Microeconomic measures can produce counterintuitive 'emergent' effects at the macro or systemic level. The commendable act of saving money by individuals during uncertain economic times has the perverse macroeconomic effect of making a recession  worse: in aggregate there will be less money available for spending, suppressing demand for goods and services. Economists call this effect 'the paradox of thrift'. Similarly, logical efforts by companies in such conditions to reduce their wage bill or their postponement of investment decisions will reduce spending in the economy  and deepen the economic downturn.

What can be done to counteract this harmful dynamic? The missing spending can be replaced by government spending: governments have it within their power to effectively counter economic downturns!

Michael Green's social progress index TED talk makes it very fun to try out causal loop diagramming in Insight Maker

https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_what_the_social_progress_index_can_reveal_about_your_country

This high-level simulation model presented by Jay Forrester in his book World Dynamics, simulates socio-economic-environmental world system. The world Model was created in a time where pollution and other negative effects of industrialization and economic growth started to become recognized in 1970. For this exam purpose, we have rebuilt the model to do some experiments and analyze the results. 

This is to support a discussion on money flows and growth. Money as a lubricant for the flow of embodied energy in human systems.
See also A Prosperous Way Down website

Tesla pestel Analysis

Adam Smith's The Invisible Hand: The Feedback Structure of Markets. From Sterman JD Business Dynamics p170 Fig 5-26. A price-mediated resource allocation system..

Ocean/atmosphere/biosphere model tuned for interactive economics-based simulations from Y2k on.

WIP  based on Where profits come from paper , Nathan Tankus blog and other historical sources

Any activity  requires the use of energy. Economic activity is not possible without energy,  especially fossil fuels. An increase in economic activity necessarily leads to an increase in the use  fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. In addition there will   be a commensurate increase in waste products, pollution and heat. This is dictated by the laws of physics and unavoidable.  A problem arise when the cost of this degeneration caused by continual economic growth surpasses the benefit society derives from it. The ecological economist Professor Herman Daly (2014) explained that when the impact on the ecosystem is correctly measured, global growth has reached a point where the total private and social costs of economic growth outweigh the private and social benefits. In other words, more economic growth is making global society worse off overall - growth has become uneconomic! The model shows that eventually pressures will build up that counteract the perennial belief that all social ills can be solved with economic growth. 

Michael Marmot's Eur J Epidemiol Essay 2017 See also IM-62760  Social determinants of health from Michael Marmot's  ABC 2016 Boyer Lectures on Social Justice and the Health Gap

Based on G.P. Cimellaro et al. Framework for analytical quantification of disaster resilience Engineering Structures 32 (2010) 3639–3649 paper

However, an unchanging doctrine may prompt actions that influence and change reality. Do ill-adapted doctrinal reactions not increase the complexity in the world, potentially making everything worse? Some Neoliberal economic remedies come to mind. 

WIP of Rammelt's 2019 System Dynamics Review Article which has STELLA and Minsky software versions as supplements. Compare with the older IM-2011 version

Summary WIP of Thomas Palley's 2012 Book

Brief Summary of Albert O Hirschman's Book with 2026 update