Control Theory is mostly just dynamical systems math using linear algebra to represent the system behavior. It becomes control-y by adding one thing into the mix: the controller itself that acts in the system in response to what it can observe. This is fleshed out for different considerations, like what properties you want the controller to have, what tradeoffs to make (e.g. faster but less accurate, the reverse, etc), whether the system is continuous or discrete, whether there are delays and how they are reoresented, how fancy you are being in terms of modeling observations vs. estimated internal state (e.g. a Kalman filter).

If you’re interested in getting into the theory, the main places to start are linear algebra and differential equations. These are often coupled together in colleges because of their relevance to representing dynamic systems and concepts like “Jacobian” only make sense if you know both. I would recommend learning differential equations first because linear algebra texts might assume knowledge of them.

Stafford Beer, sometimes called the father of cybernetics, was a Brit who was a major part of the design of Allende’s Chile’s Project Cybersyn. Unfortunately, I don’t have much else to say about this, but check out his work.

any mechanical or electrical engineers who have suffered through control theory/systems courses?

I am technically none of these things, but I am a CNC programmer who knows what a PID loop is and how servomechanisms work. So basically dealing with control systems at a more fundamental level in production (robotics).

I imagine systems like PID control could theoretically be applied on the accounting side of things, e.g. where you choose a target and tweak the porportion / integral / derivative values based on inventory to establish a steady supply. It probably isn’t a direct one to one, but these systems are designed to keep robotic systems from machine tools to aircraft autopilots trained on a setpoint while quickly adapting to unexpected external forces (like a gust of wind, or the transition from cutting through air to cutting through steel).

Theoretically, production planning could adapt to sudden changes (like a factory outage, or a sudden increase in demand for a particular integrated circuit) in a much more calculated manner, instead of the rubber-banding of scarcity driving price gouging, high profitability driving overproduction, overproduction cratering profitability, and low profitability leading back to scarcity that we see today.

I learned it thru EE but I’ve always been aware that it is a much larger field of study. Its so pervasive it seems like it reveals something fundamental about the nature of reality kind of like how probability theory permeates all of the important scientific advances of the 20th century. I’m gonna have to do a deep dive on cybernetics now.

So in EE signals and system analysis you have a system with an input and an output. You smack it with an impulse input and you get an output response. The output can be separated into a transient response and a steady state response. The transient goes away and the ss response remains. You use this info to get characteristic equation of system which can then be used to determine the response of the system to other inputs, determine stability and other useful stuff.

I think about system control every time someone mentions communism doesn’t take human nature into consideration. So your saying in order to control humans greedy resource hoarding nature you are going to control it with a greedy system? Good luck with that positive feedback.

Positive feedback? Ha ha thanks for the compliment bud your lookin pretty good yourself.

No not that kind of positive feedback it means literal positive and negative. If your input to the system is blowing up positive you need to feedback a negative portion of the output back into the input thereby bringing the input to the system down and stabilizing the output or vice versa.

I’m also thinking about systems where the USA is a linear(maybe) system and the inputs are natural and man made events and the American system has a characteristic equation and response to these events. At least since 9/11 the response is to print trillions of $$$ and distribute it top down to the half way point effectively paying half of Americans to murder the other half. 15 trillion print on 9/11, 8 trillion print in 2008 bank crash and recently 8 trillion print for covid and things like BLM, masking or anti-masking etc being the transient response and war in Ukraine and Middle East as part of USA’s characteristic response. I dunno I’m just rambling now none of this answers your question about using control systems for economics I’m gonna have to do some research.

Have you read Red Plenty?

There are many Soviet books on Cybernetics, but I think they are only available in Eastern bloc languages (for example I have a book version of a Soviet cybernetics conference, but I’m pretty sure it’s not available in English… but it’s not that interesting to be fair, only a curiosity, there’s nothing in it that couldn’t be gleaned from Western sources like Ashby et al)

Pekelis’s book is available on the internet archive

Alexander Lerner was also a Soviet Cyberneticist, but he became an Israeli settler

I would love to talk about this stuff with anyone who is interested. I’ve learned some (linear) production theory along the lines of Sraffa, Pasinetti, Ian Wright etc - essentially representing production relations as a network. If you feel comfortable with some Linear Algebra you can start there. And I have been working on a way to model this production network, but I sometimes spin my wheels and get stuck on tangents. I am thinking of a model along the lines of what Ian Wright has worked on, and either doing a macro model (modeling the explicit emergent relations) or micro model (model the micro interactions and letting the macro structure emerge). Wright has papers for both types of models. The later would be more along the lines of complexity science. The former is closer to diff eqs, and would be easier for applying ideas of control theory to. I think.

There are a series of papers from Political Economists from the new school arguing about whether to start models from the individual interactions, vs the emergent macro conditions (which is more in line with classical political economy).

Later one could add financial networks, etc. to such a model.

But if you’re familiar with linear algebra, diff eqs, and control theory, then you may find the authors above interesting. If anyone wants to brainstorm let me know. I think this stuff is interesting and would love to know more, but I also have to work to pay bills lol