“Jeezuzz, Wilson!” John Hertzler flapped his arms in exasperation as he paced back and forth in front of my father. “This Planning Subcommittee of yours has come up with the stupidest idea since the Soviet Union’s last Five-Year Plan.” Remember, Dr. Hertzler is the computer genius who was invited to represent the Silicon Valley and Seattle-based sponsors of our floating seminar. He was the first speaker when the Coordinating Committee, together with the Joint Planning Subcommittee, convened to hear reaction to the proposed allocation of personnel.
“If history has taught us anything at all,” the tirade continued, “it’s that industrial planning cannot be centralized. A bunch of big shots sitting up on Mount Olympus selecting a hundred people for this job, two hundred for that—that’s a guaranteed recipe for failure. We’ve got to free up creative energies, provide incentives, bring out the entrepreneurial genius of our people. Get with the program, Wilson! This is the twenty-first century!”
“Just a minute, John,” my father said, speaking softly, although I could tell he was irked. He had spoken to me in just that way a million times.
“I remember the Soviet Union, probably better than you do, because my firm actually worked there. I recall those construction jobs sitting idle because some crucial valve hadn’t come—the factory wasn’t making valves that month—or because some bureaucratic plant manager was dumb or uncaring or too well connected politically and couldn’t be held accountable. You don’t have to tell me about the benefits of the free market—efficiency rewarded by profit, incompetence punished by loss, and all that stuff. But you can’t just wave a magic wand and say let’s apply the free enterprise system here. We’re in crisis mode. We’re trying to survive and rebuild in the wilderness. Also, we don’t have money and we don’t have markets. Our only practical choice is to organize from the top.” And then, quickly, before Hertzler could respond: “Besides, there were times when the Russians used central planning to very good effect. How do you think they made their atomic bombs, except by dictating exactly who should have what priority in ordering materials and who should work where—a hundred people for this job, two hundred for that?”
Then it was General Allen White speaking, again before Hertzler could get a word in. “It’s not just the Russians, Will. On behalf of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, let me say a word in favor of centralized planning. Some whiz kid in a garage can create a computer, but that’s not how you establish a system of interstate highways. We couldn’t have built all of America the way you built Silicon Valley.”
Good for you guys, I thought to myself. It’s ridiculous to sit here on a barren beach and pontificate about laissez-faire capitalism. The history of technology shows us how important government planning is in the scheme of things—the Egyptians with their irrigation works, the Romans with their roads and aqueducts, the French with their bridges and canals. Sure, individual initiative is important; but you can’t start building a civilization—pretty much from scratch—without state bureaucrats.
It may be true that the Industrial Revolution in Britain was driven by entrepreneurs—Mr. Watt with his steam engine, for example, and a number of families that developed ever better ways of making iron. But at the same time, the crown played a vital role, especially in armories and shipyards, where government employees made important technical advances. You can’t even argue that computers are a product of pure capitalism. When, during the 1960s, crucial work was done interfacing computers with humans, who do you think financed the work at the Stanford Research Institute? The Department of Defense, of course. And everyone knows that the Internet had its origins in military communication systems adapted for educational institutions. I felt like making a speech myself, but stifled the impulse.
Hertzler retreated somewhat from his extreme position, but not completely. “In my experience, administrators and bureaucrats are the problem and inevitably direct us away from the solution that will satisfy anybody but themselves. They become tyrants…”
My father held up his hand and continued in a conciliatory tone, partly to keep the peace and partly because he recognized the validity of Hertzler’s concerns. “You certainly have a point, John,” he said, “and I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. In every enterprise we establish, each individual will be encouraged to use his or her initiative. We can’t have anarchy; but we can have a ‘suggestion box’ philosophy, trying to take advantage of each worker’s resourcefulness and each middle manager’s ingenuity. For incentive, I think that mere recognition will serve us well. We’ll try praise and possibly different types of awards—’the idea of the month’ sort of thing. Money, as I said, we simply don’t have. We’ll sit down with you and think about how to bring tangible compensation into play as soon as possible. But we can’t let this divert us while we’re trying to get started.”
“Okay, okay,” Hertzler growled. “But what are you going to do about modifying those allocations of personnel? You know, for sure, that you’re going to have too many miners and too few brick-makers, or vice versa. The scheme is so damned arbitrary.”
I could see that Alf Richards, who had so far controlled his irritation by pouring himself two cups of coffee, was about ready to explode. But my father held him off with a wave and a wink, and continued.
“Look, we’ve given that a lot of thought, John, and I’ve discussed the problem at length with Alf here and some of his associates on the Planning Subcommittee. I hope you’ll approve of what we’re thinking. We’re going to look at the situation as a problem in systems engineering.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Hertzler, quieter now, and thoughtful. “Sometimes I think that systems stuff is a lot of gobbledygook.”
“It certainly isn’t my specialty,” my father said, “but Harry Robbins, who is one of the top people in the field, is a member of the subcommittee, and he has assured Alf and me that the approach will be very helpful.”
It’s been almost a year since this conversation took place, and during that time I’ve had ample opportunity to see Robbins and his colleagues at work, applying the principles of systems engineering to the problems of resource allocation within the Ulundi Circle. I can’t say that I understand everything they’re up to, by a long shot. And sometimes I think that there isn’t that much to understand; that, in spite of their abstruse lingo, they’re just using old-fashioned common sense.
What we start with is a large and complex system. And within this, a change in one part, or subsystem, is likely to affect many other subsystems. The goal, to quote Dr. Robbins, is “to achieve an optimum balance of all system elements.” Well, sure. It’s like when you’re designing an airplane and you want to make the fuselage larger to carry more payload, you have to reconsider the engines, the fuel tanks, the landing gear, and so forth. Then each of these changes affects the aerodynamic characteristics of the craft, and you have to adjust each part again and again seeking an optimum overall design. In the good old days—pre-Event, that is—you could put all of these variables into a computer program and see the effect of each contemplated change by pushing a button. In our particular and peculiar case, not only don’t we have operative computers, but I dare say that our variables are more challenging than any single industrial problem, even designing a jet plane.
Since we have a limited number of able-bodied workers, adding workers to one activity means subtracting them from another. So, an essential part of the Planning Subcommittee’s work is to adjust the worker allocations. In order to make such decisions, the evaluator must be given frequent reports from the leaders of each enterprise, setting forth needs, accomplishments, and projections for the future.
But allocation of personnel is only one aspect of the problem. The webs of interrelationship are endlessly complex. For example, iron tools are needed for farming, mining, lumbering, and construction; iron nails are needed for buildings and other wooden products; iron axles and wheel rims are needed for wagons. So, given limited capacity, how many of each product should the blacksmiths make? The smiths need smelted iron, tools, and fuel for fires; the smelters need ore and charcoal or coal; these materials must be transported, which requires wagons and decent roads—and so forth, in a bewildering interplay of causes and effects. It is the essence of systems engineering to bring order out of such apparent chaos.
Kind of takes my breath away…
A key tool in this discipline is the flow chart, a graphic depiction of the overall system, in which geometric figures—circles, squares, triangles, etc.—are drawn to represent various subsystems and arrows represent their interactions. Such charts—and I’ve seen more than my share during the past year—help point out the interrelationships of processes within the main system. If a sawmill is one of our subsystems, then it’s important that the millpond (built by the construction organization) be ready before the completion of the waterwheel (made
