# 12. Constants, parameters, numbers "Parameters" in systems jargon are **the numbers that determine how much of a discrepancy turns which faucet how fast**. Maybe the faucet turns hard, so it takes awhile to get the water flowing or to turn it off. Maybe the drain is blocked and can allow only a small flow, no matter how open it is. Maybe the faucet can deliver with the force of a fire hose. These considerations are a matter of numbers, some of which are physically locked in and unchangeable, but most of which are popular intervention points.
Consider the national debt. It's a negative bathtub, a money hole. The annual rate at which it sinks is called the deficit. Tax income makes it rise, government expenditures make it fall. **Congress and the President spend most of their time arguing about the many, many parameters that open and close tax faucets and spending drains.** Since those faucets and drains are connected to us, the voters, these are politically charged parameters. But, despite all the fireworks, and no matter which party is in charge, the money hole keeps getting deeper, just at different rates (and even when, as in 1999, the parties are arguing about how to spend a nonexistent "surplus").
To adjust the dirtiness of the air we breathe, the **government sets parameters** called "ambient air quality standards." To assure some standing stock of forest (or some flow of money to logging companies) it sets "allowed annual cuts." **Corporations adjust parameters** such as wage rates and product prices, with an eye on the level in their profit bathtub the bottom line.
The amount of land we set aside for conservation. The minimum wage. How much we spend on AIDS research or Stealth bombers. The service charge the bank extracts from your account. All these are parameters, **adjustments to faucets**. So, by the way, is the act of firing people and hiring new ones, including politicians. Putting different hands on the faucets may change the rate at which the faucets turn, but if they're the **same old faucets, plumbed into the same old system, turned according to the same old information and goals and rules**, the system isn't going to change much. Electing Bill Clinton was definitely different from electing Bob Dole, but not all that different, given that every President is plugged into the same Political System.
**Parameters are the points of least leverage** on my list of interventions. **Diddling with the details**, arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Probably 90 no 95-no 99 percent of our attention goes to parameters, but there's not a lot of leverage in them.
Not that parameters aren't **important**. They can be, especially **in the short term** and to the individual who's standing directly in the flow. People care deeply about parameters and fight **fierce battles over them**. But **they _rarely change behavior_**. If the system is chronically stagnant, parameter changes rarely kick-start it. If it's wildly variable, they don't usually stabilize it. If it's growing out of control, they don't brake it.
Whatever cap we put on campaign contributions, it doesn't clean up politics. The Feds fiddling with the interest rate haven't made business cycles go away. (We always forget that reality during upturns, and are shocked, shocked by the downturns.) After decades of the strictest air pollution standards in the world, Los Angeles air is less dirty, but it isn't clean. Spending more on police doesn't make crime go away.
Since I'm about to get into some examples where parameters are leverage points, let me insert a big caveat here. **Parameters become leverage points when they go into ranges that kick off one of the items later on this list.** Interest rates, for example, or birth rates, control the gains around positive feedback loops. **System goals are parameters** that can make big differences. Sometimes a system gets onto a chaotic edge, where the tiniest change in a number can drive it from order to what appears to be wild disorder.
These critical numbers are not nearly as common as people seem to think they are. Most systems have evolved or are designed to stay far out of critical parameter ranges. **Mostly, the numbers are not worth the sweat put into them.**
Here's a story a friend sent me over the Internet to make that point:
_When I became a landlord, I spent a lot of time and energy trying to figure out what would be a "fair" rent to charge._
_I tried to consider all the variables, including the relative incomes of my tenants, my own income and cash flow needs, which expenses were for upkeep and which were capital expenses, the equity versus the interest portion of the mortgage payments, how much my labor on the house was worth and so on._
_I got absolutely nowhere. Finally, I went to someone who specializes in giving money advice. She said, "You're acting as though there is a fine line at which the rent is fair, and at any point above that point the tenant is being screwed and at any point below that you are being screwed. In fact, there is a **large grey area** in which both you and the tenant are getting a good, or at least a fair, deal._
**_Stop worrying and get on with your life."_**