Ideas Matter

Your College is Part of a Cartel

This is an eye-opening talk. Most people don't realize that the U.S. system of higher education is in desperate need of reform. We take it for granted that these hoary old institutions need to be changed. But when one turns a business lens on higher ed, one comes to realize that the system is a cross between a guild and a cartel.

SpOILed: A Defense of Plentiful Energy

Some people won't be happy. But there's a film coming out that defends plentiful energy -- including fossil fuels -- as a key ingredient of economic growth. Many overlook the relationship between energy and economic growth. But there is a strong correlation between growth and plentiful energy--one that looks to be connected to thermodynamic law. Consider:

The Physics of Wealth: Are the "One Percent" Natural?

Occasionally I break my 'five minute' rule for videos. Today I'm going to break it with Adrian Bejan's discussion of the constructal law at a TED Bucharest talk. Now, if you get through the talk I want to ask: How do you explain the gap between the few rich and many poor? 

John Hagel: Changing Organizations with Tech

What can non-profit organizations learn from John Hagel above?

First, we might share Hagel's skepticism about networking technologies breaking up big companies. Dinosaur companies may pass away, but new behemoths are likely to emerge. Indeed, the constructal law says we're likely to see "few large, many small" in any organizational landscape. Technology may help to change the topography of this landscape, but it will still have its behemoths.

Paul Romer and the Power of an Idea

If you're a faithful reader, you'll be familiar with our discussion of Paul Romer's charter cities -- as well as Romer's TED talk, which boils the idea down to its essence. Otherwise, check out the video above... Okay, good. So if you've watched the video or read our blog for a while, you've heard about the idea of charter cities by now. But is it going to happen?

Milton Friedman: Another Young Idealist Schooled

Milton Friedman really does carefully unravel the young man's argument -- the last part of which gets to the tension between equality of outcome and freedom from coercion. Interestingly, Friedman offers a proto-version of his now-famous quote from Free To Choose:

The society that puts equality before freedom will have neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will have a great measure of both.

Friedman also carefully shows how policies designed to yield equality of outcome create inequality before the law (read: power elites and redistribution carried out through state coercion). As ever, he is a master. 

But I want to point out one thing. The kid ain't entirely wrong. 

Chris Anderson's Long Tail -- A Constructal Phenomenon?

Chris Anderson has become famous for describing the "long tail," which is a kind of power law distribution (for math geeks in the know). The idea is - prior to the development of new information channels - the long tail for certain goods and services was abruptly cut off at the long tail due to distribution problems associated with bricks and mortar shelf space scarcity. But no more. New channels are being formed and the system evolves to get long tail goods where there is demand.

Adrian Bejan would argue this is instance of the constructal law at work. We've described constructal phenomena on here before. But in this instance, technology has lowered the costs of vascularization -- which has naturalized, or -- in some sense -- erased, the market "distortions" to which Anderson refers. 

Nature: Fractal or Constructal?

I love fractals. I love Benoit Mandelbrot. And this is a fantastic piece. But I know someone who might question this love affair with fractals in nature. Why? Because this detractor has taken things a step further. As I have suggested on here before, Adrian Bejan's constructal law is the as yet most important and underappreciated discovery in the field of physics, evolutionary biology, economics and, well, you name it...

Bejan points out that fractals are mathematical descriptions with fuzzy edges. But if we look out in the world, the so-called fractals are not fuzzy. It's nice that we've found geometric analogs to natural phenomena. And fractals are fruitful. But what if we could go further -- finding a natural/organizational law that had technical application across fields?

Here it is: For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.

So it is not merely that we get recursion in nature. There are functional reasons for such recursion. And function has to do with flow -- that is how systems accommodate the currents that impinge upon a system. Bejan calls this "vascularization." Heart, aorta, vein, capillary. Trunk, limb, branch, leaf-vein. River basin, tributary, brook, creek, stream. Highway, boulevard, street, alley.

Constructal theory also explains things like the relationship between energy consumption and GDP, the "gap" between rich and poor, and countless other phenomena from swimming fish to the excellence of black sprinters and white swimmers. In short, it's not just form that's important. It's function.

The Editor on Good Rules

This clip is an excerpt from a longer talk called "Radicals for Rules" (full version) that I did for a luncheon at the John Locke Foundation in NC. 

I thought it might be interesting to elaborate a little on the points above and offer further resources. So, good rules:

• Result in better "flow" - Adrian Bejan has shaken up science with his constructal principle. Will he shake up the world of political economy, too? (Read also more here.) The idea is rules help systems flow, which means reducing frictions - social, economic and otherwise.
• Allow for emergent order - Hayek's spontaneous order is a common theme on Ideas Matter. Rules help generate complex orders. Hayek refers to such orders as kosmos (e.g. in Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. II.)
• Confer predictability - One facet of order is that agents acting within that order will find behaviors of other agents more predictable, as well the behavior of the body that acts as as a steward of those rules.
• Don't privilege persons or groups - This is the essence of the rule of law, I think. Equality before the law means that rules don't favor interest seekers or attempt to socially engineer. 
• [Forgot one] Don't prescribe (or proscribe) behavior - As soon as you start telling people what they can or can't do in specific contexts, you begin losing freedom and pluralism. That is not to say that "drive on the right" is not a kind of directive. But rules are distinct from regulations. Unfortunately the line between rules and regs is not bright. 

Good rules (and good laws) are, unfortunately, not that "sexy." It's more compelling to legislate away the rights of some to benefit others in the name of some errant concept of social justice or environmental protection. But what you lose are those unsexy functional aspects of rules we've listed above. These are the essence of social order and, under some conceptions, maybe even justice.

Constructal Law Redux: A Shameless Way to Build Blog Traffic?

Ideas Matter readers may recall our discussion of Adrian Bejan's constructal law here. (I am therefore going to re-post Adrian's video--particularly for new visitors). Before discussing this idea further, allow me to offer an example of the principle at work right here at Ideas Matter.

Recently, Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution linked to our humble site. Marginal Revolution is a good example of a major "artery" in a "vascular flow system." In other words, MR deals with significant traffic currents. Tyler's link represents a new channel to our site -- one that, now established, can help continue to generate "flow."

Ideas Matter is still but a tiny brook--with Tyler's single link being a small, temporary tributary from a raging river of MR traffic. In networking language, we'd say the MR site is a major hub, while this site is a tiny node. But using constructal language, we might prefer to speak of currents, flow architectures, vascular hierarchies and evolution over time. Why? because such language unpacks an important feature of these flow systems, which Bejan refers to as: "Few Large, Many Small."

Though flow systems can evolve to become larger, you are not likely to find many blogs with traffic like Marginal Revolution. You are likely to find only a few, in fact--at least in the area of economics and ideas. Blogs with traffic like ours will be numerous. The constructal law predicts that - over time - power law distributions and 80/20-type phenonena are the norm in a given flow system.

Think about nature: vascularization is everywhere:

So in order to accommodate the currents of the world, vascularization abounds. Tree-like configurations in everything, from river basins to the transportation networks that deliver your milk, are instances of the constructal principle at work in various domains. For any such system to persist in time, it has continuously to provide better flow. (This is from an unpublished piece.)

The constructal law says:

For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.

Creating linkages with other websites is a way to increase the possibility that traffic will flow to this blog. In Adrian Bejan's terms, this is to introduce a new channel. Once the channel is formed, we increase the likelihood that traffic will continue flow here (as long as I provide readers with interesting things to read, of course). Anyone who blogs knows this.

But if I understand it correctly, the constructal law predicts that this blog is not likely enjoy the traffic of Marginal Revolution. Why? Well, Tyler and Alex are tremendous writers and thinkers, of course. And content is still king. But also, well-established channels tend to persist over time, like river basins. And that is why most of the blogs that were popular now are mostly the same blogs that were the popular three years ago and are likely to be three years from now. And that's okay. Life can be perfectly good on the long tail.

Now for my shameless attempt at creating new flow architectures: Did you find this article interesting? Add us to your blog roll or link to this article. That way, we can "provide easier access" to currents of people looking for interesting content.