Zeroth principle of societies
Status: Draft
Confidence: Very likely
One of the most controversial facts about people is that their performance is largely dictated by the system. Deming put it:
The fact is that the system that people work in and the interaction with people may account for 90 or 95 percent of performance.
Let me repeat: this is a fact. This isn’t speculation. This is what underpins the most effective manufacturing organizations like Toyota. This was the brilliance that Robert Caro chronicled about Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson.
This means that calling for individual responsibility or individual responses to issues of a society is only a way to pay lip service without having to actually change anything.
So if you want to talk about society and how it should work and what things should be changed, it must be in terms of the system. And we can articulate the most basic principle that we want in such a system.