Emergent properties in war - and peace

Charles Hugh Smith is writing about the models we use to plan war, but I think his argument applies as well to society and the environment: all are too complex to be modeled effectively:

Our models for planning and understanding war are inherently linear because there is no way to project what emergent properties the war will generate, or anticipate all the second-order effects (consequences generate their own consequences) unleashed by these dynamics. What emergent properties describe is the way that complex interactions generate dynamics that have their own separate properties that are different from the initial conditions. We start with systems we think we understand--military forces, logistics, political structures, etc. To manage these complex systems, we distill them into models that enable us to control the systems. But once these complex systems interact, the interactions generate knock-on effects which manifest properties that operate outside the models. Iran, En-Lai, Napoleon, Mike Tyson and Model Collapse, Charles Hugh Smith, 9 March 2026

Policymaking might have been simpler in former times; now the interactions and complexities are too great for the sort of top-down, one-size-fits-all approach that is inevitable when power is centralised. All this points to the need for a system that allows for adaptive approaches to solving our social and environmental problems. Social Policy Bonds could be the solution: they would target broad long-term outcomes, and stimulate approaches that can adapt readily to changing circumstances and to diverse circumstances of different regions or populations. Unfortunately, any initiative to introduce a bond regime or something like it would be hobbled by the interests of existing institutions, whose entire raison d'etre would be threatened by a policymaking system that subordinates institutional structures and funding to desirable social goals. Current policies and are dictated by the private- and public-sector bodies we already have; it should be the other way round. See here for how a Social Policy Bond regime could bring about such a reversal.