3.2 WHO'S R-ARSED

Problems do not exist in a vacuum. A problem rarely persists simply because people lack the intelligence or resources to fix it. In human systems, a problem almost always persists because it is currently functioning as a solution for someone else.

To understand the political landscape of any problem, BUMPONOMICS asks a direct, clarifying question: Who’s ARSED?

This question connects the four postures actors take toward a problem (WHO'S) with the six strategic response pathways they deploy (R-ARSED).

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3.2.1 The WHO'S Archetypes of Power

Before selecting any intervention, you must identify where each key actor stands:

• W — Weaponizing: Who is actively exploiting this problem as a weapon for political leverage, budget expansion, or market dominance? (Example: Using an unresolved operational crisis every quarter to justify bigger headcount and funding).
• H — Hindering: Who actively delays or resists real transformation because their status, job security, or identity depends on managing the broken routine? (Example: The administrative gatekeeper whose authority relies on manual sign-offs).
• O — Orchestrating: Who is else is involved in transforming the situation for the better or worse? (Example: the passionate NGO building ecosystems of hope and regeneration, or an investor who is funding a transformation).
• S — Suffering: Who is actually paying the price? Who absorbs the physical, emotional, or financial impact caused by the situation? (Example: The exhausted frontline worker, the indebted household, the depleted ecosystem, or the passionate entreprenur on a mission).

Actor Archetype	System Posture	Primary Motivation	Alignment with Transformation
Weaponizer	Exploiter	Power & Resource Capture	Strongly Opposed (Wants leverage)
Hinderer	Gatekeeper	Status & Routine Preservation	Opposed (Fears irrelevance)
Orchestrator	Architect	Systemic Rent Extraction	Strongly Involved (Profits from change or status-quo)
Sufferer	Carrier	Relief & Transformation	Desperately Seeks Transformation

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3.2.2 The Six Strategic Responses (R-ARSED)

This framework builds upon the four foundational problem "treatments" formulated by the pioneering systems theorist Russell Ackoff:

1. Absolving: Ignoring a problem and hoping it clears up on its own.
2. Resolving: Doing something that yields an outcome that is "good enough" (satisficing).
3. Solving: Doing something that yields the best possible outcome through analytical engineering (optimizing).
4. Dissolving: Redesigning the system or environment so the problem can no longer exist.

BUMPONOMICS expands Ackoff's classical quartet into a comprehensive six-part response spectrum (R-ARSED) by adding two critical systemic realities:

• Evolving: Using the problem as evolutionary resistance to upgrade capabilities, adapt, and transcend previous boundaries.
• Revolving: Confronting institutional rentierism, where bad-faith actors deliberately keep problems in circulation to extract ongoing profit, power, or compliance.

Depending on their WHO'S posture, incentives, and available energy, actors respond to problematic situations through one of these six distinct strategies:

[ REVOLVE  ] ──▶ Exploit / Keep in Circulation (Extract rent & leverage from crisis)
[ ABSOLVE  ] ──▶ Withdraw / Disengage (Let natural equilibrium clear variance)
[ RESOLVE  ] ──▶ Patch / Satisfice (Restore temporary normal within existing rules)
[ SOLVE    ] ──▶ Optimize / Eliminate Root Cause (Analytical engineering within system)
[ EVOLVE   ] ──▶ Transcend / Adapt (Grow capability & identity through struggle)
[ DISSOLVE ] ──▶ Redesign System & Assumptions (Make problem structurally impossible)

1. Revolve

• Definition: The deliberate or emergent act of keeping a problem in perpetual circulation because its ongoing existence generates revenue, career security, administrative authority, or political leverage.
• Mechanism: The problem is publicly lamented and performatively "addressed," but closure is actively sabotaged or avoided.
• Operational Sign: Growing budgets, endless task forces, expanding compliance bureaucracy, and zero reduction in the underlying harm.

2. Absolve

• Definition: The conscious decision to withdraw intervention, effort, or resources from a problem because attempting to intervene costs more than it yields, or because the system believes the problem will settle naturally.
• Mechanism: Acknowledging the condition and intentionally leaving it alone to conserve metabolic energy.
• Operational Sign: Strategic non-intervention, triage, deregulation, and allowing natural market or physical forces to absorb variance.

3. Resolve

• Definition: Intervening within the existing rules and baseline architecture of the system to achieve an outcome that is "good enough" (satisficing).
• Mechanism: Applying band-aids, subsidies, or temporary compromises that suppress acute symptoms without touching root causality.
• Operational Sign: Crisis stabilization today followed by the exact same breakdown returning tomorrow in slightly altered form.

4. Solve

• Definition: Applying rigorous analytical, engineering, or mathematical methods to diagnose and permanently eliminate the direct cause of an operational failure.
• Mechanism: Assumes the overarching system architecture is sound and simply requires an optimal technical fix or parameter recalibration.
• Operational Sign: High engineering efficiency, precise root-cause fixes, yet vulnerability to displacing the problem into adjacent domains.

5. Evolve

• Definition: Embracing the problem as necessary evolutionary resistance, allowing the system to transcend its previous boundaries, upgrade its capabilities, and transform its identity.
• Mechanism: Rather than trying to return to the old "normal," the participant uses the tension to undergo a permanent phase-shift in fitness.
• Operational Sign: Increased organizational resilience, expanded repertoire of responses, and higher systemic maturity.

6. Dissolve

• Definition: Completely eliminating the problem by redesigning the underlying system, environment, or foundational assumptions so that the conditions generating the problem cease to exist.
• Mechanism: Making the problem irrelevant. You do not fight the symptom; you change the architecture so the original issue can no longer emerge.
• Operational Sign: The disappearance of entire categories of friction, accompanied by the liberation of trapped human energy and resources.

3.2.2 Mixed Strategies & Approaches

Complex situations are rarely clear-cut. They rarely fall into one neat bucket. Often they are a messy combination of several problematic situations overlapping each other.

For example, a situation could be:

• Political (Systemic): A new AI regulation that is too vague, creating compliance chaos across the industry.
• Operational (Micro): A specific team struggling to integrate this new regulation into their daily workflow.
• Relational (Boundary): A breakdown in communication between the compliance department and the development team.

In practice we often see a mix of several of these approaches being used simultaneously. The best approach is to use the R-ARSED framework to identify the most appropriate response for each problematic situation.

For example, in situations, we might see:

• Revolving by the compliance department, who profit from the chaos and refuse to provide clear guidance.
• Absolving by the development team, who give up and decide to ignore the regulation.
• Resolving by the operations team, who try to patch the issue with temporary workarounds.
• Solving by the engineering team, who try to find a technical solution to the problem.
• Evolving by the leadership team, who use the situation as an opportunity to transform the organization.
• Dissolving by the board of directors, who decide to dissolve the company and start fresh!

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CHAPTER NAVIGATION

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