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Breaking Big: Fixing Our Godzilla Problem | Sebastian Buckup | TEDxCambridge


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what you see behind me is the world’s
largest animal it is truly majestic it’s
the blue whale and yet if you consider
the size of the swimming pool it is in
our great oceans it is tiny it’s like
why is that so
why is that so why are the largest
animals growing to a few dozen feet but
not a mile and then once you go down
this path of slightly awkward questions
you come across this one why do
companies in fact why do they stop
drawing at half a trillion in assets and
why do cities
that rapidly expand become more
dangerous tool question marks and all
three questions are actually part of a
bigger puzzle of life and that puzzle is
why do things scale in the first place
and then most of the time at some point
go stale and then unfortunately who
rapidly collapse and fail I joined the
World Economic Forum just a couple of
days before one of the greatest whales
in the financial services industry
Lehman Brothers some of you might
remember collapsed and plunged the world
economy into crisis and absorbing the
palatable fear the palpable fear of the
CEOs and heads of state gathering at our
annual meeting only couple of weeks
later made me aware of one thing and
that is that scale
being big being at the helm of big
organization bankers record at the time
masters of the universe all of that can
give us super powers but it can also
make us very frail you never there’s one
thing that I took away from convening
these people for almost a decade it is
that if we want to avoid breaking big if
you want to avoid breaking big we have
to tackle two fundamental limitations to
scale and I will call them the plankton
problem and the Godzilla problem okay
but let’s first start with a very simple
observation that is that all organism
without exception are burning energy and
they’re burning energy for two basic
tasks and that is growing and then
fixing itself maintenance as humans we
are actually at least as biological
beings quite efficient we burn the
energy of a single light bulb every day
it’s not bad what happens though is that
regardless over time things break that
means that maintenance consumes more and
more and more energy and the moment that
maintenance function cannot keep up
anymore the organism dies it’s nothing
like starting a talk with a cheerful
but when it comes to mammals our family
here there’s another stunning now I
would say slightly spooky commonality
and that is that all mammals die on
average after 1.5 billion heartbeats but
then of course life expectancies are
very different very different and
there’s one explanation for that embed’
explanation is scale the heart of the
biggest mammal on earth it’s just ten
times per minute the clock of the
smallest animals takes much much much
faster up to a thousand five hundred
times so here you have actually a pretty
good answer to the first part of my
question why does things scale we live
longer it’s powerful it’s actually quite
a powerful argument for growing big if
you think about it but then why don’t
you live in the world of whales why are
they still mice the typical answer that
one would get for this kind of question
is resources or if I will just have a
few more resources it would all be great
and indeed if you look at the story of
the whale it is consuming 1 million
calories worth of plankton and krill
every day that’s more or less what we
consume in an entire year
so clearly the availab available ‘ti of
this stuff in the sea must play a role
and then if you go a little bit deeper
into the history of whales you realize
that they around for a really really
really long time 35 million years but
the big blue one only came about quite
recently and that was a time when warmer
climates brought out more nutrients in
the sea so all to say resources are of
course a threshold to growth every
organism to benefit from scale needs to
over
it’s plankton problem now that’s a
pretty straightforward story maybe
that’s why we have heard it so often and
that’s what we have told it so often but
I would also say it is just half the
truth
third experiment what if it would feed a
that is the less likely outcome I would
say a weight size mega Mouse well the
more likelihood come is this one right
Mouse with high cholesterol and heart
problems that is on that image that is
the story of rich nations in one slide
so there is a reason there’s a pretty
good reason why scaled up creatures like
Godzilla only exist in fiction and that
reason is physics and now Godzilla fans
have to be very strong if you scale a
lizard to the size of Godzilla it will
simply sadly collapse under its own
weight its bones would break its muscles
would tear and so on and the reason is
that strength increases with size but at
a lower rate simple as that
well think about it this way an ant
could lift five times its brothers and
sisters if it wanted to an elephant
forget it couldn’t lift a single
couldn’t even lift itself so there is
the good seller problem that is the
problem there is y-scale can give us
super powers but it can also make us
incredibly fail and frail so that is the
biological world or the physical world
if you like now what about the social
creatures we are building like companies
and cities and entire countries they
behave much the same way the most
astonishing example is cities salaries
patterns even even walking speeds
increase at a stable rate with a
population size of a city
if you move tomorrow to a city twice as
big as your hometown you’re going to
make about fifteen percent more and
you’re going to walk ten percent faster
it’s good for your health as well quite
compelling and then when it comes to
companies there’s a similar play you
compare assets and profits in the u.s.
about half of our profits are going to
30 mega corporations in terms of assets
so the equivalent of mega cities if you
move as an employee into one of these
corporations no matter if you go there
as a janitor or as a top manager by the
way your salary is going to beat that of
your peers so it’s not too surprising
that more and more people are moving
into cities and it’s not too surprising
either that companies grow in markets
become more concentrated and that
industries become more concentrated and
so on but then what is putting in the
stops why don’t these social creatures
grow endlessly either there’s a good
question well a good starting point is
indeed the plankton problem I can tell
you it’s impossible to talk to a CEO who
is not worried about access to talent
might be bit different here in Boston
and Cambridge but at least that’s where
I am from if you look at the level of
cities they examples like Cape Town a
flourishing city has exploded in terms
of population size over the past decades
and then it has been hit by a draught
just a couple of years ago and it’s
going on it might be the first city in
the modern age running entirely out of
water it would be a disaster and it
could even happen this year so that is
an example of the plankton problem if
you look at the example of entire
societies the relentless race for
resources and trade routes people are
talking a lot about trade wars at the
moment well it’s an expression of the
plankton problem and so is migration
which is the desperate race of people
towards countries that hold the promise
of a better life
so the plankton problem is here and it
is certainly severe and yet I would
argue it fails to grasp some of the most
troubling challenges of society today
why is that
well cause particularly rich and
fast-growing societies like the United
States or China for that matter
don’t fracture because of a lack of
resources they’re pretty good actually
at using resources more efficiently and
so on they risk collapsing under their
own weight and that is a very different
story that is the story of the Godzilla
problem take the city of New York it has
contributed 10% to the wealth of this
country of the past 50 years
it’s impressive it’s just one city just
one city two-thirds of this two-thirds
could absorb right away by urban
inefficiency
that’s sad
but if you look at the level of entire
societies there’s another problem there
you have a growing number of people
living under precarious circumstances
despite despite all the wealth being
created around them well what does that
mean well it means family instability
job insecurity neighborhood distress
scaling societies put a lot of weight on
the bones and on the muscles that are
holding them together that’s an
expression of the Godzilla problem look
at corporations Facebook Facebook the
social infrastructure of the world that
vision – quite a heavy hit not because
of some competitors rocking up and
eating Facebook’s lunch that not really
because of weaknesses in its own
infrastructure because of weaknesses
inside in all these challenges at some
point build up on the political stage
they build up in the form of anger and
resentment against the heads of these
social creatures but I would say more
worryingly so it shows in the form of us
civil society citizen fracturing into
ever smaller units if you like a
voluntary digitally enabled descaling of
the citizen body which makes us
collectively weaker and individually
much easier to fool so the point is that
modern society doesn’t really fracture
and suffer from some sort of resource
limitation but really through its own
hand in the beginning I mentioned that
biological organisms carefully divide up
the energy between growth and
maintenance well what happens with the
social creatures we are creating they
are all in for growth then for
maintenance to take care of itself and
we do that for a very legitimate reason
in that region the reason is that Ivana
Bill Jaya
right you want a bit Giants we want to
lift longer but we end up with this and
eventually with that Godzilla on shaky
legs so the Godzilla problem is really
posing a rather inconvenient challenge
to those who position growth of
everything else who said don’t worry
about inequality as long as poverty
levels don’t go up I’m not so sure but
it also challenges those who are
attacking our addiction to growth based
on the idea that we’re running out of
stuff food and energy and oil that’s not
going to happen too soon either we’re
actually getting pretty good at becoming
more efficient for me the most important
in looking at the world like this is
that it holds a promise and that
promises that we don’t have to choose
between breaking big or hitting the
breaks between reckless growth and
hatless isolation and stagnation in a
does that with a very simple but
meaningful formula we have to cherish
and reward more the individuals empty
institutions and the ideas that are
dedicated to the work of maintenance
what does that mean it means that
societies which invests into their
smallest units families communities
won’t grow faster but they will be less
prone to breaking big it means that
corporations which nurture diversity
inside and outside it’s something that
Starbucks said to learn the hard way
recently the pelvis corporations won’t
grow faster but they will be less prone
to breaking big and it means that if all
of us here once in a while invests into
a good night of sleep and you hear me
speak here as the father of a
one-year-old
our careers will probably not grow fast
and our endeavors are not going to be
more successful but we will be less
prone to breaking big and indeed if you
want to fully appreciate what the work
of maintenance can do you don’t have to
look much further and back at yourself
I’m sure that some of you here in the
room I certainly did shudder at that
statistic he is kind of scary don’t take
out your iPhone and calculate where you
stand
fact is that we already live much much
longer than what nature has foreseen
thanks to maintenance innovations like
vaccines but also very simple ones like
soap we have gained 1 billion heartbeats
1 billion overall other mammals on this
planet so let’s use them wisely
maybe decide on one thing we want to
start fixing today thank you very much
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