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Comment by liber8 | Hacker News Reader

Serious, non-snarky question: WTF does this even mean? How is "the power to transcend paradigms" the most effective way to intervene in a system? How do you create a policy or a set of actions to actually influence an economy based on "the power to transcend paradigms"?

It seems to me that subsidies and taxes are obvious ways to shift the mindset of the system or "transcend paradigms" since we know taxes actually influence behavior. Look at sin taxes on smoking in the U.S., which not only directly reduced smoking but in turn have helped fund anti-smoking propaganda, which together have helped the rate of smoking in the U.S. plummet. Is this what is meant by "transcending paradigms" or "shifting mindsets"? If so, doesn't that really mean that taxes or subsidies can be one of the most effective ways to influence an economy?

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It would help to read the context of that list [0]. She's discussing the different ways that you can change a system (its leverage points). Changing paradigms can cause the system to be changed substantially. But you're still acting within a narrow constraint (that of the paradigm you've changed to). Versus going beyond paradigms, and recognizing the value and potential in each of them. Synonyms of paradigm shift might also be culture change or mindset change.

The purpose of the leverage points is to change the system at a fundamental level. Changing taxes doesn't (until you hit extremes) cause that. The system continues to behave in the same way but with increased or reduced constraints. Consider birth control policies. Eliminating birth control (making it illegal, so not really eliminating it) can cause an initial increase in children born until a new stable point is reached. Once you make birth control legal again, unless there has been a culture change in the interim, the birth rate will drop to the prior level.

Taxes and subsidies are the same. They don't change the system at a fundamental level (or don't do so easily), they only alter its external behavior. But once they're restored to their prior levels the system will probably return to its same behavior.

As a tax example: Perhaps we want to encourage people to save money for retirement, so we give them a tax break on their IRA contributions. This seems to help, people are saving more for retirement (as measured by IRA contributions increasing). We remove the tax break, do they continue to contribute (it's now a part of the culture) or do they stop contributing (they only did it for the tax benefit)?

If they continue, then you managed to create a substantive culture change. But most likely you'll get a drop of contributions.

[0] http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to...

That is a helpful explanation of Donella's thought process (thank you), but it doesn't really get to the heart of my question: how do you cause a cultural change or mindset change?

There are a limited number of ways to have any substantial effect on a bottom-up system like the economy in a free society. You can pass laws forbidding some activity, or offering benefits to try to encourage some activity. You can raise taxes to make an activity prohibitively expensive compared to the desired alternative. You can educate (or propagandize) the population to recognize or believe something. You can conscript people and force them to behave in a certain way (tough in a free society). There aren't too many other options.

When we're discussing how to increase growth, it's not really helpful to say that we should ignore one of the primary levers we have to play with, because that lever isn't nearly as powerful as "changing the paradigm". Okay, great, but what specific actions should we take (i.e. what lever should we play with) to change the paradigm, other than the lever we're talking about?

I'm trying to answer your question, and it's hard.

Really, though, you have to use all the leverage points (or a subset of them). The point of the list was not: Which of these will achieve the desired external behavior the best? The point is: Which of these will actually alter the system itself so that it doesn't regress when removed?

Prohibition didn't eliminate alcohol consumption, it only changed how it was acquired. It made use of a number of the leverage points but fundamentally the US was still a nation of alcohol consumers. Tobacco use has been reduced in the US, but not eliminated, through education and taxes on tobacco products. Education (at least for my generation, now mid-30s) seems to have had a huge impact and actually changed the way it's viewed (so it achieved a paradigm shift).

To change the system (and maybe the paradigm) you'll have to use several of them. Raise taxes on the product (#12). Increase information flow about the consequences of tobacco use (#6). Reduce the positive feedback loop of using it by making it "uncool" (#7). Introduce alternatives that provide the chemical fix (nicotine) without (as much of?) the health consequences via patches and gum (#4).

To directly attack the paradigm itself, you have to use education and propaganda. Which will have varying effectiveness. For points #1 and #2 to be useful, you either have to be an individual with an open mind and the ability to introspect, or a learning organization. That latter part gets harder and harder the larger the organization becomes. A small team can alter its course more easily than a small business, which is more adaptable than IBM or the US population.

Interesting, thanks for the explanation. In your example of what it took to change the system re smoking, you've described the effects of the "levers" that I listed above. In other words, Donella's list is better viewed is descriptive, not prescriptive. Maybe a better way to describe her list would be not as "places to intervene in a system", but lenses through which to view the changes wrought by the levers we have?

Anyways, it still seems to me that taxes are one of the primary tools we have to effect change, and the taxes themselves (individually or together with what we then do with the money generated) can fulfill most, if not all, of the categories on Donella's list.

> how do you cause a cultural change or mindset change?

You're right to call this out. It's the most difficult and elusive thing to achieve. However, it has been happening pretty continuously since the dawn of civilization. Thomas Kuhn sat down to study it in the 50's or 60's and published "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." That book is one of the best treatments of this subject area to date. It is the book that popularized the term "paradigm shift."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...

So that is, you wait for the gatekeepers to die.

Concrete example of “changing the paradigm” in economic history might be transitioning from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy. Even if you get literally all the details wrong, just doing something like that in the first place can lead to massive improvements, at least until you catch up and run into the constraints of getting the details wrong. (Example: the Soviet Union).

At a policy level? "Diversity" jumps to mind.

2. is basically the work of many think-tanks...

to shape beliefs and discourse in the direction of a particular perspective or worldview.

think socialism versus free-market capitalism versus libertarianism. two-party politics in the United States could be thought of as a paradigm.

these are the types of paradigms under evaluation. altering one of these at this layer has cascading effects on policies etc.

1. is basically the ability to create effective think-tanks to shape beliefs and discourse.

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