As alcateias, a ordem espontânea e a treta

Uns falam da alcateia de especuladores a atacar o euro...

.

Wolfgang Münchau em "To save the eurozone, reform its governance" escreve:

.

"While the French and Germans profoundly disagree with each other, they are both wrong. The eurozone was never under speculative attack at any time. What happened was that investors, European pension funds among them, lost confidence in the system. And while fiscal profligacy was the root cause of the problems in Greece, it is not the root cause of the problems in Portugal and Spain. That would be a combination of a defunct labour market and massive indebtedness of the private sector.
.
But instead of solving those structural problems, the two countries last week responded with a fiscal tightening. What makes the economic problem in the Iberian peninsula so difficult is the simultaneous need to reduce debt and improve competitiveness."

.

A propósito da alcateia, é importante recordar os boids de Craig Reynolds:

.

Trecho do livro "Different" de Youngme Moon:

.

"The easiest way to understand how self-organizing systems operate is to essentially break one down. In the 1980s, Craig Reynolds became intrigued by the phenomenon of birds flying in coordinated flocks. A computer animator by training, he decided to try to build a program that would generate a facsimile of flocking behaviour on the screen. He began by programming each artifitial bird to abide by three simple rules: (1) avoid crowding or colliding into nearby birds; (2) keep up with nearby birds (by flying at roughly the same heading and speed); and (3) drift in the direction of the average position of nearby birds.

.

Although he knew he had more work to do before he was finished, he went ahead and tested the simulation using just these three rules. To his surprise, without any further programming, the birds flocked perfectly. ... sometimes, all it takes is individual parties abiding by self-interested, myopic rules of behavior to generate the semblance of choreographed activity.

.

What's compelling about the concept of self-organizing systems is how little they demand of their participants."

.

Voltando a um livro que lemos em 2008 "The Social Atom" de Mark Buchanan.

.

"The central idea of this book is that the only to understand a sudden explosion of ethnic nationalism, ..., and a host of other important or just plain interesting social phenomena - in financial markets, in politics, in the world of fashion is to think of patterns, not people."

.

"Likewise, no single person in a crowd starts out to create streams of movement or plots ou where they should go. The patterns arise spontaneously out of the tumult and confusion and take on energy and power all their own. It is like choreography, yet without a choreographer."