PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

11. FORECASTING DESTINY
United States did not decline during World War II when car sales
dropped to zero.) Such growth curves are shaped by fundamental needs
and are little influenced by the shape of new bumpers.
The marketers were not happy with that notion. “You are telling us
that no matter what we do, things will go their way” was their angry objection.
No, there are things to be done and those who market products do
them most of the time, but they believe they are shaping the future,
while in reality they are only compensating for changes in the environment
in order to maintain the established course. They are reacting to
change in the same way a biological system would in nature. Whenever
there is a danger of falling behind the established path, they bring out
good ideas from manufacturing, product design and advertising. These
ideas may have been dormant for some time; they are called upon as
needed. This is how it happens in biological systems. Mutants are kept
in a recessive state until a change in the environment brings them into
the foreground.
From this point of view, innovation and promotion are no longer
seen as aggressive operations, but as defensive tactics. They can be
thought of as ways of maintaining the equilibrium, just as sweating and
shivering help regulate the temperature of the body. Innovation and
promotion do not create new markets. They are part of the competitive
struggle, which becomes more and more important as growth processes
saturate, and the only way to maintain “healthy” growth is by taking the
food from a competitor’s mouth.
Unlike biological organisms, which can be healthy without growing,
industries are healthiest while expanding rapidly. During this phase the
workforce has a vested interest in increasing productivity, which will
justify higher salaries. On the other hand, during the low-growth
phase—toward saturation—productivity slows down because the workforce
“feels” that increasing it will lead to a reduction in jobs and,
consequently, unemployment.
But coming back to the question of free will, let me give another
example which demonstrates that free will does not play a major role in
shaping the future, nor does the predictability of the future have an impact
on free will. The greater metropolitan area of Athens currently
contains about 4 million people, forty percent of Greece’s population.
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