As Michael Lewis points out, “It still matters less how much money you have than how well you spend it.”

Reflecting on this now, it seems obvious that the more pressure we put on ourselves, the more we fell back on an unreflective habitus, those ways of working that we were most used to.

Instead of supporting talented and committed teams to seek permanent solutions to our most serious challenges as we do in the sciences or in the technology sector, we fund tightly controlled five-year plans.

Producing these forms of capital improves our ability to actually take advantage of opportunities to change systems in the real world, a world in which plural forms of capital are shrinking.

Big Mac from McDonald’s. Instead of costing a few dollars, it would cost a few hundred dollars.8 The fact that the consumer is not paying for these externalities raises the question: who will pay for them? Typically such resources are extracted from the commons, hence the expression “tragedy of the commons.”

The story of the modern global food system is the story of unintended consequences.

Since then we have learned a lot, and many ideas from complexity science are in common use.

We drew up a list of about a hundred people and sent them a short outline of the lab—the invitation. We asked them if they were interested or if they knew anyone who might be interested in the lab, either as a co-convener, a lab team member, an advisor, or a funder.

Typically decisions are made centrally and then programs are delivered on the ground via five-year plans.