Economy

Synchronous Failure: The Emerging Causal Architecture of Global Crisis

The authors argue we are increasingly witnessing a new form global crises they characterize as “synchronous failure.” This form of crisis “is more biophysical in origin, more inter-systemic in manifestation, more global in scope, and more rapid in development” (5). The deep cause of synchronous failure are increases in energy throughput, heightened global connectivity, and […]

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Economic Crisis, Long Waves and the Sustainability Transition: An African Perspective

Mark Swilling analyzes economic crises from both a global and a more regional (global south/South African) perspective, examining sociological and technological changes from the post-WWII era into the future green economy. He notes that “a growing body of popular and academic literature has turned to long-wave theory to contextualise the crisis and predict the system

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The Butterfly Defect

The Butterfly Defect: How Globalization Creates Systemic Risks, and What to Do about it

Ian Goldin and Mike Mariathasan argue that systemic risk is endemic to globalization that cannot be removed. “It is a process to be managed rather than a problem to be solved” (p. xiii). But rather than retreat from globalization and forfeit its considerable benefits, the authors argue that systemic risk requires global governance reforms to

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Going South: Capitalist Crisis, Systemic Crisis, Civilisational Crisis

Writing in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, Barry K. Gills argues that the world is actually in “a multidimensional set of simultaneous and interacting crises on a global scale” that he terms a “triple conjuncture.” It involves: A capitalist crisis of over-accumulation that includes the externalities of neoliberalism. A world system crisis

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What Is Systemic Risk, and Do Bank Regulators Retard or Contribute to It?

George G. Kaufman and Kenneth E. Scott provide one of the most often cited definitions of systemic risk as “the risk or probability of breakdowns in an entire system, as opposed to breakdowns in individual parts or components, and is evidenced by co-movements (correlations) among most or all parts” (p. 371). They explain how systemic

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Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems

C. S. Holling argues that ecosystems, economies, and societies periodically undergo four stages of an adaptive cycle in which their levels of resilience, connectivity, and wealth (or “potential”) vary in characteristic ways. Over time, a system gets locked-in to a particular way of operating in which it accumulates immense wealth, expands connectivity to maximize efficiency,

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The Collapse of Complex Societies

After explaining the shortcomings of other accounts of societal collapses, Joseph Tainter presents his own, universal theory. Societies, he argues, are problem solving organizations that solve an unending stream of problems by increasing their complexity. Each addition of complexity, however, has an energetic costs to create and maintain it. Because societies solve their easiest problems

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