Places to Intervene in a System

Places to Intervene in a System
By Donella H. Meadows

http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/places_intervene_system.html

Some excerpts:

"9.  Numbers (subsidies, taxes, standards).

8.  Material stocks and flows.

7.  Regulating negative feedback loops.

6.  Driving positive feedback loops.

5.  Information flows.

4.  The rules of the system (incentives, punishment, constraints).

3.  The power of self-organization.

2.  The goals of the system.

1.  The mindset or paradigm out of which the goals, rules, feedback structure arise."
...

"Numbers are last on my list of leverage points. Diddling with details, arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Probably ninety-five percent of our attention goes to numbers, but there's not a lot of power in them."
...
"When the Hungarian road system was laid out so all traffic from one side of the nation to the other had to pass through central Budapest, that determined a lot about air pollution and commuting delays that are not easily fixed by pollution control devices, traffic lights, or speed limits. The only way to fix a system that is laid out wrong is to rebuild it, if you can."
...
"The ability to self-organize is the strongest form of system resilience, the ability to survive change by changing."
...
"It is in the space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia."
...
If you haven't read the article you should.  If you have, you should read it again.  It's one of those that can be reread again and again.