distribution of the successive issues prepared and no one was aware of the work done, or made any use of it.18. Large complex systems are beyond human capacity to evaluateIn support of this Gall cites C W Churchman:"In general, we can say that the larger the system becomes, the more the parts interact, the more difficult it is to understand environmental constraints, the more obscure becomes the problem of what resources should be made available, and deepest of all, the more difficult becomes the problem of the legitimate values of the system" (6).19. A system that performs a certain way will continue to operate in that way regardless of the need or of changed conditions.The inertia of large bureaucracies is a well-recognized phenomenon. This does not prevent their advocates from believing that such agencies are well able to adjust rapidly to changing circumstances - to a crisis of multiple crises, for example. Donald Schon has drawn attention to the fact that many organizations are memorials to old problems.20. Systems develop goals of their own the instant they come into being.And such goals can be only indirectly related to those for which the system was established. This is a reason to be concerned with plans to create a world government to solve problems we have not been able to handle nationally. Bigger systems do not necessarily lead to better solutions.21. Intra-system goals come firstGall notes:"The reader who masters this powerful axiom can readily comprehend why the United Nations recently suspended, for an entire day, its efforts at dealing with drought, detente, and desert oil, in order to debate whether UN employees should continue to ride first class on airplanes".There are other, and more biting, examples of this point.22. Complex systems usually operate in failure modeClearly the more complex the system, the more probable it is that some parts will be under repair, "unavailable", or on holiday. The appropriate question is then not how an international agency ought to function, but how it actually functions in the normal absence of some parts (especially during the holiday months June to September, for example, or before the end of the post-prandial coffee break). This corresponds to the reviewer's insight, following a recent visit to a developing country, that we should primarily be concerned with inter-system conditions, namely those not covered by working systems for whatever reason. Organized chaos can be most instructive, particularly as a model for the post-petroleum epoch.23. A complex system can fail in an infinite number of waysThose who recognize the possibility of failure cannot hope to design effectively' against it as has been shown time and again. It might almost be said that such systems generate new methods of failure and educate people into increasing acceptance of them. In fact the international system may be characterised by the contrast between the extraordinarily high expectations of those who do not know its limitations and the extraordinarily low expectations of those who do.24. The mode of failure of a complex system cannot ordinarily be predicted.Donald Schon pointed out that the institutional complex that is