The theory of self-organised criticality, or Complexity Theory, is an extension of chaos theory. It hypothesizes that upheaval, change and enormous consequences flow from trivial seeming events. Think of the last snowflake landing on a mountain top that triggers an avalanche.
The economy is an incredibly complex, adaptive and unpredictable system. Yet traditional economics uses precise mathematical functions, assumes perfectly rational agents and imagines an idealised system in equilibrium…