Don't just do something, stand there! Reflections on the counterintuitive behavior of complex systems, seen through the eyes of System Dynamics, Systems Thinking and simulation.
While the government is shut down, it seems like a good time for a rousing round of Alan Atkisson‘s GDP Song:
The shutdown means GDP measurements are on ice, which is not all bad, though we can expect a 15 basis point drag on GDP per week to include some real harm.
Shutting down our measurement systems strikes me as alarmingly close to turning off the instruments on the flight deck of a plane, due to a route dispute between the pilot and copilot.
In SD, we often talk about the pitfalls of managing systems with delays and feedback while paying attention to the wrong indicators. The classic example is navigating a car at high speed in the fog on an icy road by looking in the rearview mirror.
A related problem is managing your system to maximize the wrong goals, e.g. running the economy by a problematic metric like GDP. Here’s Alan AtKisson’s musical take on that: