View this in your browser “Enabling structures expand what societies can sustain together.” Civilizations A child born today inherits social structures that civilizations built over thousands of years. Long before learning to read, that child enters a world organized by cities, universities, governments, corporations, financial systems, and technologies built across countless generations. These structures seem so familiar that they are often mistaken for a natural part o

View this in your browser “Structure organizes relationships. Alignment determines whether they can function coherently.” Prosperity is often explained through the visible components of development. Societies measure advancement through infrastructure, technology, investment, industrial capacity, education, scientific progress, and economic expansion because these factors are directly observable, quantifiable, and deliberately improvable. Institutions organize around the

View this email in your browser “Structure organizes relationships; alignment determines whether they can function coherently.” Misconception When Steve Jobs returned to Apple Inc. in 1997, the company already had capable teams, advanced technologies, and a wide range of products under development. Different groups were executing effectively within their domains, and the organization remained active and coordinated. Yet the overall system had become difficult to underst

View this in your browser “Structure organizes relationships; not all structures can sustain what they generate.” We take it for granted that bands evolved into tribes, tribes into villages, and villages into cities. Yet why did human civilization not remain organized around small kinship groups and localized communities? Why did societies repeatedly reorganize into broader, more complex forms capable of sustaining expanding systems of production, specialization, exchang

View this in your browser “Improvement can increase effort without improving outcomes.” Misconception In the early agricultural settlements established under the Ottoman Empire, where the State of Israel sits today, in the second half of the 19th century, known as Moshavot, farmers received financial support, access to modern agricultural knowledge, and infrastructure designed to support agricultural production. The settlers were educated, and significant resources wer

View this in your browser “What repeats across systems reveals what lies beneath them.” Pattern In the previous column, we traced a trajectory that appeared across domains, geographies, and time, in which human societies evolved from small bands to tribes, from tribes to villages, and from villages to more complex forms such as cities. These transitions did not occur as isolated events but repeated across independent histories, suggesting a consistent direction of deve

View Online and Translate "Systems grow, strain, and reorganize before they truly advance." The Question Over time, it became clear to me that prosperity, as it appears in societies and economies, is not random. This is most evident in how societies organize themselves as they evolve. Patterns repeat across countries, industries, and periods of history: these arrangements invest effort, improve technology, and expand their activity yet do not consistently achieve sustained

View Online and Translate "Prosperity emerges from structured interdependence." Why Definition Matters The question "What is the economy?" may seem theoretical, but it is crucial for understanding how prosperity is created and why poverty persists. Because how we define the economy shapes our views on development, growth, and the factors that influence economic results. If we misunderstand what the economy really is, we risk misinterpreting how prosperity emerges and why

View Online and Translate "Prosperity emerges when structure organizes increasing complexity.” Across countries, industries, and communities, prosperity emerges unevenly. Some systems generate sustained growth and rising incomes, while others, despite significant investment, technological progress, and institutional support, remain trapped in stagnation. This uneven pattern appears across very different environments, suggesting that prosperity cannot be explained solely b

View Online and Translate “Prosperity fails when systems cannot organize the complexity they need or create.” Rising Complexity In the previous column, we examined how economic systems rely on the alignment of signals among participants, and how value chains serve as the structural framework through which these signals travel. When signals reach decision-makers and participants are exposed to outcomes, local decisions begin to align with system-level performance, enabling a

View Online and Translate “The strength of an economy is determined by the strength and coherence of its value chains.” A Known Pattern This pattern is familiar to anyone observing agriculture in developing economies. Knowledge improves, technologies advance, production methods evolve, and logistics become more efficient. Activity expands across the value chain, yet prosperity at the production level often remains limited. This recurring pattern indicates that the key f

View Online and Translate “Efficiency improves activities, while effectiveness enhances results and income. Which do we pursue?” This column continues a short series that began with a simple but troubling observation. Across many developing economies, agricultural productivity has improved steadily over the past decades. Farmers have gained access to better seeds, fertilizers, pest management technologies, irrigation systems, digital advisory services, and a growing range

View this email in your browser “For the farmer, added value is the difference between revenue and cost, and the best channel is the one that widens that gap." From Volume to Value I remember that after each apple harvest, there were always fruits that did not meet fresh-market standards. Some had fallen to the ground, while others were infested, too small, bruised, or visually imperfect. Whatever the reason, it was our task, as children, to follow the pickers and colle

View Online and Translate “When the unexpected strikes, a community’s structure determines how quickly it recovers.” Editor’s Note. This week I had planned to publish the second column in the series Critical Field Notes. However, events in Israel during the past week made it difficult to continue as intended. A personal family experience revealed something striking about how communities respond to sudden shocks, and I felt it was important to share this observation now,

View Online and Translate “Progress begins not by pouring more effort into the same structure, but by understanding the mechanism that makes it work.” The Production Machine After ending a recent video call with an African colleague, I remained seated for several minutes, not because the discussion had been dramatic, but because it brought a structural issue into sharper focus. The colleague on the other side of the screen had spent decades working in agricultural research, i

View Online and Translate “To imagine that our economies and social systems escape universal law is to repeat the error of placing ourselves at the center of the universe.” The most common elements in the universe, excluding noble gases, are also the most common in our bodies, and this is not a metaphor but a physical fact. With the exception of most hydrogen, which traces back to the Big Bang, nearly every atom that composes us was forged inside stars, dispersed at their d

View this email in your browser “We are the carried accumulation of every stage from the Big Bang to this moment.” Long before we attempt to formalize them, we live by the assumption that the reality we experience is not a collection of coincidences but the outcome of underlying laws that operate whether we recognize them or not, producing a coherent universe of which we are an inseparable part. This assumption is not a matter of belief but of necessity, because a reality g

View Online and Translate “At any point in history, what we don’t know surpasses what we know.” From humanity’s earliest attempts to make sense of existence, there has been a persistent intuition that reality is not arbitrary but governed by enduring principles that hold even when they are not yet understood. Long before the scientific method, this intuition found expression in myth and narrative, not as fabrication, but as an early recognition that the universe follows rul

View Online and Translate “Prosperity grows where tension is held within structure.” Why This Matters Before we begin, I want to be clear about why this work exists and why it speaks not only about physics but also about life, society, and prosperity. Poverty is neither a coincidence nor a natural law. It is the result of misalignment, of working against the deeper patterns that govern complexity and growth. What follows is part of a broader effort to explore what I call th

View Online and Translate “Effort matters, but structure determines whether progress lasts.” Frustration As someone who cares deeply about farmers in developing economies, I have spent many years observing large, well-intentioned efforts to reduce rural poverty through coordinated action. Much of this exposure comes from regular participation in meetings, conferences, seminars, and professional forums that bring together NGOs, agrotech companies, service providers, business l