The Mathematics of Civilization: Why Physics Reveals Humanity Needs a Cultural Revolution to Survive

Theoretical physicist Geoffrey West explains how universal scaling laws governing all life reveal that human civilization faces an accelerating innovation trap that can only be solved through fundamental cultural transformation.

Key Takeaways

• All biological systems follow universal quarter-power scaling laws, achieving 25% efficiency gains with each doubling in size across all species and physiological functions.
• These scaling laws emerge from the mathematical optimization of hierarchical networks like circulatory and respiratory systems that have evolved to minimize energy costs.
• Cities demonstrate dual scaling behavior—infrastructure scales sub-linearly (15% savings) while socioeconomics scale super-linearly (15% increases in both positive and negative outcomes per capita).
• The super-linear scaling of cities creates accelerating innovation requirements that lead to finite-time singularities where the system must reinvent itself or collapse.
• Innovation cycles must occur at ever-increasing frequencies, creating an unsustainable "accelerating treadmill" that threatens civilizational stability.
• Current growth paradigms require paradigm shifts every few decades, accelerating to potentially impossible timescales of months or years between major innovations.
• Traditional technological solutions may be insufficient—the mathematics suggests we need fundamental cultural paradigm shifts redefining growth and success metrics.
• The tension between physical infrastructure constraints and accelerating socioeconomic demands creates systemic instability in modern civilization.
• Human social networks operate on completely different temporal scales than biological evolution, enabling rapid change within single generations rather than millennia.

Timeline Overview

• 00:00–11:30 — Introduction and Book Overview: Geoffrey West's background in theoretical physics, the Santa Fe Institute's complexity research, universal scaling laws across biological and socioeconomic systems, hidden simplicity underlying apparent complexity
• 11:31–22:45 — Physical Scaling Laws and Galileo's Insights: How areas scale as length squared while volumes scale as length cubed, strength limitations in physical systems, gravity's role in constraining growth, heat dissipation challenges in larger systems
• 22:46–34:20 — Biological Networks and Quarter-Power Laws: Universal 25% efficiency gains with doubling across all organisms, metabolic rate scaling, thousand kilograms of elephant cells versus unicellular organisms, economy of scale in integrated biological systems
• 34:21–45:55 — Origins of Scaling Laws in Network Mathematics: How circulatory, respiratory, and neural networks create fractal-like structures, optimization for minimizing energy costs, space-filling requirements, invariance of terminal units across species
• 45:56–57:10 — Cities and Infrastructure Scaling: Physical infrastructure follows biological-like sub-linear scaling with 15% efficiency gains, universal patterns across global urban systems from Japan to Colombia, cities as scaled versions of each other
• 57:11–68:25 — Socioeconomic Super-Linear Scaling: 15% increases per capita in both positive metrics (innovation, wealth) and negative ones (crime, disease), positive feedback from human social interactions, universality across different cultures and countries
• 68:26–79:40 — Network Intelligence and Social Interactions: Cities as stages for human networks that operate in real-time, tension between physical infrastructure constraints and socioeconomic acceleration, difference from biological time scales
• 79:41–91:15 — Time Acceleration and Finite Singularities: How social systems speed up time while biological systems slow it down, mathematical structure predicting system collapse at finite time points without paradigm shifts
• 91:16–102:30 — Innovation Trap and Accelerating Paradigm Shifts: Historical examples from iron/bronze to Industrial Revolution to IT, requirement for ever-faster innovation cycles, potential impossibility of maintaining acceleration indefinitely
• 102:31–113:45 — Entropy, Thermodynamics, and System Maintenance: Second law of thermodynamics and continuous entropy production, wear and tear requiring increasing energy investment, analogies between organism death and civilizational collapse
• 113:46–125:00 — Technological vs Cultural Solutions: Critique of Ray Kurzweil-style technological singularity, preference for science fact over science fiction, need for cultural paradigm shifts redefining growth and success beyond GDP
• 125:01–136:15 — Wealth Inequality and Elite Responsibility: Pareto distributions of wealth, recent explosion of extreme wealth concentration, potential for philanthropic solutions versus historical patterns of self-interest
• 136:16–145:30 — Network Intelligence and Consciousness: Spinoza's animist view of universe as conscious entity, humans as universe's means of self-understanding, mathematics as language of reality, spiritual dimensions of complexity science

The Universal Mathematics of Life and Growth

Geoffrey West's groundbreaking research reveals that beneath the apparent chaos and complexity of biological and social systems lies a hidden mathematical order governed by universal scaling laws. These laws apply with remarkable precision across all living organisms, from the smallest bacteria to the largest whales, and extend into human-built systems like cities and economies.

The most fundamental discovery is that all biological systems follow quarter-power scaling laws, meaning they achieve approximately 25% efficiency gains with each doubling in size. This isn't just true for obvious metrics like metabolic rate—it applies to virtually every measurable characteristic of life, including lifespan, heart rate, circulation time, and even DNA mutation rates.

• A thousand kilograms of cells organized as an elephant requires far less energy per unit mass than the same mass distributed across thousands of individual organisms
• Every physiological system, from circulatory to respiratory to neural networks, follows the same mathematical principles regardless of species or evolutionary history
• These scaling relationships transcend the randomness expected from natural selection acting on individual organisms in different environments
• The universality suggests fundamental physical principles underlying all biological organization rather than historical accidents of evolution

What makes this discovery profound is that it reveals life operates according to mathematical laws as precise as those governing physics, despite the complexity of biological systems. A mouse is essentially a scaled-down elephant, and an elephant is a scaled-up mouse, when viewed through the lens of these universal principles.

This mathematical framework allows scientists to predict characteristics of unknown organisms based purely on their size, and to understand why certain biological configurations are possible while others are not. The laws emerge from the optimization of hierarchical networks that have evolved to minimize energy costs while maximizing delivery efficiency to all parts of the organism.

How Networks Create the Hidden Order of Nature

The key insight underlying all scaling laws is that life organizes itself through hierarchical networks that follow three fundamental principles: space-filling, invariance of terminal units, and optimization. These principles apply whether we're examining the circulatory system of a mammal or the branching structure of a tree.

Space-filling means that networks must reach every part of the system they serve. Every cell in your body must receive oxygen and nutrients, so capillaries must reach within diffusion distance of each cell. This creates a geometric constraint that shapes how networks can be structured as systems grow larger.

• Circulatory systems deliver blood from macroscopic hearts down through hierarchical branching to microscopic capillaries
• Respiratory systems move air from large airways down to tiny alveoli where gas exchange occurs
• Neural networks transmit signals from central processing areas to peripheral sensors and effectors throughout the body
• Plant vascular systems transport water and nutrients from roots through trunk and branches to individual leaves

Invariance of terminal units reflects nature's parsimony—evolution doesn't reinvent fundamental components when scaling up organisms. Capillaries, mitochondria, and basic cellular machinery remain roughly the same size regardless of whether they're found in mice or elephants. Nature builds larger organisms by adding more terminal units and optimizing the networks that serve them, rather than redesigning the basic building blocks.

The optimization principle emerges from evolutionary pressure to minimize energy costs. Natural selection favors circulatory systems that require less energy for the heart to pump blood, respiratory systems that move air more efficiently, and neural networks that transmit information with minimal metabolic cost. This optimization creates fractal-like structures where each portion of the network resembles a smaller version of the whole.

These three principles interact to create the quarter-power scaling laws observed across all biology. The mathematics is sufficiently precise that scientists can calculate not just metabolic rates but also growth patterns, aging processes, and even tumor development from first principles based on network optimization.

Cities: Where Biology Meets Super-Linear Economics

Human cities represent a fascinating hybrid system that follows biological scaling principles for physical infrastructure while exhibiting completely different super-linear dynamics for socioeconomic activities. This dual nature creates both the extraordinary innovation and wealth creation that defines urban life, and the sustainability challenges that threaten civilization's future.

The physical infrastructure of cities—roads, electrical lines, gas stations, water systems—scales sub-linearly like biological networks, achieving approximately 15% efficiency gains with each doubling in population. Larger cities need proportionally fewer miles of road per capita, fewer gas stations per capita, and less electrical infrastructure per capita than smaller cities.

• New York requires less infrastructure per capita than Los Angeles, which requires less than Chicago, following predictable mathematical relationships
• These infrastructure scaling laws hold across different countries and cultures, from Japan to Colombia to Portugal
• The universality suggests fundamental constraints similar to those governing biological systems, despite cities being human artifacts rather than evolved organisms

However, the socioeconomic activities within cities follow the opposite pattern—super-linear scaling that produces 15% increases per capita with each doubling in city size. This applies to both positive and negative metrics: larger cities have more patents per capita, more restaurants per capita, more educational institutions per capita, but also more crime per capita, more disease per capita, and more financial complexity per capita.

This super-linear scaling emerges from the positive feedback effects of human social interaction. When people interact more frequently in denser environments, they generate ideas, innovations, and economic opportunities at accelerating rates. The same mechanisms that create wealth and innovation also amplify problems like crime and disease transmission.

The tension between sub-linear infrastructure and super-linear socioeconomics creates fundamental challenges for urban sustainability. Cities become more efficient physically while becoming more demanding socially and economically, requiring ever-increasing innovation to maintain growth.

The Finite-Time Singularity Trap

The mathematics of super-linear scaling in human systems reveals a disturbing pattern: unlike biological systems that reach steady states and sustainable equilibria, socioeconomic systems driven by positive feedback loops are mathematically destined to encounter finite-time singularities where growth requirements become infinite.

In biological systems, the quarter-power scaling laws create natural limits that prevent runaway growth. Animals grow quickly when young, then stop growing and eventually die, following predictable mathematical patterns. The sub-linear scaling ensures that larger organisms become more efficient, allowing sustainable population levels within ecological constraints.

• Biological systems naturally reach equilibrium states where energy input balances energy requirements plus maintenance costs
• The economy of scale in biological networks provides stability—larger organisms are more efficient and can better survive environmental fluctuations
• Evolution optimizes for long-term survival over multiple generations, creating systems that can persist for millions of years

Human socioeconomic systems operate under fundamentally different mathematics. The super-linear scaling creates accelerating demands that require continuous innovation to avoid collapse. When West and his colleagues model these dynamics, they find that without regular paradigm shifts, the system reaches mathematical singularities where growth requirements become infinitely large within finite time periods.

Historical evidence supports this mathematical prediction. Human civilization has avoided collapse through a series of major innovations: the discovery of agriculture, metallurgy, writing systems, the Industrial Revolution, and information technology. Each innovation "resets the clock" by providing new sources of efficiency and growth, allowing the system to continue expanding.

However, the mathematics reveals an accelerating trap: each successive innovation must occur more quickly than the previous one. What once took centuries now takes decades, and the interval between required paradigm shifts continues shrinking. Eventually, the system would require major innovations every few years, then months, then continuously—an obviously impossible requirement.

The Innovation Acceleration Trap

The requirement for accelerating innovation creates what West calls humanity's greatest challenge: staying ahead of an accelerating treadmill that demands ever-faster paradigm shifts to maintain civilization's trajectory. This isn't just about incremental improvements but fundamental transformations comparable to the Industrial Revolution.

The historical pattern shows clear acceleration in innovation cycles. The discovery of agriculture took thousands of years to spread globally. The Industrial Revolution unfolded over centuries. The information technology revolution occurred over decades. Each major paradigm shift happens faster than its predecessor, consistent with the mathematical predictions.

• Early innovations like bronze and iron working took centuries to diffuse and transform societies
• The printing press, steam engine, and electricity each transformed civilization within decades of their invention
• Computer technology and the internet created global transformation within years of widespread adoption
• Recent innovations in biotechnology and artificial intelligence are creating changes within months of development

This acceleration creates multiple challenges beyond just the pace of innovation itself. Human institutions, governance systems, and social structures struggle to adapt to change occurring faster than generational timescales. Educational systems become obsolete before students graduate. Career skills become irrelevant within single decades. Social and political institutions designed for stable societies cannot cope with continuous transformation.

The psychological and social stress of continuous change may itself become a limiting factor. Human beings evolved for relatively stable social environments changing over multiple generations. The current pace of change creates anxiety, social fragmentation, and political instability that could undermine the cooperation necessary for continued innovation.

Most critically, the mathematics suggests this acceleration cannot continue indefinitely. At some point, the required pace of fundamental innovation exceeds human cognitive and social capabilities, leading either to system collapse or the need for a completely different approach to growth and development.

Why Technology Alone Cannot Save Us

While futurists like Ray Kurzweil propose that artificial superintelligence will solve the acceleration trap by enabling unlimited innovation, West argues this approach fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the challenge. The problem isn't just generating new technologies—it's managing the social, cultural, and systemic changes required to implement them sustainably.

The technological singularity hypothesis suggests that machine intelligence will eventually surpass human intelligence, solving all problems within the constraints of physical law. From this perspective, the innovation acceleration trap becomes irrelevant because superintelligent systems can innovate continuously at whatever pace the mathematics demands.

• Kurzweil and others predict machine intelligence will merge with human intelligence, creating hybrid systems capable of unlimited problem-solving
• This scenario assumes technological solutions can address the fundamental mathematical constraints governing complex systems
• The approach focuses on increasing the rate of innovation rather than questioning whether continuous acceleration is necessary or desirable

West challenges this technological optimism on both scientific and humanistic grounds. Scientifically, he argues that unconstrained speculation divorced from quantitative understanding of historical patterns and mathematical principles lacks predictive value. The technological singularity hypothesis makes claims about future capabilities without explaining how they emerge from current understanding of physical and mathematical laws.

More fundamentally, West questions whether the technological singularity represents a desirable future for humanity. The merger of human and machine intelligence threatens the essential characteristics that make human life meaningful: physical embodiment, emotional experience, social connection, and the full range of human capabilities and limitations.

Rather than seeking technological escape from mathematical constraints, West advocates working within those constraints to find sustainable solutions that preserve human values and capabilities while addressing the acceleration trap through cultural rather than purely technological means.

Cultural Revolution as the Path Forward

West's most important insight may be his recognition that the solution to civilization's sustainability crisis lies not in accelerating technological innovation but in fundamentally redefining how we measure growth, progress, and success. This represents a cultural paradigm shift comparable in magnitude to the Agricultural or Industrial Revolutions.

Current civilization measures success primarily through economic metrics: GDP growth, stock market performance, corporate profits, and individual wealth accumulation. These metrics drive the super-linear scaling dynamics that create the innovation acceleration trap. By focusing on quantitative expansion, societies lock themselves into mathematical patterns that require ever-increasing resource consumption and innovation rates.

• Traditional growth metrics assume infinite expansion on a finite planet, creating inevitable collision with physical constraints
• The focus on economic growth drives the positive feedback loops that create finite-time singularities in social systems
• Stock market indices and GDP measurements provide daily reinforcement of growth-oriented thinking that shapes individual and institutional behavior

West proposes developing alternative metrics that value quality of life, sustainability, and human flourishing rather than pure quantitative expansion. Instead of celebrating GDP growth, societies could track happiness indices, environmental health, social cohesion, and educational achievement. Rather than daily stock market reports, news could feature measurements of community wellbeing and ecological sustainability.

This cultural shift would require changing fundamental assumptions about human nature and social organization. Current systems assume that people naturally desire more material goods, larger homes, and higher status consumption. A sustainable culture might instead value sufficiency, community connection, and environmental stewardship.

The mathematical framework suggests such cultural changes could alter the scaling dynamics that drive unsustainable acceleration. If societies valued maintenance over growth, cooperation over competition, and sustainability over expansion, the super-linear socioeconomic scaling might shift toward more stable patterns resembling biological systems.

Trump as Proof of Concept for Rapid Cultural Change

West finds unexpected hope in the political disruption represented by Donald Trump's presidency, not because he supports Trump's policies, but because it demonstrates that rapid cultural paradigm shifts remain possible in modern societies. Trump's success in convincing large populations to abandon previously accepted norms around political discourse and institutional respect proves that deeply held cultural assumptions can change quickly under the right conditions.

This observation challenges the assumption that cultural change necessarily occurs slowly over multiple generations. Traditional social science suggests that fundamental values and worldviews change gradually through education, generational replacement, and institutional evolution spanning decades or centuries.

• Trump's political success required large populations to reject previous commitments to rational discourse, factual accuracy, and institutional norms
• This cultural shift occurred within months rather than generations, suggesting that human societies can change fundamental assumptions rapidly when catalytic conditions exist
• The speed of change demonstrates that seemingly stable cultural patterns may be more malleable than previously understood

West proposes that if destructive cultural paradigm shifts can occur rapidly, constructive ones might be equally possible under different leadership and social conditions. The same psychological and social mechanisms that enabled Trump's rise could potentially support leaders advocating sustainability, cooperation, and long-term thinking.

The challenge lies in identifying the catalytic conditions that could trigger positive cultural transformation toward sustainability. This might require charismatic leadership, compelling narratives, or crisis conditions that make current approaches obviously inadequate.

However, West acknowledges the difficulty of intentionally engineering beneficial cultural change. The complex adaptive systems that govern human societies resist simple manipulation, and attempts to control cultural evolution often produce unintended consequences. The same unpredictability that enabled Trump's rapid rise makes it difficult to guarantee that future cultural shifts will move in beneficial directions.

The Physics of Network Intelligence

Underlying West's analysis is a profound recognition that networks themselves possess a form of intelligence that emerges from their mathematical structure and optimization processes. This network intelligence operates across scales from biological systems to cities to global civilization, creating the hidden order that governs complex systems.

In biological networks, this intelligence manifests as the extraordinary optimization seen in circulatory, respiratory, and neural systems. These networks solve complex mathematical problems of resource distribution, information transmission, and energy management without centralized control or conscious planning. The solutions they evolve often match or exceed the efficiency of human engineering.

• Vascular networks route blood more efficiently than human-designed distribution systems
• Neural networks process information using principles that inspire artificial intelligence research
• Plant root systems explore soil resources using strategies that resemble optimal foraging algorithms developed by computer scientists

Urban networks exhibit similar emergent intelligence in their self-organization patterns. Cities develop transportation networks, commercial districts, and residential areas through millions of individual decisions that collectively create functional and efficient urban forms. This occurs without centralized planning and often produces better solutions than top-down urban design.

The global economic and social networks connecting human civilization represent perhaps the most complex example of network intelligence operating at planetary scale. These networks coordinate resource flows, information exchange, and innovation diffusion across billions of individual participants, creating emergent capabilities that exceed the sum of individual human intelligence.

West suggests that understanding and working with network intelligence rather than trying to control it may provide better approaches to addressing sustainability challenges. Instead of imposing solutions from above, societies might learn to create conditions that allow network intelligence to evolve toward sustainable configurations.

This perspective connects to deeper philosophical questions about consciousness and intelligence in complex systems. West, influenced by philosopher Baruch Spinoza, considers the possibility that the universe itself possesses a form of consciousness, with human intelligence serving as the cosmos's means of understanding itself.

Wealth Concentration and Systemic Risk

The extreme concentration of wealth observed in modern societies creates both opportunities and dangers for navigating the sustainability crisis. While concentrated wealth could potentially fund massive coordinated responses to global challenges, it also represents a departure from the mathematical distributions that historically characterized economic systems.

Traditional economic systems follow power law distributions (Pareto's Law) where wealth concentration follows predictable mathematical patterns. However, recent decades have seen wealth accumulation at the extreme top that violates these historical patterns, creating unprecedented concentration of economic and political power.

• The richest individuals now control resources comparable to entire nations, providing unprecedented capacity for large-scale intervention
• Extreme wealth concentration creates potential for coordinated responses to global challenges that would be impossible under more distributed wealth systems
• However, historical evidence suggests that extreme wealth typically reinforces itself rather than addressing systemic problems

West remains skeptical about relying on elite philanthropy to solve sustainability challenges. While figures like Bill Gates have donated substantial sums, these represent small fractions of total wealth, and the donation patterns often reflect donor preferences rather than optimal allocation for addressing systemic challenges.

More concerning, extreme wealth concentration may itself destabilize the social systems that enable continued innovation and cooperation. When large populations lack economic security while small elites control vast resources, the social cohesion necessary for addressing collective challenges may deteriorate.

The mathematical framework suggests that sustainable solutions require addressing wealth distribution as part of the broader cultural paradigm shift toward valuing sustainability over accumulation. This doesn't necessarily require absolute equality, but it may require wealth distributions that support social stability and collective action capability.

Time Preferences and the Discount Rate of Civilization

A crucial insight from West's analysis concerns how human time preferences—our relative valuation of present versus future benefits—drive the unsustainable acceleration of modern civilization. Unlike biological systems that optimize for long-term survival over millions of years, human social systems increasingly optimize for short-term gains over progressively shorter time horizons.

This temporal mismatch manifests in economic systems through interest rates and discount rates that heavily favor immediate consumption over future investment. Financial markets reward quarterly profit growth over long-term sustainability, corporate leaders optimize for stock prices over institutional longevity, and political systems prioritize electoral cycles over generational planning.

• Biological evolution optimizes over thousands of generations, creating systems stable across millions of years
• Human social systems increasingly optimize over single lifetimes, decades, or even quarterly reporting periods
• The acceleration of social change means that long-term planning becomes increasingly difficult and apparently less relevant
• Market interest rates effectively place minimal value on outcomes beyond a few decades, making long-term sustainability economically "irrational"

This temporal compression creates the mathematical patterns that drive finite-time singularities. When systems optimize for short-term outcomes, they naturally tend toward accelerating growth patterns that become unsustainable over longer time horizons.

Addressing sustainability may require cultural shifts that extend human time preferences back toward longer-term thinking more aligned with biological and ecological timescales. This could involve institutional changes that reward long-term planning, economic systems that account for intergenerational impacts, and educational approaches that cultivate patience and future orientation.

The challenge lies in creating cultural and institutional structures that can maintain long-term perspective while remaining competitive with systems optimized for short-term performance. This represents another dimension of the cultural paradigm shift necessary for sustainable civilization.

Conclusion and Practical Implications

Geoffrey West's groundbreaking research reveals that human civilization operates according to mathematical laws as precise as those governing physics, but these laws point toward an accelerating crisis that threatens sustainability. The super-linear scaling of socioeconomic systems creates an innovation trap requiring ever-faster paradigm shifts that may exceed human adaptive capabilities. His analysis suggests that technological solutions alone cannot address this fundamental mathematical constraint—instead, humanity needs a cultural revolution that redefines growth, success, and progress toward sustainable metrics that work within rather than against natural constraints. The choice facing civilization is stark: evolve culturally toward sustainability or face potential collapse from the mathematical dynamics built into current systems.

Practical Implications

• Develop Alternative Success Metrics: Create and use measurements of progress that value sustainability, wellbeing, and long-term thinking over pure economic growth
• Extend Time Horizons: Make decisions based on longer-term consequences rather than quarterly profits or electoral cycles, aligning human planning with ecological timescales
• Work With Network Intelligence: Understand that complex systems have emergent intelligence that often produces better solutions than top-down control
• Invest in Cultural Education: Support educational approaches that teach systems thinking, sustainability science, and long-term perspective rather than just economic optimization
• Question Growth Assumptions: Challenge personal and institutional assumptions that more is always better, bigger is always preferable, and faster is always superior
• Build Resilient Local Networks: Create community-level systems that can function independently of global supply chains and maintain stability during transitions
• Practice Voluntary Simplicity: Adopt lifestyle choices that prioritize sufficiency over accumulation, demonstrating alternative values in daily practice
• Support System-Level Research: Fund and advocate for research into complex systems, sustainability science, and cultural transformation rather than just technological innovation
• Create Transition Institutions: Develop organizations and policies designed to manage cultural paradigm shifts toward sustainability smoothly rather than through crisis

Predictions About the World to Come

• Innovation Cycles Will Hit Physical Limits: The acceleration of required paradigm shifts will exceed human cognitive and institutional capacity to adapt within decades
• Cultural Paradigm Shifts Will Accelerate: Following the Trump precedent, rapid cultural transformations will become more common as traditional institutions lose stability
• Cities Will Face Infrastructure Breakdown: The tension between sub-linear infrastructure and super-linear demands will create increasing urban dysfunction and inequality
• Biological Systems Will Provide Design Models: Sustainable technologies will increasingly mimic biological optimization principles rather than pursuing pure efficiency maximization
• Wealth Concentration Will Trigger Social Instability: Extreme inequality will undermine the social cooperation necessary for addressing collective challenges
• Traditional Economics Will Lose Relevance: GDP-based growth metrics will be supplemented or replaced by sustainability and wellbeing indices
• Network Intelligence Will Be Recognized: Scientific understanding of emergent intelligence in complex systems will influence management of social and economic systems
• Regional Variations in Cultural Evolution: Different societies will experiment with varying approaches to sustainable development, creating natural laboratories for cultural innovation
• Time Preference Institutions Will Emerge: New social structures will evolve to maintain long-term perspective in rapidly changing environments
• Mathematics Will Constrain Political Options: Scientific understanding of scaling laws and network dynamics will limit the range of viable policy choices