Conner Calzone, Tiffany Pang

1. If you are the Chief of Police for Afghanistan, what solution would you develop to pay the cops that are actually working, reduce corruption, and boost their morale?

Solution 1: Have policemen supervised and their progress monitored – if they fall below the standard, threaten to lower their salaries until they reach the expectations set for them, and if they still refuse to work efficiently, fire them

• • This is a measure of regulation in systems thinking, since it focuses on feedback to lead to the desired outcome of the system, in this case being the performance of the police.
  • This will help everyone work together for the cause of the country, and for themselves
  • This can also be seen as leverage, since their salaries are being threatened, and potentially their jobs.

Solution 2: Offer incentives such as bonuses or extra days off for high performance working cops

• • This could be seen as a leverage point, as the incentive will lead to a shift in the individual policemen, affecting the overall safety of the community due to a better police force.
  • However, we must also understand that more incentives or bribing can hurt the poor when resources are going to increasing incentives for the policemen

Solution 3: Create new policy-sustainable improvement on how the government should deliver services by endorsing sensible rules and practices that ensure change

• • Similarly to enforcing stricter surveillance and supervision on policemen as a regulation, it is possible to gradually integrate new policies that force the policemen to make the guidelines in order to receive certain benefits in an abstract fashion

Solution 4: Keeping the citizens engaged on what is happening at the local, national, interaction and global levels to promote engagement

• • Through holism, changing the communities’ and people’s behavior by teaching them the relevant information/tools to push engagement and participation in their government by identifying priorities, problems and looking for solutions; this allows the power of the people to occur
  • This idea helps indirectly solve the problem at hand, yet it is effective
  • It’s not the best option as it could lead to riots and a mass rebellion with those of extremely high positions versus the people, but corruption is not easy to change 
    • Some real life examples of protests are Hong Kong, Thailand, and BLM protests around the world

2. If you are the entrepreneur, what multi-final solution will you develop so that you succeed, your venture succeeds (takes water hyacinth off the lake), and the people living along the lakeshore also walk away happy. Please be specific on how your solution might function and precisely whom you would work with. For example, refrain from including vague stakeholders like entire communities.

Solution 1: The fisherman already knows the hyacinth is affecting their fishing business which is also decreasing the overall amount of food resources available for the community. The fisherman, the people in this village knows this and if this continues, they may lose the most efficient/effective way of getting food

• Therefore, the entrepreneur should publicize what she is trying to do. I believe that poster billboards with very explicit images will help the people of the village and the fishermans understand what is going on. I believe that their lack of understanding, is making them unhappy, and causing them to be subjected to think the entrepreneur is only doing this for the money
• In a way, she is also educating the public about the situation and how dire it is to fix and get rid of the hyacinth, before it’s too late, where the plants will start to affect the economic state and lifestyle of the people
• This is Multifinality where resource optimization is happening in this case, thus the fisherman most likely saw the entrepreneur as a competitor since she was earning money. However, if the fisherman saw it like this where the entrepreneur fixes the hyacinth problem earns some money, then the fisherman will be able to earn their money from fishing more now since the hyacinth is gone and then the consumers of the fish being sold at the market will be able to bring home food for their families to eat

Solution 2: The entrepreneur can show that she is not competing against the fisherman for who gets the best business and instead her goal is to support and aid their community that is being supported by fishing. She would have to explain and describe that, in order to help the fisherman, she must earn some money to sustain this hyacinth-ridding system she has created. 

• This shows interdependence as they are helping each other rather than competing against each other, hoping to create a symbiotic relationship
• This defines equifinality where the end goal of getting rid of the hyacinth is what both parties want. Both want to earn money to sustain their business, but they have competitive advantages based on each other. If the entrepreneur succeeds in clearing all the hyacinth and restoring these bodies of water, then the fisherman can earn more money by catching more fish and the compost produced from the crushed hyacinth can help families potentially to fertilize their own small gardens or to be used as firewood.