Reference #339: Thinking in Systems

When a resource system is drawn from at a faster rate than it can sustain, it may or may not survive and rebuild itself. There are three possible outcomes:

• Overshoot and adjustment to a sustainable equilibrium.
• Overshoot beyond that equilibrium followed by oscillation around it.
• Overshoot followed by collapse of the resource and the industry dependent on the resource. Which outcome occurs depends on two factors: the resource's critical threshold and the relative effectiveness of the balancing loop that slows growth.

If feedback is fast enough to stop growth before the critical threshold is reached, the system comes to equilibrium. Slower feedback leads oscillations. And a very weak balancing loop fails to stop continued growth, and so the resource passes its critical threshold and collapses.

Meadows. Thinking in Systems, 2008. (71-72)

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