Though we live in a highly complex, networked world, the paradigm that guides policymaking is largely linear, mechanical, and “rational.” This leaves us blind to the obvious – including our own blindness – and vulnerable to conceptual traps and collective-action problems....
Must-read. It's short and to the point. The main point is that societies are complex adaptive systems that are more suitably represented in terms of organic models than mechanical models. The Western tradition focuses on mechanical models, whereas the Chinese tradition focuses on organic models.
Project SyndicateHow Paradigm Blindness Leads to Bad Policy
Andrew Sheng, Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong. a member of the UNEP Advisory Council on Sustainable Finance, and a former chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission; and Xiao Geng, Chairman of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance and professor and Director of the Institute of Policy and Practice at the Shenzhen Finance Institute at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Bad intentions lead to bad policy.
ReplyDeleteMost problems are more efficiently solved by private action that government. For every success that China touts there are dozens of debacles and failures combined.with an almost sport like commitment to cheating and bending rules and working around government goals to solve real problems. Government is usually last to learn and adapt to Chinese people's creativeness, resourcefulness and profound culture of individualism despite governments best efforts to squash and steal anyone that souch as utters criticism or looks Cross-eyed at the CCP.
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