Nancy Krieger's Spider located? Response to Putnam

I was pondering Harvard researcher Nancy Krieger's question about reconciling apparent signs of a conspiracy to exploit the poor with lack of any actual suspects. Admittedly, in the Tobacco industry, there was an actual conspiracy, but it wasn't "directed" at blacks or the poor in an evil way -- they just "happened" to be easy victims. How does that happen?

( ref: Krieger N. Epidemiology and the web of causation: has anyone seen the spider? Soc Sci Med, 1994, 39:887-903.)

I think the answer may lie in the nature of systems thinking and feedback loops. As I've discussed, even the simplest goal-seeking feedback loop acts as if it has a mind of its own, and is a sort of "proto-life", or "MAWBA" - (Might As Well Be Alive.) of a more fundamental nature than even cells or DNA. This is the core of silicon life forms as well, or any system of any material that is adaptive and cybernetic.

All we need to explain the observed concentration of exploitation on poverty-laden areas is a single feedback loop and minimal dynamics. Here's the causal loop:


And the dynamics are similar to the charge build-up that precedes a lightning stroke:


Any "pressure" acts almost alive, as if it is consciously seeking a way out, probing every weakness. Once it finds even a tiny gap, as with the over-topping the levees in New Orleans, positive feedback enlarges the hole and momentum builds up flowing towards that hole.

Catastrophe ensures, both mathematically and physically, or in our case, socially. In fact, in the weather case, the addition of the Coriolis force can create a tornado or hurricane that even feeds on energy in the environment and grows larger and stronger.

So, we don't actually need a "conspiracy" - we just need pressure and a situation where weakness is exploited and exploitation leads to weakness, which leads to more exploitation, which leads to more weakness, etc. in an exponentially increasing cascade.

With active corporate MBA's looking to see what other corporations are doing, once one starts making money exploiting the poor, others rush to follow suit, attracting still others, etc.

My suspicion is that the relationship that Robert Putnam has found between diversity and a loss of social capital

Robert D. Putnam (2007), E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture
Scandinavian Political Studies 30 (2), 137–174.

is actually a reflection of the fact that the above-mentioned feedback loop differentially focuses exploitation on the poor, making them poorer, which induces more exploitation, etc. The end point of that Markov chain is death of the target population, I suppose, unless something else stops it sooner.

The key driver in making this catastrophe is collective willingness to exploit the weak for profit, and collective tolerance for this activity, probably based on a belief that this is "an unavoidable effect of free markets."

These earlier posts in this weblog are relevant for further reading:
E Pluribus Unum
Unity in Diversity is the central problem
Systems Explanations for Student Behavior
Being a Robot 101 - The Cybernetic Loop
Part A of Why Sloops Matter
Another gentle introduction to Control Loops
Causal Loop Diagrams, Stories and Macrobes
Systems Dynamics, Worcester Polytech and Social Policy

Wade