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Don Quixote's Fried Eggs: Purpose of a System Is What It Does

“And he who has shown the greatest longing for him has been the great Emperor of China, who wrote me a letter in Chinese a month ago and sent it by a special courier. He asked me, or to be truthful, he begged me to send him Don Quixote, for he intended to found a college where the Spanish tongue would be taught, and it was his wish that the book to be read should be the History of Don Quixote.” - Miguel de Cervantes’s Dedication of Volume II .

Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote" introduces the concept of "the purpose of a system is what it does" (POSIWID) centuries before Stafford Beer, both through its story and its cultural impact, illustrating how outcomes often differ from stated intentions. Cervantes aimed to satirize and diminish the popularity of chivalric romances during his time, with the "fried eggs" meant to point out how silly Quixote's ideals are. An intricate and uncertain planning system supercharges this consolidation (by forcing smaller developers to submit to the larger ones), with the top 10 firms now responsible for nearly half of all new construction in England.

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