The case studies alone are fascinating.
Highlights (verbatim):
- A blatant example is the “do it yourself” movement, a maneuver invented by the managers of the largest and most sophisticated System of mass production in the world to make the consumer do some of the work the system is supposed to do.
- Parkinson, who concluded that Administrative Systems maintain an average rate of growth of five to six percent per annum (corrected for inflation) regardless of the work to be done.
- In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service not only collect our taxes, they also make us compute the tax for them
- The correct orientation is: A MACHINE ACTS LIKE A SYSTEM—and if the machine is large and complex enough, it will act like a large System. We simply have our metaphors backwards.
- A LARGE SYSTEM, PRODUCED BY EXPANDING THE DIMENSIONS OF A SMALLER SYSTEM, DOES NOT BEHAVE LIKE THE SMALLER SYSTEM
- Such cycles may be found everywhere, wherever Systems exist. In Fashion, skirts go up and down, neckties become wider or thinner. In Politics, the mood of the nation swings Left or Right. Sunspots advance or retreat. Economic indicators rise or decline. The pragmatic Systems-student neither exhorts nor deplores, but merely notes the waste of energy involved in pushing the wrong way against such trends.
- SYSTEMS TEND TO MALFUNCTION CONSPICUOUSLY JUST AFTER THEIR GREATEST TRIUMPH; Toynbee explains this effect by pointing out the strong tendency to apply a previously-successful strategy to the new challenge: THE ARMY IS NOW FULLY PREPARED TO FIGHT THE PREVIOUS WAR
- The power of the Naming Effect should not be underestimated. It is literally the power to bring new “realities” into existence. Because of this power the various wars on “crime,” “poverty,” “addiction,” and the like not only continue in a state of chronic failure: they are doomed to be waged forever, so long as they continue to be framed in those terms. They perpetuate that which they have named.
- TO THOSE WITHIN A SYSTEM, THE OUTSIDE REALITY TENDS TO PALE AND DISAPPEAR; Examples include evangelistic religious movements, certain authoritarian governmental systems, and the executive suites of some large corporations
- As we all know, sensory deprivation tends to produce hallucinations. Similarly, immersion in a System tends to produce an altered mental state that results in various bizarre malfunctions, recognizable to us but not to the persons so immersed.
- DESIGNERS OF SYSTEMS TEND TO DESIGN WAYS FOR THEMSELVES TO BYPASS THE SYSTEM
- Example: The Congress of the United States specifically exempts itself from the Civil Rights Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and the Privacy Act.
- “I never ruled Russia. Ten thousand clerks ruled Russia.” Thus spoke the Czar Alexander on his deathbed.
- A COMPLEX SYSTEM DESIGNED FROM SCRATCH NEVER WORKS AND CANNOT BE MADE TO WORK. YOU HAVE TO START OVER, BEGINNING WITH A WORKING SIMPLE SYSTEM
- ANY LARGE SYSTEM IS GOING TO BE OPERATING MOST OF THE TIME IN FAILURE MODE
- in 1969, five days before the liftoff of Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins for their trip to the moon, it was discovered, purely by accident, that Gravity had been entered into the flight path program with a minus sign; that is, as a repulsive force rather than as an attraction.
- every Bug, no matter how humble, always gives us at least one important piece of information; namely, it tells us one more way in which our System can fail
- CHERISH YOUR BUGS. STUDY THEM
- THE MEANING OF A COMMUNICATION IS THE BEHAVIOR THAT RESULTS
- IN A CLOSED SYSTEM, INFORMATION TENDS TO DECREASE AND HALLUCINATION TENDS TO INCREASE
- At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, when the Great Powers met to decide how to punish France for a generation of aggressions against Europe, the French Foreign Minister Talleyrand pointed out that France was just one more victim of Napoleonic oppression. Indeed, France was the one who had suffered the most and therefore, he insisted, she should be treated as an equal party to the Congress.
- IN ORDER TO SUCCEED IT IS NECESSARY TO KNOW HOW TO AVOID THE MOST LIKELY WAYS TO FAIL