The Economy That Keeps Becoming · Chapter Thirteen

What Grows by Itself

Ammanuel Santa Anna · ORCID 0009-0008-3244-0306

Chapter Thirteen of The Economy That Keeps Becoming: Complexity Economics, Read as a Living System, for Leaders and Households.

Abstract

This book has followed one idea from a paper in a drawer at Stanford to a kitchen table. It is worth reading the whole of it once, from above, in the terms of the living-systems lens that Ammanuel Santa Anna's Ecstatic Economics develops, before putting it down. Complexity economics, in Brian Arthur's hands and those of the people who worked beside him, made a scientific case that an economy is not a machine settling into balance but a system that keeps forming itself. Its agents learn and adapt to a world their own choices are creating. Some of their interactions reinforce themselves and grow; others correct themselves and fade. History matters, because early accidents are remembered in the structure of who does what. Arrangements nobody would choose can hold for decades, and arrangements that once seemed fixed can dissolve within a few years when the loops beneath them change.

Read the PDFRead the whole bookdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989472

Cite this chapter

Santa Anna, A. (2026). What Grows by Itself. In The Economy That Keeps Becoming. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989472

@incollection{santaanna2026the13,
  author    = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
  title     = {What Grows by Itself},
  booktitle = {The Economy That Keeps Becoming},
  chapter   = {13},
  publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
  year      = {2026},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23989472},
  url       = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/the-economy-that-keeps-becoming/13-what-grows-by-itself/}
}

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  2. Chapter TwoThe Economy That Keeps Becomingdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989453
  3. Chapter ThreeWhere the Model Runs Thindoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989454
  4. Chapter FourNobody Designed the Trapdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989455
  5. Chapter FiveThe Valley and the Highwaydoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989458
  6. Chapter SixThe Week After the Firedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989459
  7. Chapter SevenA Firm Read as Weatherdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989460
  8. Chapter EightThe Field Manualdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989463
  9. Chapter NineKnowing Whether It Workeddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989464
  10. Chapter TenThe Hard Conversationsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989465
  11. Chapter ElevenThe Household as a Living Systemdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989466
  12. Chapter TwelveThe Path Across the Lawndoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989467
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  14. WorkbookEvery Tool, and a Ninety-Day Plandoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989473

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The licence

Free to read, share, quote, translate and teach, non-commercially, for ever, under the Luminous Library Licence 1.0. Every other right is the Author’s. Deposited on Zenodo in the Luminous Prosperity community.