Some political and economic arguments become much easier to understand once a few basic ideas are introduced.
Externalities are costs created by a business or activity but paid for by other people or the environment.
The commons are resources that belong—or arguably should belong—to everybody, including water, information, infrastructure and shared public space.
Requisite variety explains why a system responsible for controlling something complex must itself be capable of handling that complexity.
Viable systems explore how organisations and communities can operate through connected, bottom-up decision-making rather than relying entirely on central control.
These four ideas appear repeatedly throughout the chapters and provide useful tools for questioning how the modern system works.
