Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Often, greed is not the result of one great big greedy villain, but rather the sum of many well-meaning people who wanted to add just one little item to a system.

The Occupy Wall Street occupiers continue to occupy Wall Street and a few dozen other famous places in a few dozen cities in the U.S. One of the themes espoused by the occupiers is:

greed

The thought is that there are some really big, really greedy people out there somewhere who are taking far too much for themselves and leaving far too little for the rest of us, the 99%.

This thought may be true, but is outside of my experience. What I have seen is something else. I have seen many well-meaning people adding just one little thing to a big system. The one little thing is good, and since it is little, it won’t put a load on anyone.

I first saw this in college. Someone, just a lone student elected to the student council, wanted to added $2 to tuition fees. The $2 times 25,000 students would bring $50,000 that would fund something wonderful for all. And it was only $2. Thirty years later, and thirty years of just a couple of dollars added here and there, tuition has risen ten times more than the rate of inflation. College administrators are greedy. They must be greedy as what else would explain the unjustified rise in college tuition.

Hence, we come to a principle or two of general systems thinking:

One little thing added to a great big system will change that system.

and

The change will often be unintended.

“No,” cry the large group of small and well-meaning people. “We are not greedy. We are in the 99% and we want to improve life for all of us.”

I agree with these people I have known. They are not greedy, the are in the 99%, and they do want to improve life for all of us. A generation or two later, however, these people are gone, no one remembers why they wanted to add $2 to a large system, and someone else looks really greedy.