tells us that the government deficit is going to be well over $1 trillion a year for at least ten years. And that does not take into account the outlier years in the 2020s when the really [...]

The Straw That Breaks the Camels Back
Incremental change can cause a collapse that is difficult to reverse.
What is particularly intriguing is the way that the lakes change. They exhibit what is known as hysteresis. That means you can “drip feed” them with fertiliser without causing much visible change until, suddenly, the whole system crashes [...]

As is so often the case, however, the system became a prisoner of its own complexity. The original system of canals and reservoirs was tied, over time, to new spillways, plus a larger canal and related dam. These show signs of having seen significant stress, perhaps a reservoir going dry, all causing endless repairs to [...]

Collapse dynamics: Phase transitions in complex social systems
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