This was recorded by INET, as part of the "Human After All" economics conference.
Scroll ~4/5ths down the page to "Friday April 11,2014 ("Integration, Currency Unions, and Balance of Payments")" - where Bill's talk starts at ~36:45 (2nd in a 4-person panel, with subsequent discussion)
Bill uses this presentation to review how and why the entire process for building consensus on the common euro-monetary union was a disaster from the outset, given the arbitrarily fixed - not dynamic - input biases maintained throughout.
This is a classic lesson in how adaptive systems can and cannot work, which is also echoed in classic campaign theory, whether business, political or military, or all forms of dynamic navigation.
The simplistic statement of that lesson is that all the dynamic adjustments required for tuning the growth (or navigation) of complex systems cannot be predicted, so that the easiest way to proceed is to set a Desired Outcome and then simply make, on an ongoing basis, any & all adjustments dictated by context, in order to approach that outcome.
Conversely, the classic failure pattern for all naive beginners is to try to dictate or predict given methods or tactics up front, and then attempt to "insist" that predetermined presumptions can be forced to guide populations to where they want to go. This path, of course, generates all the later excuses that "no one could have predicted" the unpredictable. [Well no shit, Sherlock Cheney!]
Given how many disciplines HAVE known these lessons about adaptive systems - literally for thousands of years, even the entire history of the human species - it is truly astounding that the economics discipline has (along with various "organized" religions, aristocracies, criminal gangs, and political parties) managed to ignore or deny learning the recurring lesson. At least politicians, royalty and crooks have the honesty to admit that they just lie, constantly, about everything.
What excuse does the economics profession have? That they're bought by the same lobbyists that buy politicians? And who dole out pennies from their ill-hoarded public fiat to "fund" public education systems that should be (and once were) publicly mandated as an absolute requirement for a growing culture?
