System purposes need not be human purposes and are not necessarily those intended by any single actor within the system. In fact, one of the most frustrating aspects of systems is that the purposes of subunits may add up to an overall behavior that no one wants. No one intends to produce a society with rampant drug addiction and crime, but consider the combined purposes and consequent actions of the actors involved:
• desperate people who want quick relief from psychological pain
• farmers, dealers, and bankers who want to earn money
• pushers who are less bound by civil law than are the police who oppose them
• governments that make harmful substances illegal and use police power to interdict them
• wealthy people living in close proximity to poor people
• nonaddicts who are more interested in protecting themselves than in encouraging recovery of addicts
Altogether, these make up a system from which it is extremely difficult to eradicate drug addiction and crime.
