Credit Creation and the Building of Sustainable Economic Ecologies

Culture and cultural inventions are part of the Technium -- they are technologies. Kevin Kelly

And as our cultures and their interrelationships evolve so must our cultural inventions.

Following on my previous post On Social Energy, Enterprise & Expanding the Technology of Money If we look at a civilization (or any social organism) as a product of decisions (ideas+actions) operating within the physical world we then see culture as the expression of social energy.

And that unlike the other forms of energy we're familiar with social energy requires agreement on a whole collection of underlying values and assumptions to operate efficiently for the benefit of the organism as a whole. A crude expression of this idea is the difference in quality between the work of an independent craftsman and a slave laborer. Or between a soldier fighting for his family and another drafted for a purpose he doesn't support. If we posit two identical armies with identical equipment and identical numbers, any General will tell you that that alone will not make them equivalent. Morale, training, organization, a common language and values (or not), etc. ALL factor in to how that army will do in the field.

Technology in this sense is a product of decisions (ideas + actions) and physical conditions intended to enhance the survivability of the decision-maker or makers by producing some new physical condition not previously in existence: a tool! This is true whether that new condition be a wrench, a computer, a law, a corporation or fractional reserve banking.

Money was developed originally as a technology for the allocation of excess social energy where complexity (and loss of various forms of proximity) required conventions beyond the less formalized methods of a hunter-gatherer group.

It's an amazing invention. But it's not a simple one and inherent problems in its mechanisms and design are having serious repercussions.

The farther credit-creation mechanisms are from the actual possessors of the social energy being pledged... the greater the problems.

For instance, I have a friend in India working on systems for Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD)... sustainable technologies built around locally available renewable energy and resources to the extent possible.

This is a good idea. The hangup is a problem with another invention's current limitations: money and finance.

The global monetary system is an incredible invention and has produced many wonders... And the move from a commodity-based to a credit-based system can be understood as a recognition that innovation and growth may require (or at least be facilitated by) an expectation of a return of future social energy greater than the credit required to produce it. And that both sacks-of-wheat and bars-of-gold are either too fickle or too limited to accommodate the requirements for social energy allocation.

However there's confusion over the true foundation of capital (excess social energy and its products) which no hierarchical credit-creation mechanism can completely address. Especially as social distance increases between the credit-creator/suppliers and credit-users.

(BTW, Seen in this light, credit for consumption is certainly NOT a capital investment unless there is a corresponding real increase in output. And lender profits from consumer lending have no place in the GDP and, in fact, are a negative for the social organism. Profits from this sort of so-called business only pledge future social energy without increasing its supply. However it does allow a clever or oblivious political/financial sector to gut the accumulated energy of a civilization without it's population quite realizing it till near the end of the cycle... when all the missing social energy has to be accomodated.

I believe the following is of fundamental importance: No monetary system has ever, nor can ever represent all or even a major portion of available social energy.

I'm not a believer in conspiracy theories, or evil cabals (groups don't do secrets well... especially over time)... so I really want to avoid being put in that box. I don't think fractional reserve banking was an invention of devils. Hierarchical (centralized) credit-creation has it's purposes but hey...

Here come distributed networks and a need for decentralized credit creation.

In order to better unlock vast reserves of wasted, lost and/or mis-used social energy... sound credit creation mechanisms can and must be developed for other networks along lines best suited to their own internal conditions and purposes.

A system facilitating user-created exchange mechanisms to function alongside traditional currencies so as to permit local economic ecologies to gain a foothold.

This isn't about destroying a world system of finance. It's about technologies allowing the actual possessors of that social energy more creativity in its allocation so as to better benefit their own conditions rather than those of the outside credit creators. There's an interplay of decisions needed for the best invigoration of a society's true energy that requires both.

My friend in India has been spurred by the suicides of thousands of farmers who are being locked into large-scale monoculture and a system of permanent indebtedness by a lack of any source of credit other than that provided, directly or indirectly, by central banks... this is unnecessary IF they could tap into their own LOCAL resources and potentials.

And on the other hand, my developers at HyTechPro are a part of India desiring a rapid modernization along Western lines. I believe both sides are complimentary not only in India but Indiana, Entebbe and Port-Au-Prince.

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. But I am trying to be pragmatic. More than talk is urgently needed.

And as wonderful as it is, charity is not enough. Nor is it a way out.

The Individually-controlled / Commons-dedicated Account is the most viable path to the development of a globalized network which can accomodate BOTH the traditional monetary system while simultaneously facilitating NEW mechanisms for LOCAL markets and local-ecology-specific innovations WITHOUT the need for force or compusion.

While what I don't know is vast... I know this... there'll be no fix without seriously addressing the technologies of money and finance.

On Social Energy, Enterprise & Expanding the Technology of Money

The Individually-controlled / Commons-dedicated Account & Neighborhood Banks

How would hunter-gatherers rule the world? (Pssst... They DO!)

And finally a bit of promotion for my friend's endeavors:
Agro-Biogenics
Zero-Waste Zero-Carbon Business Model
And from Pvhramani’s Blog :

...almost all of the world’s nations look upon ... economic development... irrespective of the 

REAL LOCAL resource availabilities. 

It is a great tragedy and paradox... that although the Tropical nations (including India) have the greatest volumes of natural RR, these are the very nations that struggle with huge populations of extreme poverty, living in dilapidated villages and in wretched conditions!

And what could be the most unused local resource?
The untapped and repressed SOCIAL ENERGY of people ignored or misused by existing sources of credit.

Anybody want to fix Haiti?
Then liberate and channel their social energy once the emergency is handled.

The Individually-controlled / Commons-dedicated Account concept arose out of the investigation of issues in addressing reciprocal obligations in scaled social networks and the interplay with biological altruism, Dunbar's number (a hypothetical natural human community size), proximity and, especially... issues in technologies of interaction that come with that scale and complexity. I believe these ideas can lead to additional solutions in other fields of social interaction.

On Social Energy, Enterprise & Expanding the Technology of Money

If money makes the world go round... and there's increasing concern that it's not doing a very good job of it... then it seems worthwhile to take a fresh look at what the heck it is.

Always having believed that a distanced perspective is a prerequisite for good analysis, I'm fortunately an ideal analyst being neither an economist nor having any money.

SO LET'S TALK ECONOMICS!


First off, paradoxically, let's forget about money for a minute. Believe me it'll come back to mind soon enough; it always does. But try just for a minute. Because when you look at the Egyptian pyramids...

and if, thank God, you're not an economist... a question that might come to mind is:

"WOW! What went into getting all THAT together?"

And what it actually comes down to is... social energy.
It was a whole lot of people doing a lot of different things mixed in with decisions. Actually lots and lots of decisions. Everything from the decision to do it at all (governance), to decisions about it's design and construction (aesthetics, technology)... all the way to two laborers giving each other a glance and by that glance deciding which one will give right-of-way before going up a ladder, or how much care they put into the job they're doing (bio-social norms and the strength of the decision-makers link to the social contract). And all those pieces are needed... and ALL those pieces are social energy.

Okay, now see if you can stay with me on this... and keep not thinking about money for a little longer... I know it's hard.

So the pyramids were a product of a lot of social energy.
People running around doing stuff with stuff, leveraged by technology and guided by an incredibly complex matrix of decisions. In operational terms a decision is an idea + an action.

But social energy is very different from other kinds of energy.

Because agreement is implicit in the energy itself! There can be no social energy at all without some underlying agreement whether that agreement arises by force, necessity or mutual benefit. And there are many different forms of agreement. The agreement that drives the decision to build the pyramid is of a fundamentally different nature than the agreement underlying the glances that two laborers give each other in making their decision.

Playing with this idea then...

We really come down to just two things: it's decisions and physical conditions that result in whatever we're looking at and calling a civilization. Actually it's the same thing for an individual or any isolated bit of consciousness anywhere in the universe for that matter... it all comes down to decisions and physical conditions.


And technology in this sense is a product of decisions (ideas + actions) and physical conditions intended to enhance the survivability of the decision-maker or makers by producing a new physical condition not previously in existence. Whether that new condition be a wrench, a computer, a law, a corporation or fractional reserve banking.

SO on this very basic level it really just comes down to:
"What are the people doing?" and "What decisions are they making?"

In a band of hunter-gatherers it's fairly simple. They sit around and decide: Okay, you guys go look for berries and we'll go kill a mammoth. If it works out they live, if not they don't. If somebody's not pulling his weight he gets a talking to or no piece of liver, and if somebody else is sick then maybe she gets a little extra even though she couldn't help that day. And of course the group's sanctions could get very severe for the real screw-offs. Quite a difficult life actually, let's not have any fantasies. But no money necessary.

We're still not quite to money yet.

Those Egyptians were paid in sacks of grain. They ate their paychecks. It set a stringent limit on this early money supply however. And it could go up or down season to season no matter what the Pharaoh said. In this situation a collapse in the money supply was a very serious situation indeed!

Regardless they soon realized that sometimes sacks of grain were inconvenient and... blah, blah, blah...= money. That blah, blah, blah part is actually very significant but my only point here is that it's origins are rooted in survival necessities. Gold only came later. Nothing against gold. I'm just getting to the foundations. Gold does have the similarity of being finite and directly linked to labor with an added benefit of persistence (it doesn't rot) allowing capital formation.

And then came fractional reserve banking and the shift from a commodity-based to a credit-based system. A very clever technology and not inherently pernicious. There are plenty of reasons behind it, many of them good ones but there are some big problems. (I haven't read it yet but this guy looks like he's definitely understanding the issue:  The End of Money and The Future of Civilization  by Thomas Greco. I can't say how he addresses it since I haven't read it. And if it's there that's great. I'm just trying to lay out the reasoning behind the Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account and some of the potentials of the resultant network.) 

Here's how it goes:

To the extent that fractional reserve banking makes sense, it's in its relationship to its ability to allocate excess social energy for the greater good. But here's some problems:

• Social energy is finite.
• Social energy can expand or contract for a variety of reasons.
• Many of those reasons are agreement issues related to the social contract.
• The human decision process has deep roots and scaling is difficult. Note: see How would hunter-gatherers run the world? (Pssst... They Do!)
• Money even in it's origins can't represent a significant part of social energy.

Further:

• Credit-created money is (nominally) theoretically infinite while social energy is not.
• Credit-created money can't escape it's very inherently imperfect link to social energy and can never exceed that limit regardless (which seems obvious to everyone but some economists).
• The inherent bias in money-creation (capital formation by fiat, not production) will bias (even unconsciously) allocation decisions so as to favor survival and persistence of the credit creators.

Or see for that matter the last 30 years in this country... almost all credit-created money has ended up finally sitting at the top. In fact by the use of depressed wages in combination with usurious credit practices it's possible to create a social organism split between credit-creator/suppliers and credit-dependents. This has very definitely been an even greater global issue for quite a while in different forms. It's important to note that it's a doomed strategy. I thought you should know!

This however, does NOT mean that all credit-creation is bad. In fact some measure of it is essential. There's a whole lot of mis-used and just plain unused social energy out there going to waste. Some of the greatest entrepreneurs are in the under-developed world. So what's the hang-up?

It's locked up because it's dependent on a credit creation process which is seriously obsolete and destructive.

The solution (I believe the book above must come to a similar conclusion. Somebody tell me if I'm wrong) is NOT that the bias in money creation can be eliminated (scaling problems in decision systems related to issues I discuss in previous posts) but that there must be an ability to democratize money creation while still dealing with the realities of the existing system and the finite limits of social energy.

And I believe the Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account is an essential root part of that process.

That'll have to be for the sequel... especially as it relates to ad hoc money creation by self-organizing assemblages for their own purposes, Asset-Based Community Development, non-currency trade mechanisms, etc...

And since this work is background for and in support of The Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account concept and project...

Food for thought... just running it up the flagpole...

A practical GOV 2.0 step?

The CITIZENS' Commons-dedicated Earmark!

Assuming the network of Accounts I envision (also ideal for the public finance of elections directly between citizens and legally established candidates)...

There then results the ability of Congress (or some gov entity at whatever level) to fund directly to its citizens' earmarks enabling self-organization for Commons purposes within the conditions set by that particular legislation.

In other words separate from the concept of direct payments to individuals for consumption or maintenance (social security, welfare, etc.).

An example: 

Make it easy, let's assume 200 million adult citizen accounts each given $10 (a measly $2 Billion total)... what parameters (if any) might be set as to how account holders could organize and utilize their funds? Is it feasible? Could it be another tool to encourage the kind of civic involvement required for a vibrant social contract?

The brief point here is that the network directly enables an entire panapoly of NEW capabilities for the relationship between government and the citizen!

I'll be interested to hear about the political party that wants to oppose greater citizen involvement! At least publicly...

From What the Ancient Greeks Can Tell Us About Democracy

"The original meaning of democracy was 'the capacity of a

public... to accomplish things of value in the public

realm' – thus 'the empowered people' rather than simply 'the power of the people'"

The Individually-controlled / Commons-dedicated Account concept arose out of the investigation of issues in addressing reciprocal obligations in scaled social networks and the interplay with biological altruism, Dunbar's number (a hypothetical natural human community size), proximity and, especially... issues in technologies of interaction that come with that scale and complexity. I believe these ideas can lead to additional solutions in other fields of social interaction.

The Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account

...“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”Alex Carey, Australian social scientist

Three years ago I had one of those moments that happen occasionally to people who spend too much time letting their minds wander. An idea! Dangerous things those. Important to keep them under control lest they sweep you away to madness, or worse yet, insolvency. Grand ideas can be the worst!

Here's my story.

I was reading an article about some idiotic state legislature bill or amendment or something that had been passed and how corporate lobbyists had spent a pile of money... (I don't remember, maybe like in the $100,000 neighborhood) to ensure passage of what I thought was very bad legislation.

And I remember thinking, "I'll bet millions of people just heard that and I bet it's ticking them off as much as me!"

And then I thought, "Gee whizerwonkers... I bet if those people could do it right now they'd happily click a button to send 10 cents to  another side of that argument."

And then I thought, "You know, if we could do that... that'd be a very big deal! Cause if we could do that it would set in motion a very different set of players and motivations."

But how the heck could you give 10 cents? Transaction costs, campaign reporting costs, security, all the rest of it. It just won't work the way things are set up now... HOW could you make that practical?

SO I figured out how to do that! It's not too tough. It could have been done ten years ago if anyone had thought of it or wanted to.

Then of course, there's that question: "Do they want it? Would they use it?"

I figured I oughta find out! So I built it. Or actually I got it built with the great help of the guys at HyTechPro who've had continuing faith in me. And in the summer of '08 we put together a basic website with associated bank accounts, gateways and all that stuff. Fully functional, and according to my developers all ready to handle hundreds-of-thousands of donors. You can see it at http://www.Chagora.com . The bank accounts are disabled as is the Gateway. But it's great for demonstration! We set it up so you can have demo bucks to see the basic idea. Though its not too hard to understand. About as complicated as those X-Box points people use to buy electronic goods.

The basic concept is really easy too... Small Money, Large Numbers & Immediate Feedback! The platform is only a neutral tool, it's other entities that would be using it for and/or against something or another.

Meanwhile I was also thinking about the real why of this thing. What happens that allows people to let their own potential slip away in the public arena after so much effort to build an Enlightenment framework.

My own thoughts on this are in some of my previous postings and I invite you to investigate. But essentially I believe its about a critical failure to address issues in reciprocal obligations in scaled social networks and their interplay with biological altruism, Dunbar's number (a hypothetical natural human community size), proximity and, especially... issues in technologies of interaction that come with that scale and complexity. I believe these ideas can lead to additional solutions in other fields of social interaction.

At the end of that intellectual journey (or at least where it is so far)... I realized I was talking about something much more fundamental. I've been calling it the "Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account".

But you can call it Mary as far as I'm concerned, I'm just interested in the concept as a practical tool for a pragmatic approach to some rather critical problems.

Anyway, back to the story:

SO! I'm ready to put it out there for people to take a look at. I don't figure that I'm going to take over the world right away but this is the Fall of '08, Obama-mania, the whole thing... so I figure its a perfect time to maybe get a little attention.

But in August of '08 Bank of America pulls the Home Equity Loan I'm intending to use for launch. In a sense I understand. Property values had certainly dropped, and the money had been available for months. If I'd had any sense I'd have taken out the money from the credit line and put it under my pillow.

As a long-term customer with great credit (up till the Fall of '08 anyway) I wasn't too worried. When I'd been looking for a loan for my launch they'd suggested this route as the easiest and quickest. But when I tried to get it switched to a business loan it was "No way!" And no local branch decisions. Only from the "main office." Which means essentially dealing with computer-bots with robo-clerks manning them. They're giving no loans at all anyway it turns out.

Meanwhile I'd been renting out my house while I stayed in a little granny unit. And they couldn't make the rent and that's a whole three or four act play but ends with a strangely amicable eviction and me with an uncollected $8,000 judgement against them with no such efficient crew as Chase has for fruitless pursuit.

Not much to say about the next year-and-a-half. Well, actually a lot but not now. I've just been out there looking for a chance to present my ideas. So-called improvements in the banks conditions don't help once your credit is shot.

Really, I'm having a fairly good time. Having at least some kind of an idea is better in a life than a jillion trips to Trader Vic's, though I really miss their poo poos!

What prompts this brief post today is frankly now Chase bank has drained my only bank account after obtaining a judgement against me on a credit card debt! I'll only say two things about that... One: I was never served which I hope will be provable... since I guess it's my burden.

And Two: that if I can get this thing going...

I want these accounts in COMMUNITY BANKS!

THE INDIVIDUALLY-Controlled/COMMONS-Dedicated Account!

TAKE BACK YOUR PLANET!*

*This account is also the ideal vehicle and most politically pragmatic approach for the public finance of elections if desired... as well as serving many other commons-oriented functions... yet is a network that can grow naturally and without imposition. A better landscape for a better balance of competition and cooperation. And, in my opinion, closer to the ideals that BOTH parties CLAIM to represent.

(Yeah it would be great if gerrymandering ended, free air time was provided, some form of public finance and a lot of other things. All of which could have been done years ago... and I believe they will be done if I can get this concept over... they're a sort of emergent inevitability.)

We have done NOTHING about attending to our basic democratic mechanisms... while they are gamed quite efficiently and profitably by others.

We MUST work to level the playing field of influence capability that quite literally locks out vast networks and networks-of-networks from meaningful input into not only decisions affecting them... but the very parameters of debate.

Citizens, on average, won't be any better or worse than CEO's or Congressmen at being statesmen...
Some will do better, some worse. But without that input of needs, interests and values from very different viewpoints a civilization's decisions will skew (surprise, surprise!) in favor of those with influence.

To shorten the story... oligarchy then decay, collapse and/or revolution.

We have little time to do a better job of addressing the individual's capability of acting within the commons. We are in a quite literally explosive condition of expanding awareness existing simultaneously with global system vulnerability and desperate inequality.

These are very pragmatic survival issues.

ICT is catalyzing awareness on a global level at a culturally unprecedented speed. ICT is essential in addressing an emergent realization:

ICT requires an ICT 2: Neutral, responsible Influence Capability Technology

"Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment."
George Orwell

The FIRST contract was the SOCIAL contract. And all following contracts are dependent on it.

( I welcome the opportunity to speak about these issues to any interested. I figure I should be ready by now.)

How would hunter-gatherers run the world? (pssst... They Do!)

Or...

What happened when the Social Organism outgrew the Social Network?

And can it be fixed?

Social Organism: A self-recognized and internally governed economic/political grouping organized for basic survival
Social Network: Related to Dunbar's Number  and a hypothetical natural-human-community size

From my post Social Networks & The Social Organism - Healing the Breach on characteristics of our early hunter/gatherer social networks:

• Each individual knew almost everyone he/she encountered - and then encountered them repeatedly - thoughout their lives. Strangers were not unknown but rare and never the majority.
  
• Each individual knew their own social status and the social status of those with whom they interacted.
• (An important corollary is that individuals DID NOT have more than one group with which they identified and hence separate statuses for separate groups.)
  
• The altruism drive was limited to, closely coincided with, and did not often extend beyond the boundaries of this social grouping.

Further:

• There was ubiquitous awareness that personal well-being was dependent on the group's well-being.
• There was ubiquitous awareness that whatever the group decision process was - and there was almost certainly a range - decisions on group matters had whole group effects.
• Effects of group decisions to the extent they were knowable, were known to the whole group.
• Individual concealment of assets was difficult (and had no value regardless) while intragroup distribution enhanced the status of the giver.
  
• Lines of communication and influence were proximate and immediate.
• Decision maker(s) could not persist in the role without consensus agreement by the group.
  
• The Ultimatum Game's implications made it imperative that the range of asset and power distribution within this group not exceed limits defined by that group as fair.

I suggest in  The Foundations of Authoritarianism that:

Authoritarianism's rise, which developed along with the move to organized agriculture from a hunter-gatherer existence thousands of years ago and persists in many places today, was due to:

• The loss of congruity between the social network (a hypothetical natural human community size related to Dunbar's Number) and the social organism necessitating multiple social networks within a single social organism.
• A hierarchical stratification of those networks roughly mirroring a hunter-gatherer pecking order...
• Accentuated by an inherent social inertia arising with the loss of this congruity and a break in the immediate influence feedback loops such congruity provided and...
• More importantly an additional problem relating to scalability of biological altruism and loss of related forms of proximity. (see Self-Interest vs Altruism - Problems in Scaling the Decision Process)

Authoritarianism was a very imperfect solution for the disconnection between the social network and the social organism that arose with the birth of agriculture and a need for methods for human organization which had not been needed as hunter-gatherers.

Democracy (and the many forms of scaled representation whether via election, sortition or other method) arose as a response to authoritarianism and its unsuitability to human creativity and development… i.e., its inevitable failure.

Representative systems involve the introduction of horizontal distributed networks to counter-balance those hierarchical networks.

Force as a basis for a social contract, while sometimes functional temporarily for clarity and decisiveness will inevitably concentrate power while insulating it from consequences of its decisions and promote stagnation(oligarchy). This tendency inevitably destroys any non-consensual social contract and has very violent consequences.

Technology’s limits allowed opacity (non-transparency) and social network (class) isolation to sustain authoritarianism’s otherwise unsustainable model (in other words, technology's inability to restore the proximity concurrent with the Dunbar’s Number sized social network we had as hunter-gatherers… and its relationship to the individual’s position, status, wealth and role in the group decision process).

The point here is that technology is now revolutionizing proximity... but is still lagging in enhancing meaningful influence capability for the individual!

This is perilous!
In On the Birth of the Global Social Organism I stated that:

"Only when the gap in wealth and status approaches that level which would be considered fair within a Dunbar’s number-sized social network in daily contact… only then can we consider the possibility of a healthy, scaled social organism."

Moreover, it may be that the rapid expansion of ICT and the nature of the Ultimatum Game makes this first assertion no longer just a nice ideal but a survival necessity."

...A rather daring statement (and it's difficult to specify the terms) that however I believe is fundamentally valid.

The unfortunately unavoidable disconnection between the social network and the social organism which arose with the birth of agriculture (unavoidable at the time due to scale and technological limitations) remains the most unrecognized problem civilization faces.

Possibly even a fatal one. And we have a rather brief window to fix it.

I'm optimistic about the capabilities of reason and technology to handle just about any problem we face… whether global warming, ocean pollution or the disaster of our food monoculture and the loss of biological diversity.

But these solutions ALL rely upon a Social Contract that holds the social organism together for decision and action.

The welcome advancement of global communication increases demand for human rights and opportunity (a natural product of ICT dispersal and increasing transparency)... but also a more urgent recognition of imbalances. And hence a demand to be part of the process in decisions regarding solutions.

However, this also increases the necessity for dispersal of influence capability whether via stable associations or, more importantly... ad hoc formations encouraging the individuality of the decision-maker so important for sourcing crowd wisdom... all under a structure encouraging Enlightenment principles and minority rights.

This has applications in corporate law and governance (see my post Compensation & the Social Network and Ayn Rand & Alan Greenspan: The Altruism Fly in the Objectivist Ointment for a bit more on this) as well as many other areas of our lives as social creatures… still at least partially bound by our long history as hunter-gatherers.

For further info see relevant posts at the Chagora & Civlization Systems blog and the 5-minute Fixing Big! PowerPoint as well as the Chagora demo which is focused on what I believe is a vital assist to better governance and building a responsible and involved citizenry… the Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account

Ayn Rand & Alan Greenspan: The Altruism Fly in the Objectivist Ointment

I do admire Ayn Rand. You can't help but be impressed by that kind of intelligence and the challenges she overcame. Her philosophy of Objectivism has earned a large and powerful following inspired by those ideas as exemplified through the characters she created. Characters who've become popular heroes of independence, reason and creativity around the world. (My favorite remains Howard Roark, the iconic architect of The Fountainhead.)

The Objectivist paradigm has two central elements of concern here...

• The primacy of the individual:

"I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." (from Atlas Shrugged)

• And the power of reason:

“From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man -- the function of his reasoning mind.” (Here)

As for the Objectivist view on various human groupings:

"Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to society, to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force -- and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism." (Here)

It's the misguided view she takes on the relationship between the individual and the group that is the source of the problem.

The Missing Element:

Recently, perhaps her most noted follower, Alan Greenspan appearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform expressed some need for reflection on his intellectual foundations.

He acknowledges that he may have some undiscovered:

"flaw in the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works... I don't know how significant or permanent it is but I have been very distressed by that fact."

and further...

"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."

I believe the error resides in a fundamental misunderstanding of the biological reality and roots - as well as the equally important boundaries - of altruism.

Ayn Rand stated the following:

"Now there is one word—a single word—which can blast the morality of altruism out of existence and which it cannot withstand—the word: 'Why?' Why must man live for the sake of others? Why must he be a sacrificial animal? Why is that the good? There is no earthly reason for it—and, ladies and gentlemen, in the whole history of philosophy no earthly reason has ever been given. ...What most moralists—and few of their victims—realize is that reason and altruism are incompatible (emphasis added)." (From Ayn Rand's Philosophy: Who Needs It)

There's the logical flaw! She never understood the 'Why'...


Altruism can't be simply ignored as an irrelevant distraction... any more than one can ignore other fundamental biologically-based drives in any human philosophy meant to guide decision.

BUT perhaps more importantly, we must understand altruism's limits and true nature!

My previous post Compensation & the Social Network touches on this in the area of pay disparities. However the implications extend much further.

There is a relationship between:

• Altruism and Proximity (see Self Interest vs Altruism - Problems in Scaling the Decision Process)
  
• And the implications of the move from Dunbar's Number-sized social organisms to scaled social organisms; that is networks-of-networks both vertical and horizontal. (see Social Networks & Social Organisms - Healing the Breach)
  

In other words, the issue is not simply the verifiable existence of biological altruism as a real factor in human interaction, though that by itself is an issue for the pure Objectivist... but its boundaries and relationship to proximity and decision!

This has been an unresolved problem for what seems a very long time; but really not too long in terms of our evolution. We haven't quite fixed this one yet, either through biological change or intentional design. (see The Foundations of Authoritarianism)

Technology is fundamental for solution. But not merely the technology itself. But also the design of its implementation.

For instance, political constitutions are technologies! And as the conditions under which they operate change... So must the technologies through which they operate. Sometimes secondary technologies are chosen that serve to pervert the primary one by design! (e.g. gerrymandering)

ICT is increasing proximity like never before in the history of humanity.

And as the noted author and scientist David Brin has pointed out, it's cultural change at a Moore's Law pace!

This is a great challenge and opportunity. However it increases awareness of excessive inequality and makes glaring the imbalances in influence that brought it about.

The Ultimatum Game (from behavioral economics) and the move to a global social organism make for a very dangerous time unless social technologies which address not only proximity, but decision conditions and influence capability within the commons are seriously addressed.

For me the bottom line is that it's in addressing these elements that frameworks for solution may be found.

And the tragedy of Greenspan's reign wasn't so much that there are those with pure philosophies and simple answers ready to lead others down the same path...

But that the decision-making-class had too much to gain to want to look too closely... and the rest of us were split between those too powerless to do anything about it...and those too gullible to care.

What Mr. Greenspan missed was that in addition to the "invisible hand of the market," there's another hand.

The invisible hand of... well, for now I'll call it... altruism's limits and the human social network.

As for Objectivism: A philosophy cannot be both rational and dogmatic. Since once it chooses dogmatic rigidity, it abandons any claim to a foundation in rationality.

So my friendly message to the Objectivist is the most basic one in evolution... Adapt or Perish

Cause this fly's not getting out of the ointment!


This piece is in process and needs expansion so may be tinkered with for a while but I decided to post now inspired by recent posts by Dr. Brin (here) and the article Capitalism's Fundamental Flaw from Forbes online.

Compensation & The Social Network

Should disparities in wealth be limited?

(Whether through taxes, limits on salaries and bonuses, a negative income tax, changes in corporate governance or any other method)

Is there some point at which disparities can actually debilitate incentive, damage innovation... and promote corruption?

• Aristotle believed a middle class was vital to a healthy democracy and that the disparity between the wealth of the lowest and highest citizens should be no more than 4 times (of course his idea of who was a citizen was rather limited).
  
• During the Eisenhower administration the gap between the CEO and average wage earner was an order of magnitude greater... about 40 times.
  
• And now that gap has gone up another order of magnitude... over 400 times.

Hypothesis:

That the individual's drive for wealth and status takes place within the individual's social network and NOT the social organism as a whole. That some disparities in wealth and status are natural, necessary and acceptable BUT the viability of any social organism* will degrade where that disparity exceeds a threshold level and/or is not recognized as connected to performance valuable to the organism as a whole.

Further, in scaled social organisms (societies larger than a hypothetical Dunbar's Number, essentially non-existent since we were hunter/gatherers), there is a tendency towards isolation of social networks which will inevitably degrade the social organism (related to limits of biological altruism) without mechanisms to counteract those tendencies.

*Social Organism: A self-recognized and internally governed economic/political grouping organized for basic survival. See Social Networks & the Social Organism - Healing the Breach.

These issues remain unresolved from our hunter/gathering existence. Though there has been some progress. See The Foundations of Authoritarianism and its links for more.

This bring another thought to mind...

It's been said that the problem in a democracy is that the rulers (being the people) will rob the public treasury by voting themselves all the money!

This may well be true...

But if that's the case...

And considering what's become of our once healthy financial balance (you actually have to go back to the '70's to find when we were a creditor and not a debtor nation)...

And where all the wealth ended up...

You have to ask... Just who is really in charge around here?

One last thought:

Elizabeth Warren (see her video clip in the right hand column) suggests that the middle class has been treated like a "Thanksgiving Turkey" to be carved up and eaten by it leaders in business and politics.

She's essentially right. Except it's a very rare turkey that actually will buy the carving knife and pay for the meal. And then commit suicide and crawl into the oven.

Gov 2.0 and New Economies - Designing the Social Contract

Whether you're joining or blaming Tea Parties, Townhalls or TARP it's likely your sensing a fraying of our ability to come together. There's a thread that runs through all sides of these debates that's of much greater substance than most of the arguments and many of the facts.

Trust is fraying badly. Whether trust in government, trust in business, trust in politicians, trust in the Left, the Right, the banks, the media, the dollar, well pick your own. But don't leave out this one: trust in the social contract and our capacity for a meaningful voice in our own governance!

But what happened? How do we fix it? A Health Care Bill with a public plan or without it? Getting out of Afghanistan or adding troops? Raise the minimum wage or abandon it? Audit the Fed or leave it alone?

Certainly all these questions are interesting ones but none addresses the issue of trust in our essential systems... and without addressing the trust issue no other solutions are possible or sustainable.

Though my Fixing Big! PowerPoint focuses on an essential element for building trust in the Social Organism ...

[A hasty 5-minute overview of the vital role of the Chagora hub, the Political MicroTransaction, and networked lobbying in the U.S. via its self-organizing and ubiquitous distributed network. This establishes cultural feedback loops that re-engage the citizen in politics, repair gaps in influence capability and, though perhaps not immediately clear, when combined with Electoral/Geographic networking and scaled anonymity systems (personal contact is STILL a vital element of human association) can liberate localized economies while offering a counter balance to overly dominant but needed larger enterprises. All done via a monetization structure enabling the essential microtransaction without drawing on it with ownership and governance as a co-op by its donor base]

The larger issues have to do with discovering and designing best practices for human endeavor and growth maximizing self-determination for the individual and viability for the system of governance under which that individual, and his or her associations function.

And, let me tell you... that ain't going to be easy. The Drake Equation hypothesizes that only a certain percentage of global civilizations ever get off the planet if they ever get that far at all.

If biological scaling patterns hold it may be that about as many make it as fish eggs that make it to maturity.

We are desperately in need of a Science of Civilization... a fuzzy one at best perhaps. Because we have extremely limited data from only one planet and none at all from any civilizations that have ever made it out of the egg sac... and regardless these systems are fundamentally chaotic anyway.

Nevertheless, there are observations that can be made, and lessons to be learned.

In his excellent piece: Economics is NOT Natural Science [8.11.09] , Douglas Rushkoff states:

"It is up to our most rigorous thinkers and writers not to base their work on widely accepted but largely artificial constructs. It is their job to differentiate between the map and the territory — to recognize when a series of false assumptions is corrupting their observations and conclusions."

and later:

"We ended up with... an economy that requires growth and eschews sustainable business models. It may or may not better reflect the laws of nature — and that it is a conversation we really should have — but it is certainly not the result of entirely natural set of principles in action. It is a system designed by certain people at a certain moment in history, with very specific interests."

I couldn't agree more. And it's past time for some new ways to look at things. There's a lot of cogitating going on but old boxes are very hard to see out of.

In my work I focus on what seems to me to be somewhat neglected areas. Most especially the role of natural human community size (Dunbar's Number), biological altruism, behavioral economics and the role of myth and ideology (Commercial Branding is of special interest here if I could ever get to it), and the disconnection between the social network and the social organism with the birth of agriculture.

All political and economic designs since are attempts to resolve problems connected with the social/biological disconnections concurrent with the move from small group existence.

I make a rather far-reaching assertion in my post On the Birth of the Global Social Organism that:

"Only when the gap in wealth and status approaches that level which would be considered fair within a Dunbar’s number-sized social network in daily contact… only then can we consider the possibility of a healthy, scaled social organism*."

*A self-recognized and internally governed economic/political grouping organized for basic survival decisions and actions.

Moreover, it may be that the rapid expansion of ICT and the nature of the Ultimatum Game makes this first assertion no longer just a nice ideal but a survival necessity."

This is a rather rash assertion. It's essentially asserting that not only can those wacky idealists and philosophers hope for all that sissy charity and love for our fellow man as something to make you feel good about yourself... But can get a little hard-nosed and assert it as a survival necessity.

My bet is that the civilizations that make it out of the cradle realize they can't sit like mold in a petri dish blindly following a single model of consumption till the agar runs out. They know they have to make a new plan!

And a brief note on the thought behind Chagora:

Speech and Association are the essential tools of group decision and so at the fundamental root of self-determination for the individual in society. And without that there can be neither freedom nor responsibility. Self-determination is a fundamental drive and will not be frustrated for long without repercussions to the social contract.

So, a healthy social contract requires a balance in influence capability fostering a sense that the systems is fair.

Further, capability not only enables responsibility, it catalyzes it. Where effective responsibility is blocked, extremism and irrational response is encouraged.

The technical methods for effective group-decision-making and frequent citizen participation have not kept up with changing conditions and and the quality of the decision process has decayed.

Changes in the scale of economic and political structures but NOT in the scale of the internalized human social structures to which we have adapted over many hundreds-of-thousands of years will repeatedly lead to stresses so no perfect solution is possible.

But the re-examination and repair process of organized social systems must be continuous.

Freedom of Speech & Association are Essentials! When civilization's scale requires technology for their exercise... then that technology is also essential in its design, implementation and broad availability.

A final note: Chagora's theoretical foundations in implications of the move from Hunter/Gatherer society are NOT some argument for a return to the savanna and a life in small groups. Afterall, I LOVE New York!

Its an argument for designing political and economic systems that adapt to our natures rather than the other way around.

And recognizing when they don't.
See The Foundations of Authoritarianism

A report (9/2/08) from The World Bank admits that in 2005 three billion one hundred and forty million people live on less that $2.50 a day and about 44% of these people survive on less than $1.25. Complete and total wretchedness can be the only description for the circumstances faced by so many, especially those in urban areas. Simple items like phone calls, nutritious food, vacations, television, dental care, and inoculations are beyond the possible for billions of people.

This isn't a sustainable model.

A Sad Time for Both Freedom & Responsibility

This is a sad time for government by the people. Its health is poor and getting poorer. Its been on this trendline for a while now and time is growing short.

I'm afraid both citizens and their leaders have abused it horribly. Citizens through neglect abetted by misdirection and flattery. And leaders through everything from gerrymandering, revolving doors, consultancies, corrupt legislation... I can go on but most importantly by their own willingness to overlook continuing degradation of the social contract for short term gains both personal and political.

The middle class is crippled if not destroyed, though it may not be fully aware of it yet, and their children and grandchildren will live poorer lives with fewer opportunities because of their own poor job of citizenship and the even greater passivity, comfort and ignorance of their leaders.

The arguments between a hardened Right and Left that consume airwaves and the minds of all too many are approached as religions. As if each if followed in some pure form would yield some nirvana. When neither word any longer has a consistent meaning other than as a straw man for the other to knock down. It USED to be a reflection of the eternal tension between the Individual and the Group in relation to the Commons as a guide to approach for any particular issue. But this function seems to have been replaced with its great functionality as a confuser so other interests can have a clearer field of action.

If carefully and neutrally examined, I believe most people will find in themselves a bit of both the Right and the Left but may find their own internal debate cut short by our natural tendencies to congregate. Hence our very messy political parties.

And here we come to a nub of the problem.

Democracy assumes, and decision theory seems to make clear that Crowdsourcing wisdom depends on independent decision makers. Yet our political parties work very much against this as does our media... and especially powerful interests that see benefit in confusing issues.

I believe this is why even practices that both the Right AND Left claim to oppose can continue, whether in healthcare, immigration, jobs or banking for decades.

I believe there is a fundamental problem that has developed in the relationship of large corporations and government which has encompassed both parties and is preventing reasoned discussion and mainstream recognition of this issue.

On matters mentioned above there has been large consensus for considerable time on if not all elements, at least several: we expect secure borders and reasonable employment laws. We want fair banking by bankers that know our neighborhoods and we want our deposits and investments in OUR futures and those of our children... not for gambling and the exorbitant self-congratulation and enrichment of bankers and their friends. And we don't understand why we pay so much more for healthcare than others and get such poor results.

Yet in each of these areas progress has been stifled quite successfully. At the expense of our faith in government, business... and ourselves.

I believe in our Constitution. And, if possible, even more in the Bill of Rights which is our shield so long as it is honored.

I also believe in a right to private property though not without limit. (If you believe otherwise, take it ad absurdum which makes my case obvious... and then work back to what you think would be an appropriate limit)

I also believe some enterprises need to be big.

HOWEVER:

Mechanisms of influence in self-governance are never static.


Imbalances have become excessive and created a self-reinforcing but ultimately unsustainable oligarchy which, to give it some defense may not entirely recognize itself and likely believes itself benign.

I suppose at bottom of what I'm doing is a call for rational attention to these imbalances of influence in a much more serious and urgent way...

And that solutions will not likely come from the top.

Take it back!

Chagora

On Communities (Part 3): The Wachovia Approach

Copy of my letter to Wachovia and their foreclosure servicer, ETS (GMAC) sent today.

To:
Ms. Christine Gomez-Schwab, Trustee Sale Officer for ETS Services A Division of GMAC
Mr. Wayne Hessler, Attorney for Wachovia Mortgage, FSB. f.k.a. World Savings Bank
Mr. Jaimee Gonzalez, Vice President Wachovia Mortgage, FSB. f.k.a. World Savings Bank

Dear Sirs and Madam,

I received your Notice of Trustee Sale for September 14, 2009 when it was applied to the front door. No certified mail has been received on this matter if relevant. While it's gratifying to finally have an address for you and actual named people with whom to correspond, it is nevertheless disappointing to receive this after repeated phone assurances (these are a matter of record) from the never-the-same-person-twice phone bank operators since early July stating that a new modification program, Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) was forthcoming any day for which I may be eligible.

To date this had not occurred at Wachovia though other banks are much more proactive. This, along with the lack of providing your mortgage holders in distress with any single or coherent contact, of course is why Wachovia has one of the lowest rates of loan modification despite receipt of exceptional government assistance.

(For those reading this on the Civilization Systems blog, this imbalance in influence capability that has been so damaging to American politics and economics, has to do with issues of natural human community size and unaddressed problems of scale discussed in previous posts whereby, e.g. banking/political elite form unfortunately natural loyalties that made this bank bailout and the other disastrous legislative and regulatory policies that led to it possible.)

But to those formally addressed,

Firstly:

I urge you as a matter of law and equity to postpone and/or cancel this sale. I believe there is reason to believe that Wachovia and/or its employees and agents are intentionally misleading borrowers in default so as to inhibit, discourage and delay any search for legal advice or other forms of assistance until this possibility is foreclosed for them by events.

I believe it's very possible that an entire class of borrowers have been severely disadvantaged by practices designed by Wachovia to put them at that disadvantage.

Executive Trustee Services (ETS), a division of GMAC, and sub-contractor for Wachovia's foreclosure related activities should also be aware that, should the above be the case, they may be abetting deceptive and possibly illegal activity.

I believe there are other legal causes for delay not mentioned here but forthcoming if necessary after professional consultations are completed.

But for a moment, is it possible to pretend like we're people instead of just cogs in a very banal machine?

Nah, I'm not looking for some kind of mercy or pity. But common sense would be nice! There are so many better ways you could be handling this.

It's gratifying to finally have some identified folks to talk to! Are any one of you familiar with my situation? Which is the particular individual handling my account? I'd certainly like a chance to discuss options with someone focused on my issues and what seem to me like obvious solutions. I'll bet there are others who would like that too!

I suppose it's unfortunate that this is my primary residence. If it was only an investment or vacation property I could have a chance to talk to a judge without having to go to extraordinary lengths. Could you clear that idea up for me? It makes no sense. What is the rationale your lobbyists use for that since I assume legislators must occasionally have to justify this to their constituents?

Banks argue that without this denial of due process to borrowers they would have to make interest rates higher! But I still don't understand I'm afraid, because if banks actually had to be concerned with judge ordered mortgage modifications because of bad valuations lenders made to up their loan statistics for bonuses and higher short-term stock valuations... wouldn't lenders be more careful to NOT so fully corrupt the risk rating and appraisal systems? And wouldn't that over time lead to more stable rates and better lending?

But I'm not as clever as you all and your boards may have short-term purposes I'm unfamiliar with.

This and other similar legislation has encouraged and is continuing to encourage the shrinking of the middle-class and an enrichment of those at the top. This bailout is doing the same especially because of the way the banks are handling it (with the passive acquiescence of political leaders).

I believe most citizens want to be fair with you. How about on your side?

But hey, what do I know? I actually believe that regular citizens also have a need for a voice and may need a little technical assist. And that if they'd had it along with transparency much of this wouldn't have happened.

And I'm so stupid that I actually believe that it's not as difficult to remedy as might be thought which is why I'm harping on the essential role of networked political microdonation (<$1) as a fundamental of political speech and created the mechanism to make it possible. I think its important so I have little choice but to keep after it despite it having put me in this situation. Fortunately, I believe its coming. (Over 800 views on the Fixing Big PowerPoint in the last few weeks.) I also am hopeful that I will be able to draw some attention to the plight of the entrepreneur in this crunch, as well as the serious misallocation of national investment which has taken place over several decades. There are many better alternatives to foreclosure. I will be happy to discuss my situation.

Secondly:

Despite the above and any additional assertions or claims that may be made in future in connection with this matter, I attest to you as true and verifiable these following disclosures regarding this property which I entrust to you to transmit to any potential interested party as you are on formal notice as to these conditions:

• Cracked foundation across complete slab from East to West
• One end of the house over six-inches lower than the other
• Dry rot in floor plates at lower end of house due to flooding
• Drywall mold and residue from flooding
• Rear retaining wall in state of collapse endangering pool and with potential city action
• Continuing slippage of foundation
• Sub-standard concrete in additions at both ends of the house from construction done by previous owner
• Other violations of code not here mentioned

These and other issues are can be substantiated via Structural Engineering and other reports. I have tried since purchasing this home to do my best with it. At this age and in these circumstances you can be assured that I will be most diligent in working to keep this roof over my head... while sharing it with the family also staying with me (sorry, I'm afraid they are not qualified buyers).

The big banks in this country got a sweet deal because of their personal relationships with those in power.

Personal relationships are important aren't they? Is there a chance we could meet? Its so much easier to destroy the lives of strangers.

I don't want to be a stranger. Neither do millions of others. I don't expect you to give me or anybody else their house. But wouldn't it be better to share the pain?

Do you really believe you'll do better with this house (or this country) with your approach? I'll be happy to hear your thoughts. Especially since I've heard so little that's been accurate, clear or useful.

Thirdly:

Upon review of your situation, I'm sad to inform you that neither Wachovia nor GMAC will be satisfactory institutions for future Chagora business or trust accounts. (Yeah, I guess you'll think that's sorta silly since Chagora's completely broke currently and I'm not so well known but I'm quite relentless and have a gut feeling the concept is going to catch on. Maybe you guys will be helpful in some ironic way and if so, hey, COOL!)

Regards,
Tom Crowl

On Communities (Part 2) : The Approaching Trains

Thank You to L. Williamson (GigaGranadaHills) for her interest and the invitation to discuss how my work with Chagora and Civilization Systems relates to us in Granada Hills. Part 1 focuses on the foundations of persistent problems in governance we've faced since moving from the Hunter/Gatherers we once were (See Social Networks & the Social Organism - Healing the Breach ) to the vastly more complex society AND network of societies we now are.

It's time to get both local, current and personal with the situation I know best... my own!

FORECLOSURE!

While a fascinating tale, it's not in a way that I'd rather have it since that quality derives from its resemblance to some sort of Rube Goldberg train wreck. I intend to tell it while avoiding conspiracy theories, paranoid delusions and self-pity. And then even further to logically tie it all in with ideas about civilization, decision systems and building a healthy world. Let me know if I veer off too far!

I'm in a very tough spot along with a lot of other people caught in this economic stroke . There's all sorts of ways to parcel out responsibility and every situation is different. And there are many stories much sadder than mine.

But, like I said... mine is the one I know best and it also gives me the chance to lay out where my responsibility lies as well. And then in the next post maybe suggest some better solutions for me personally and others too.

I got hit bad with the economic blow in the Fall of '08... Real bad... Lifetime bad. Now I'm literally just trying to keep a roof over my head.


It's a good roof and its on my house here on El Oro Way in Granada Hills I bought (or rather have been buying) since 1991.



Except now I'm living in the little 500 square foot granny unit I designed and built and have friends living in the house paying rent. And don't feel bad about that. I love it! It's all I need at this point. My needs are simple.

Yesterday a man came and posted something on the door... Notice of Trustee's Sale with the sale date set for September 14. This was not a complete surprise to either me or my friends though I'd been told to expect a new modification program from Wachovia they'd been promising "any day now" since early July... (they have one of the lowest rates of modification) which would give a chance to better resolve this.

I very much want to be able to stay and am trying every angle available as well as thinking up a few new ones in order to accomplish that.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Go back to 1991... It was right after my divorce. We had no kids. I'd never bought a house before, and while brilliant in some ways... in others I can be extremely foolish and naive. So naturally I hastily bought a house with serious problems: broken foundation, flood damage, one end of the house 6 inches lower than the other, rotten plates from standing water, sub-standard concrete in the room additions made by the previous owner, collapsing retaining wall behind the pool, etc... and active concealment! All of which, I now realize, any idiot should have been able to tell.

SO... I had to start the first (and hopefully last) lawsuit I'd ever been involved in. It took five years but with iron clad evidence (we obtained previous escrow papers where issues were disclosed vs. mine showing none of these issues) they finally made a settlement on the day before trial. The money received paid for my attorney and re-grading of the lot and a drainage system to stop previous flooding. But it was not enough to fix other problems.

Figuring I was now stuck with a sow's ear, over the years I did what I could to turn it (at least in terms of aesthetics and livability) into a silk purse...
Skylights, tile, new kitchen, new windows, custom brickwork,glass-block master shower, fire pit, etc. I did it myself with a licensed contractor friend I paid. (Me being the guy designing and running back and forth to Home Depot more than swinging a hammer.)



Through this period, being somewhat of an eclectic type, I'd been supporting myself with a couple of commercials (Yep, that's me in Makeup for Honda in Japan)...

selling a couple of my paintings...

and occasional roommates, odd jobs and savings, etc.

A Renaissance man! Or a quasi-bum depending on how you view it.

Hitting fifty and acting and painting not too dependable, I tried teaching for a year (At Patrick Henry Middle School no less! And now have a few old students who've found me and become friends on facebook! They actually seemed to have thought I was a good teacher! And I'm very flattered. But, to tell you the truth, coming in blind at age 50+ and over 40 kids in 5 different classes was just overwhelming and I literally collapsed with pneumonia. I would actually like teaching and have a few thoughts in that area for another time.)

And finally even tried Real Estate. I was a whiz at the theory and procedures... other salespeople would come to me to explain things all the time. But the worst salesman ever! Managed to get one client though... sold my sister's house for her. I did a good job too. Of course, demand was high then.

That brings us to about 2003 and I was seeing the handwriting on the wall and that I'd better make a plan! The handwriting said that I was getting older and needed to lower my overhead and seek some stable modest income.

THE Original PLAN!

So my rather conservative and, I think, modest plan was to build the granny unit under California ab 1866 since it was silly to live in the house by myself and resale was so difficult because of the structural problems. And then figure a way to make even a modest living doing something I believe in. Fortunately, I'd always had great credit and used a Home Equity Loan and credit cards to build my charming little bungalow over about a year and a half which is a fascinating but separate story.

Went great for a couple of years. Great tenants. And I was doing a lot of thinking and despite the problems, I hit the jackpot! I found an idea!

I realized that I understood something that could be helpful... and it has implications. One of them is that, at least at this stage of civilization, money is speech... and that issues of scale and system design were preventing its proper functioning. Hence this Chagora thing... which I think is much more than it may at first appear.

So what else could I do? I went after it! And I'm still at it with, I think, some slow understanding and support building.

THE ENTREPRENEUR'S CREDIT CRUNCH

But my jackpot seems to have a timeline that's out of sync with my situation! The tenants' had a medical disaster and had to finally move owing me over $8,000 and Bank of America cut off a $65,000 Home Equity Line they'd suggested and approved nine months earlier (and I'd accepted) to fund my startup.

Both disasters in the Fall of '08 JUST when we were ready to launch the basic website and needed it for administration, promotion, legal services, etc...

In the next post (hopefully tomorrow) I'll give colorful details of the ongoing train wreck between the inept and inexperienced entrepreneur and the one-sided nature of government's current mortgage solutions that aren't even in the banks' best interest, let alone citizens, neighborhoods and communities. (And suggest some personal opportunities here for investors in Real Estate and/or StartUps! I like Granada Hills and want to stay.) Oh, and I'll discuss the special place in my heart I have for Bank of America and their HOE and community practices! (which actually relate to why we NEED strong LOCALLY based banks with LOCAL decision systems!)

Question: If a lender encourages a loan (secured or not) and derives a timely benefit from making the loan (corporately, as an asset carried on the books and to its individual officers via incentives and bonuses) while the borrower derives NO benefit since actual funding is denied when needed (despite being carried and reported by the bank as an asset) and, in fact is damaged by loss of alternative sources of funding that may have been sought over that time... does the lender then have liability? Especially if the loan may have been based on an also self-serving in-house appraisal by an appraiser beholden to the lender for his employment? Any attorneys out there? Could be a whole class of people in that boat? Yeah, I know, of course I'm biased!

Tomorrow: The Smoking Train Wreck!

On Creating Communities (Part 1)

This post is in answer to a request for a piece about my work with Chagora and Civilization Systems for GigaGranadaHills (An excellent local blog for our community). Thank You to L. Williamson for her interest and the invitation to discuss how my work relates to us in Granada Hills.

Chagora hypothesis background:

When humans moved from living as Hunter/Gatherers to Organized Agriculture and then on to other forms of economic activity requiring a larger Social Organism* it resulted in some very fundamental changes to the communities in which we and our progenitors had lived for literally millions of years...
*A self-recognized and internally governed economic/political grouping organized for basic survival decisions and actions.

And it engendered some new forms for group decision.

While these new economic activities have brought enormous biological success (in terms of population growth and resource utilization)...

There are still unresolved issues in group decision systems (governance) which have persisted since that first move to agriculture some 10,000 years ago. And these still unresolved issues are now at a critical juncture and badly need to be addressed for the future of us all.

What are these issues? Let me see if I can explain what I see as a root of the problem:


We evolved in small groups. WE were those Hunter/Gatherers. If you were to meet all your ancestors on a particular line (Your mother, Your mother's mother, Your mother's mother's mother, and so on... all the way back to Homo Erectus, you'd find that the vast majority spent their whole lives with a relatively small number of immediate family and not too distant relatives in small communities.

All others were considered something between wary allies, mortal enemies or even non-human altogether!

The size of these small societies is sometimes referred to as Dunbar's Number, a hypothetical natural human community size to which we had so long been adapted. This very real (though unfixed and individually variable) limitation on natural human community size also has a direct relationship to biological altruism which is the irresistible impulse that can cause a mother to run in front of a bus to save her baby, or a soldier to reenlist only to storm a beach with his buddies even when the cause may be lost or foolish.

With the birth of agriculture... and for the rest of the lifespan of humanity... a fundamental change has taken place which we're still struggling with. And it has a myriad of repercussions:

The Social Organism outgrew the Fundamental Social Network!

The most immediate response to this dilemma was authoritarian forms of governance with all the fixings... military classes, worker classes, slavery and oligarchy. A perfectly natural outcome. Specialized networks, forming networks of networks were required for such a complex social organism to function.


What may have begun as needed specialization by an even accidental decision-making group, with even the best of intentions (e.g. Plato's philosopher kings), will tend to become self-reinforcing and isolated with it's own internal loyalties and identifications related to the natural drives linked to their own personal associations and Dunbar's Number.

Hence oligarchies are over time an unfortunately inevitable problem when society scales beyond natural human community size.

What's important to recognize is that this is inevitably damaging for the organism as a whole and has always driven the civilization's collapse, reform or both. There are clear reasons for this decision-system collapse related to ultimatum game issues, amongst others, but enough on that here.

Designs for Representative Government have all been attempts to broaden the decision system beyond the closed networks that tend to form if not interrupted. They do this generally by introducing systems of rules and horizontal or distributed networks to counter-balance or interrupt hierarchical networks; e.g. Constitutions, Bills of Rights, Legislatures, Suffrage, etc.

But even these current representative systems are having their problems and authoritarianism is still a very strong contender. And oligarchy formation is a constant threat for both.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and while I try to stay neutral in many things, I'm going to admit a bias...

Government by the people needs to work! And it must be capable of accomplishing this within a large civilization while retaining both maximum freedom and maximum diversity. Not an easy goal. There's no guaranteed path to that end but there are guideposts and hints.

Some are mentioned above, others can be added, like the role of proximity in all its forms, the tendency of strong nodes in a network to become stronger, the actually essential criticality* in complex/chaotic systems which means there's never a final fix and why vigilance really must be eternal, the role of technology, influence capability, etc.
* Here criticality refers to the needed balance between order and chaos in any civilization (or complex system for that matter), with too much of either being fatal as a mathematical certainty.)

Every characteristic of Representative systems listed above: Bills of Rights, Legislatures, etc. are attempts to address INFLUENCE CAPABILITY between individuals and groups within a larger social organism.

However, influence capability is itself influenced by many external forces and is never static. In a small town you might know the mayor and your city councilman personally as well as their opponents... or at least, your sister's husband might! But that's not the case anymore and a sense of helplessness easily spreads.

So much has changed about the fundamental nature of our "natural human community size" communities! Both technology and scale have radically changed our close social networks... often, but not always or necessarily for the better.

The Chagora Hypothesis:

• Social Organisms inevitably tend towards Authoritarianism over time due to inherent characteristics which arise when scaled beyond Dunbar's Number.
• Further, as complex/chaotic systems, social organisms are inherently unstable.
• Representative Systems arose as a response to repeated "Ultimatum Game" related disasters inevitably befalling Authoritarian Regimes.
• Representative Systems are also inherently unstable.
• The mechanisms of Representative Systems are NEVER finished and must constantly be addressed to maintain a healthy state of system criticality and hence, survival.
  

The Chagora financial function is designed as one tool, I believe an essential one for addressing a problem in influence capability. It's a way to make giving them a piece of your mind an every day experience. Frequency of participation is essential to being part of a community!
But, more importantly, it's a part of a broader framework to address changes in approach necessary for civilization health and survival.
I hope you'll take a look!


This post is probably already too long so I'll end here.

I'll follow this post up with another on how Chagora's financial function might change the system, how it relates to speech specifically as well as my personal adventure looking for support for at least the concepts, if not the project itself. (Which I believe is an embarrassing, sad but unsurprising tale of the mix of an inexperienced, uncredentialed, hermit intellectual/entrepreneur and a foolish "too big to fail" banking system with NO concern for the local communities it feeds on. Yes, I said "feeds on" and NOT "invests in" which I'll defend in my next post. I'll admit a bias here too since I'm facing foreclosure after 20 years in Granada Hills directly connected to this project and the current financial crisis.)

BTW, finance, banking and investment interests with their associated problems of scale and influence have already been devastating. They were brought to us by BOTH parties here in this country, and if unaddressed likely to get worse with very negative implications for sustainable economics and political freedom.

The Future of the World Lies in Finding Unity in Diversity!

On the Birth of the Global Social Organism

Only when the gap in wealth and status approaches that level which would be considered fair within a Dunbar’s number-sized social network in daily contact… only then can we consider the possibility of a healthy, scaled social organism*.
*A self-recognized and internally governed economic/political grouping organized for basic survival decisions and actions.

Moreover, it may be that the rapid expansion of ICT and the nature of the Ultimatum Game makes this first assertion no longer just a nice ideal but a survival necessity.

This begs the questions: if the previous two statements are true, can this necessity be reasonably satisfied while avoiding pitfalls (e.g. a monoculture as undesirable and unhealthy in a society as it is in organized agriculture from the serious dangers of losing needed variation, but more on this later.)

Are the first statements true?
I believe they are but can also see how each could be credibly attacked. As a way to assert their validity, and at the same time expand on their definition let me deal with anticipated counter-arguments.

• What is healthy in this context and how can it possibly be evaluated objectively?
  
• Why assume primitive societies were healthy?
• Who can say what gap in either wealth or status is appropriate and wouldn't what's fair to one individual seem unfair to someone else anyway?
• Humanity has made great material and intellectual progress... and isn't it often (or even generally) true that the individual inventiveness that drives that progress IS inequality in wealth and status?
• A socially-stratified globe has existed at least since the birth of agriculture and done pretty well. Why should ICT specifically change anything about that?
• Is it possible that human stratification leading to either speciation or extinction of portions of humanity is inevitable anyway and so its best to let nature take its course?
  

Assuming I can drag a few of you through this first stage of this very fuzzy subject...
Can this Necessity be fulfilled in a reasonable way?

• Can a Global Social Organism be successful where individual wealth/status gaps are bounded? (I assert that it not only can, but cannot survive without them!)
  
• What might it look like?
  
• What are the dangers?
  
• What are the potentials?
  
• Can beneficial market mechanisms survive? Or is this some dream of communal utopia? (I believe markets, competition, creativity and healthy ambition will not only survive but will expand to overcome multiple distortions associated with inadequately addressed scaling issues... in tandem with better managed commons functions where market approaches are sometimes counter-productive)

And finally, what does it all have to do with decision mechanisms in representative systems?

(This is a quick introduction to what will be a very much longer post or series of posts addressing these issues. I'm on the road and may only have intermittent chance to write for the next couple of weeks but for various reasons want to at least begin laying out some of these ideas now.)

Freedom of Speech & Association are Essentials! When civilization's scale requires technology for their exercise... then that technology is also essential in its design, implementation and broad availability.

"Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech."
Benjamin Franklin

The Foundations of Authoritarianism

As a consequence of your ancestors and mine having spent their lives living in small groups the Social Media world has great interest in Dunbar's Number and natural human community size.
Its been a concern long before the Internet however.
Authoritarianism's rise, which developed along with the move to organized agriculture from a hunter/gatherer existence thousands of years ago and persists in many places today, was due to:

• The loss of congruity between the social network (a hypothetical natural human community size related to Dunbar's Number) and the social organism* necessitating multiple social networks within a single social organism. (see Social Networks & The Social Organism - Healing the Breach)
• A hierarchical stratification of those networks roughly mirroring a hunter/gatherer pecking order...
• Accentuated by an inherent social inertia arising with the loss of this congruity and a break in the immediate influence feedback loops such congruity provided and...
• More importantly an additional problem relating to scalability of biological altruism and loss of related forms of proximity. (see Self-Interest vs Altruism - Problems in Scaling the Decision Process)

Representative government in it's various forms has been designed to overcome these problems through a variety of mechanisms designed to introduce counter-balancing distributed networks, compartmentalization, network shuffling and clear delineations of fundamental rights and responsibilities.

But complex/chaotic systems -and civilizations are certainly that - are always changing!

Technology has cut both ways in the ongoing balancing act seeking to resolve the tension between the social organism and the individual's natural social network size.
A successful civilization must guarantee the individual's rights, opinions and opportunities regardless of that individual's social position.
* A self-recognized and internally governed economic/political grouping organized for basic survival.

(This post is part of a series briefly laying out some broader ideas, problems and opportunities underlying development of Chagora and perhaps having some general relationship to the evolution of a global civilization.)

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Social Networks & The Social Organism - Healing the Breach

Roots of the Social Network

We developed and in essential nature remain a social, small-group oriented species.* The majority of your ancestors and mine spent their lives relating to no more than a few hundred people. That's how it was from the time we were still in trees to the birth of agriculture. And for many it remains much that way today.
*see Dunbar's Number for more on natural human community size

Our innate drives for survival and status were focused on these small groups for literally millions of years. Consequently, it also has a close relationship to the boundaries of our Altruism* drive . Survival was a precarious enterprise. This was no idyllic time of pastoral peace and wisdom but rather one of short and difficult lives. And the available technology was not enough to change the social paradigm much from what it'd been from before the birth of language: a small, vulnerable group immediately dependent on one another for any life at all.
* See Biological Altruism to better understand its relationship to the concept of community

But while the technology was limited and life was short, in social terms the paradigm did have one thing going for it... We'd had a long time to adapt to it!

It's not that these ancient groups were all alike certainly. We can assume plenty of variation in marriage practices, inheritance patterns, beliefs, rituals, etc; with some peaceful, others warlike, some matriarchal, others patriarchal, some savanna dwellers, others mountain people; locally-adapted technologies, coalitions and rivalries, etc.

But what would they all have in common?

The Ground that Nurtured the Social Network

• Each individual knew almost everyone he/she encountered - and then encountered them repeatedly - thoughout their lives. Strangers were not unknown but rare and never the majority.
  
• Each individual knew their own social status and the social status of those with whom they interacted.
• (An important corollary is that individuals DID NOT have more than one group with which they identified and hence separate statuses for separate groups.)
  
• The altruism drive was limited to, closely coincided with, and did not often extend beyond the boundaries of this social grouping.

Further:

• There was ubiquitous awareness that personal well-being was dependent on the group's well-being.
• There was ubiquitous awareness that whatever the group decision process was - and there was almost certainly a range - decisions on group matters had whole group effects.
• Effects of group decisions to the extent they were knowable, were known to the whole group.
• Individual concealment of assets was difficult (and had no value regardless) while intragroup distribution enhanced the status of the giver.
  
• Lines of communication and influence were proximate and immediate.
• Decision maker(s) could not persist in the role without consensus agreement by the group.
  
• The Ultimatum Game's implications made it imperative that the range of asset and power distribution within this group not exceed limits defined by that group as fair.

The Breach in the Social Network Paradigm

This leads to a very important observation: The Social Network significantly coincided with the Social Organism!*
* A self-recognized and internally governed economic/political grouping organized for basic survival.

Until recently...

By recently I mean the revolution catalyzed by the Birth of Agriculture 10,000 years ago. (I bet you didn't think I was going to say that but in evolutionary terms that's just yesterday!)

The population concentration, labor specialization, intellectual stimulation, technological development , environmental manipulation, wealth creation, etc. which came along for the ride was the most significant alteration in the human condition since... well, since being human!

This revolution continues and expands. In fact it's all been a single revolution... a revolution in technology which reached a phase transition with agriculture and has been continuing ever since.

However, this has altered the social organism in ways to which the social network mechanism was not adapted and with which it did not coincide.

This first real change in social structure for eons necessitated the creation of new systems of governance, decision-making, persuasion and control which were nevertheless built on these same social network mechanisms adapted for very different conditions. And this inevitably led to a hierarchy of social networks and authoritarian forms dominated by the decision-making classes (i.e. specialized social networks within a social organism composed of a hierarchy of social networks).

Further, problems in scaling the altruism drive create a self-reinforcement feedback loop; powerful networks tend to get more powerful. This resulted in severe imbalances in wealth and status neither tolerable or possible previously because of counter-forces offered by the proximity available within a social organism that coincides with its social network.

Political and economic thinkers from Plato and Aristotle, Locke and Nietzsche, to Adam Smith and Karl Marx have been essentially attempting to address problems related to social imbalances.

All of recorded history with its wars and revolutions are largely a recitation of struggles related to survival, status and social identity (altruism drive boundaries) as groups and individuals attempt to conform their drives to the social organism of which they are a part.

In other words, they are directly related to failing decision systems within a network of social networks. And, generally an associated perceived injustice beyond Ultimatum Game tolerable limits

The re-emergence of self-government has been a slow and difficult process. Various forms have been tried and are in use now. But success is not assured. There have been successes and failures, the lure of Authoritarianism has always been a strong temptation.

Some believe, and I am one, that a healthy future must include mechanisms for resolution of this breach between natural human community size and the boundaries of an emerging global social organism. In fact, that was largely the intent of cultural engineers like Madison, Jefferson et al...

I recently read a fascinating piece by Kevin Kelly The Unabomber was Right in which he discussed Ted Kaczynski's belief that man could never be happy in technological society... that it would trap us; essentially making us slaves who'd lost our self-determination.

I believe this is what old Ted was talking about... this incongruity which he believe technology would accelerate and broaden. But he saw no good solution so came up with a very bad one.

He's wrong. There are solutions ready and others still to be sought. Information and communication technology especially are the lever making resolution possible.

That is, IF we can avoid the many traps along the way... here system design is critical and, as is very often the case, the devil truly is in the details.

The outcome of this story is yet to be written... and in pop culture terms... with a likely denouement as either a Star Trek Federation, a Borg Collective... or extinction.

Personally, I pick Uhuru!

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Miscellaneous on Status Updates, Distributed Intelligence & New Economies

Many have realized that Twitter, Facebook or any other widely used system of Status Updates could be useful for tracking possible infections and other trends, as well as having application in many other forms of group action and communication.

(Sure enough, within an hour of posting, a friend over at the Brennan Center sent this link: http://www.google.org/flutrends/

And I recently saw a clever suggestion for keeping realtime track of buses in NYC! Apparently the city wants to implement a computerized system to keep track of where all their buses are but they can't afford it.

Someone came up with a simple idea! Just ask regular people to text or tweet the positions when they see a bus or its late or whatever! And some person or group will come up with an open source method to put the data together and get the job done.

It's another example of how technology is changing economics and power relationships in fundamental ways. Like the issues with newspapers, intellectual content, etc.

From Vernor Vinge* who's a hot topic these days:

"The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity. In the coming of the Singularity, we are seeing the predictions of true technological unemployment finally come true."

*The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era

Yet in many cases, and as a result of the Internet's unique nature, the value is actually produced from a distributed network which extends beyond the boundaries of the entity which focuses that value into marketable form and derives the market's benefits.

The Internet is a landscape not a business. But as a landscape its qualities are unlike normal geographies since proximity is fundamentally redefined (farther in space and longer in time become closer and shorter respectively). This results in both greater productivity but also reduced opportunities to extract surplus value from the points along that chain from product to consumer since that chain no longer exists.

Further the Internet disperses content... or more accurately disperses it and then reconcentrates it in a myriad different configurations ever more individually determined.

Thus, the nature and reality of Vinge's singularity are debateable but the ramifications of technological unemployment are here right now!

It's possible that some form of exchange could be envisioned rewarding different kinds of personal or group production distinguished from the production of consumer goods or services through traditional entities.

Further, the availability of information and communication technology COMBINED with the implications of the Ultimatum Game in a shrinking and interdependent world make vast imbalances in wealth and power much LESS viable than they once were. Which suggests that a minimal drawing right against the commons for basic necessities may now be a practical necessity... in addition to the moral imperative it's always been.

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Civilization, Complexity & Collapse - The Search for Levers

Civilizations Are Complex Chaotic Systems*

Some characteristics of complex chaotic systems**:

• Interactions are nonlinear
• Feedback loops are both positive and negative
• Cause and effect are intermingled
• Evolves in time (not static)
• Ultimately unpredictable.
• Can self-organize and adapt (though not necessarily well)
• Defined in a State Space measured relative to Criticality, a fundamental of all living systems. (A Goldilocks zone at the threshold between order and chaos called criticality. For good discussion on biological networks see Science News No Gene Is An Island
• Theoretically, ALL complex, chaotic systems eventually collapse.
• Systems CAN be modified so that theoretical collapse is extended to a point beyond the useful life of the system rendering the issue moot.


• Thus it will be a constantly evolving system (or more accurately system of systems).

SO WHAT!

As Kevin Kelly covers very well in two recent pieces( The Unibomber Was Right and The Collapsitarians ). The Technium seems right now to be a pretty sick puppy. And our evidence from the very, very meager experience we have of civilizations... is that so far none has managed to avoid periodic regression... often very severe regression.

(Hence the Drake Equation and its included factor regarding survivability of technological civilizations)

Ted Kaczynski and others of the eco-anarchist, anti-civilization wing make the not unreasonable assumption that this collapse is inherent because of the integral link between technology and human group scaling, that is, the growth of complex civilization.

WHILE TECHNOLOGY IS CONCOMITANT WITH HUMAN GROUP SCALING... IT IS NOT THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM!

But it IS an essential piece of the solution. This is my area of exploration. I believe we can begin to look at other human and social factors rationally and draw a few tentative conclusions about where possible problems may lie... or at least areas for search and evaluation.

The longing for a romanticized "pre-technology" hunter-gatherer past is a false goal. But it provides the clue to the true problem.

Its not the simple technology they long for... ITS THE CLEAR ALIGNMENT OF SELF-INTEREST, RESPONSIBILITY AND THE GROUP (the target of ALTRUISM DRIVES).

And this relates to concepts like freedom, initiative, creativity, happiness etc.

(See Overview of Self-Determination Theory by Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M., University of Rochester. See also my post Self-Interest vs. Altruism - Problems in Scaling the Decision Process)

The step from hunter/gatherer DID involve a significant de-humanization process (LOSS of CONTROL over fundamental drives: Authoritarian forms and slavery). It was a form with some success for a while but couldn't last (China will find that out and adapt or face similar difficulties). but it did increase freedom for some for a time.

Adam Smith could be considered as representing the next stage describing an economic model whereby the individual acting from self-interest in the commons would improve him/herself AND the commons, while empowering a new political counterforce for failing authoritarian/hierarchical decision structures.

Its a good model but there are critical confusions that have arisen. For instance, the Ayn Rand school of thought has not recognized the Biological role of altruism as a natural Drive and the repercussions on decision-making with scale. See my post Leadership & Adam Smith - On Ignoring the Basics

This is going on too long for now but where this is leading is this:

Our evolution is in Our hands. We cannot expect automatic fixes.

We CAN find the elements that previous civilizations have failed to see. I believe I'm on the track of some essentials. Or at least beginning to recognize neglected parts of the problem and ways to modify the structures without breaking them.

But Its going to be more about re-thinking some social assumptions and structures than simply a matter of where money is thrown or not thrown.

WE URGENTLY NEED TO RE-ADJUST OUR FEEDBACK LOOPS!

The Individually-Controlled/Commons-Dedicated Account concept arises out of this search (and very much incorporates concepts Kevin Kelly covers in his piece The Bottom is Not Enough ).

For a very brief view of the initial rationale see Why Chagora posting. (This sketch only reflects the flow from the individual to the commons... there are additional potentials, some of which may be vital to a new paradigm... going the other way. More on this later.)

Its certainly not the only fix needed and maybe I'm wrong but...

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller

* Complex ≠ Complicated: The obvious analogy is to complicated Newtonian physics with fixed answers vs. complex Quantum Physics with probabilistic answers.

** References re Complex Systems wiki
AAPT Topical Conference on Computational Physics in Upper Level Courses
At Davidson College (NC)
On July 28, 2007

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Self-Interest vs Altruism - Problems in Scaling the Decision Process

Both Self-Interest and Altruism are inherent motivations in humans and have established roles in evolutionary theory well supported by observation and controlled experiment.

And examples of altruism extend across the biosphere: honeybees sacrificing themselves for the colony, vervet monkeys sounding loud alarms to warn of threats though it draws a predator's attention to themselves, bats regurgitating blood meals for hungry companions... and soldiers storming Omaha Beach in Normandy.

( see Biological Altruism Stanford Encyclopoedia of Philosophy, revised Oct. '08)

This was a dilemma for Darwin himself and he recognized it as perhaps the greatest challenge to his theory of natural selection presented in "The Origin of Species".

How could it possibly make sense for an organism to act against its own self-interest reducing its chance for reproduction? It seems such a trait would die out since those carrying it would be putting themselves at a disadvantage to those without it!

In "Descent of Man" he glimpsed the truth: Evolutionary forces also act on the group as a whole. Later investigations by many scientists have shown how an individual organism may, by reducing its own advantage, increase the survivability of the group and thereby a greater proportion of its own characteristics. In fact, evolutionary forces act on many levels from genes, to cells, to organisms, to ecologies.

So where there are groups engaged in survival... altruism is a fundamental element.

THE ALTRUISM PROBLEM IN SCALING THE DECISION PROCESS

Self-interest is clearly bounded. In other words its quite clear where it begins and ends: the individual and his/her personal survivability.

However altruism is NOT!

The boundaries of what might be called extended identities vary from individual to individual and from sub-group to sub-group within the entire human species.

Further, the intensity of attachment to these extended identities is directly related to proximity.

Proximity here can be defined as genetic, geographic, or cultural (social, political, psychological, etc.) and is the primary factor regulating the inherent force and direction of altruistic motivations in a deciding individual.

In short, altruistic drives weaken with distance whether genetic, geographic or cultural.

Human individuals and groups engage in conscious decision processes with intent of both personal and group effect.

With scale these decision processes require hierarchical structures and compartmentalization since if each individual were expected to participate in every decision we'd all soon starve with lack of time for anything other than "deciding" group issues.

However, hierarchies with scale become increasingly problematic because the relationship of proximity to altruism tends to narrow the focus of the Deciders.

This is because WITH SCALE THE SELF-INTEREST MOTIVATION OF THE DECIDER REMAINS CONSTANT BUT THE FOCUS AND INTENSITY OF THE ALTRUISTIC DRIVE DOES NOT NECESSARILY EXPAND TO MATCH THE LARGER GROUP.

Especially where the hierarchical structure erodes proximity.

The U.S. Constitution and others are an implicit acknowledgement of this by recognizing the need for both hierarchcal and counter-balancing distributed (egalitarian) mechanisms.

It remains a sound structure. However subsequent and additional changes in scale, social structure, legal structure (corporate law especially), technology and culture make additional attention vitally necessary.

There is no single or simple solution to these issues.

As may be becoming more generally known I'm a fanatic for the idea of Political MicroDonation (under $1) and the Individually-Controlled/Commons-Dedicated Account at the core of a distributed network as a vital tool for that rebalancing.

But it's not the only tool needed.

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Leadership & Adam Smith - On Ignoring the Basics

Jared Diamond made an interesting observation on PBS last night about what seems to him a key difference between societies that survive and those that don't.
And it relates to their decision systems!

He simply observed that in societies where the decision makers are insulated from the effects of their decisions... collapse is more likely.

This is one of the problems in scaling the decision making process for larger societies: preserving that connection.

Social stability (not rigidity) relies on consensus. But it's not consensus on each individual decision that is required for that stability, but rather consensus on the process and structures through which decisions are made.

This consensus is in trouble.

Even Wall Street's founding philosopher, Adam Smith, understood that the rational justification for the reward of individual initiative and investment of capital, labor and intellect was because it resulted in BENEFIT TO THE COMMONS!

The central objective of a civilization's banking/financial sector is NOT RETURN ON INVESTMENT... but rather investment return should only be a reflection of the degree of sustainable benefit to the Commons.

This simple concept has been completely ignored by our most elite and isolated educational, business and political interests.

There are solutions.

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Leadership & Trade - Understanding System Failure

The ASSUMPTION

In general trade will raise all boats. This is a reasonable assumption. Our leadership class (Left AND Right) saw this and moved in that direction.

And sold it to a nervous public with a rationale of both increasing national wealth while raising the standards of a hungry world. ( The GOOD INTENTIONS)

The PROBLEM

The process will not be smooth and there will be many arbitrary winners and losers as various systems adjust. (The unavoidable ROAD)

The TRAGEDY

The leadership class, with control of the 'devil in the details' drew ALL increase in wealth to iself by misappropriating the nation's accumulated capital for the benefit of interests other than the constituents for whom these investments were made.

Further they relied on discretionary consumption and usurious debt instruments on which that constituency increasingly depended to fuel that trade... together with neglect and exploitation of their 'commons' necessities (e.g. healthcare & housing) while abandoning internal production essential for a better trade balance. (The HELL)

This results in calls for protectionism because of the constituency's sense of fundamental systemic unfairness.

It may well be that most in the leadership class honestly believed they were 'doing well by doing good. This strongly suggests we need brighter leaders. ( PAVING the way)

The SOLUTION

Attend to the badly neglected 'commons' and provide a dependable safety-net for a misled and misused public.

Seek reasonable redress and compensation where appropriate.

Repair SYSTEMS of Representation and Decision so as to balance distorted mechanisms of motivation and decision.

These are NOT partisan political issues.
They are meta-political issues!

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Chagora - A Key Element of The Technium?

Individually-Controlled/Commons-Dedicated Accounts offering (especially but not only) viable Political MicroTransaction (1 cent to legal limits) with Electoral/Geographic Networking DRIVE the natural growth of a Distributed Network Powered by Individuals for effective Speech & Association in the SCALED Commons.

The Dedicated Individual Account for Commons Functions is a necessary (but not sufficient alone ) technology for scaling representation and a better group decision process.

More than a tool for the individual voice in the commons, which it certainly is...
The hypothetical Chagora structure in aggregate IS the mind of the commons in a sense... at least within the technium.

(For more of Kevin Kelly's great work see his blog The Technium which inspired this post.)

Chagora should be founded on a For-Profit model with pre-determined Exit Strategy by sale to the donor base.

The For-Profit-Commons-Owned Chagora structure itself then becomes an additional and necessary check and balance both on the government on one side and on large private interests on the other (woe be to the entity that ticks off this user base!).

Chagora provides a check by its nature as a distributed network against hierarchical political and economic structures which are self-reenforcing with scale and prone to collapse. Additionally, a for profit structure reinforces the donor's attraction since he benefits directly and this stablilizes the structure by dispersing its funding sources.

While the Political MicroDonation component was (and is) a key element for the foundation and catalyzation of such a network... and, in fact is a neglected FUNDAMENTAL for scaling Political Speech... that is not the only potential envisioned.

Such a network has important application for everything from a better way for the citizen-centered public finance of elections, to perhaps one day the establishment of such an account as an essential right for all citizens of the world with basic calorie and shelter guarantees*. I believe this has application for moving to new economic forms needed for transition to viable models NOT dependent on constantly expanding and mis-valued consumption.

*The Internet is a landscape not a business and alters some basic economic assumptions. As a landscape its qualities are unlike normal geographies since proximity is fundamentally redefined - farther in space and longer in time become closer and shorter respectively. This results in both greater productivity but also reduced opportunities to extract surplus value from the points along that chain from product to consumer since that chain no longer exists... just ask the Newspaper industry. However this new landscape has much greater impact on lowering the cost of information as opposed to goods. This has impact on the ability of the market to accurately reflect supply and demand. e.g. While the traditional economic market makes it clear that a ton of new shiny DVD's is worth much more in dollars than a ton of rice, an impoverished group in North Africa may not feel the same way. And the Internet makes that a much less sustainable situation as the world grows closer together. The Ultimatum Game makes it clear that the general increase in situational awareness when combined with increased civilization vulnerability makes better (and more representative) government imperative.

The Chagora structure (in purest form a distributed network with each node as what might be called an "Individually Controlled/Commons Dedicated Account) as a "for profit" structure ultimately owned by the population in general may well be a vital component for this new landscape.

We're not creating a business... or a charity... or a service... or a product.

We are constructing a landscape for the evolution of civilization.

Capability ENABLES Responsibility

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The Chagora Live Debate Function

A Major User-base Generator!

e.g.
Imagine if for the recent primary debates CNN had announced that during the upcoming televised event they were inviting people to join in with $5 during the 2 hr period. And then during the debate participants could from their home computer, laptop... or even cell phone give it out in 25 cent pops in response to candidate positions!

With realtime results displayed by any of a myriad of already available graphic pyrotechnics.

MEDIA LOVE CONTESTS... and they love scores... so they end up promoting User account creation for their own advantage.

How would the candidates think?

Now if I had been Dennis Kucinich back then I'd want my supporters to open an account with $5 cause I'd bet I'd make a pretty good showing against more "media-acceptable" candidates...

And he'd be right!

Of course, Hillary and Barack and the rest are going to be thinking...

"wait a minute, this could end up very embarrassing!"

So they end up encouraging their supporters to sign up too.

What we end up with is a FREE-ADVERTISING-USER-BASE-BUILDING MACHINE for our NON-PARTISAN SITE AND WIDGETS!

And the User is ready for other capabilities there offered which keep him coming back.

Just as in televised debates we see now... since it is considered "system" support and not "candidate" support sponsorships are possible... (be a participant and win a new hybrid!)... so long as its not tied to HOW or HOW MUCH a participant gives but simply participation my understanding is that it perfectly legal...

The system also allows similar debates or other format fundraising on any level and at very low-cost which is great for potential candidates and issues!

Various rules structures can be envisioned and deserve careful attention.

BTW
An ID'd NON-FUNDED account has rights of participation in ALL website functions except, obviously contribution.

A NON-ID'd NON-FUNDED account has almost all website functions available except certain neighborhood functions.

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On Citizenship Revitalization

People and other living things tend to be lazy so long as they see no need to be otherwise. A hungry cat is more active and curious than a fat one.

I've seen the most nonsensical, irrational, emotion-dominated people become suddenly very rational when dealing with something immediate and over which they feel they have some control.

Stupidity is only fun when it has no price.

To the extent that a government and an economy is successful it may well encourage stupidity for some period of time. Leaders like it. It makes their jobs so much easier.

But it won't last. And when the people figure out they've been "sucked in" (yeah, it’s their own fault but that's not how it goes down!)...

They get quite angry.

That's what's happening now. True or not, many believe they've been made fools of by a trickle-down ideology that never trickled down while they worked longer and longer hours and fat cats got rich by stealing their meager savings.

The dilemma for a successful leadership is to PROVE that's not what they intended and they really do want a nation of citizens who are ALL of value and are listened to.

People don't expect financial equality...

But they'll demand respect and want to be treated fairly.

Politicians have done a lousy job of presenting ideas... and so have depended on promising fantasies and citizens have indulged them.

You may not have noticed, but most people believe in private property and want to see hard work and initiative rewarded.

And at the same time they believe large corporations & powerful, distant organizations are taking away their freedoms and the individual is losing his place and dignity in our polity.

Finding the way to resolve this seeming conflict is the way back for both liberals AND conservatives... or more factually... the way beyond the limitations of both.

Champion the individual who feels helpless and sees those large entities as something eroding his place in the world.

The way back for Representative Government is to revitalize the citizen's power and the role of citizenship.

Make citizenship count for something other than consumerism. Give the citizen a bit of responsibility for his own governance and become the champions of ending gerrymandering, election-law injustices, the revolving-door and other devices interfering with the citizen's role. These may have seemed to benefit short-term goals. But at a long-term cost.

I have a few ideas along these lines.

Capability ENABLES Responsibility!

Prototype & Faq http://www.Chagora.com/faq.aspx

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CHAGORA ASSUMPTIONS

1. POLITICAL MICRODONATION (Cause/ Candidate contribution under $1 alone or in concert with others) has very Powerful and Unrecognized Potential IF it can be made easy enough for the DONOR to give AND financially feasible for the RECIPIENT to receive.

2. This CATALYZES Donor usage of this account for ALL CONTRIBUTION in both the POLITICAL AND CHARITY sectors for reasons of convenience, unified accounting and additional benefits and functionality it uniquely enables.

3. Eventually also drawing All potential Recipients and 3rd party sponsors and advertisers to platform(s) hosting or with access to Users with such SPECIALIZED ACCOUNTS. (Even Users with no interest in politics at all!)

Political MicroDonation required an enabling mechanism. And it’s also the hook. The fish is a significant portion of the multi-billion dollar Charity and Cause/Campaign services industry and as a huge Advertising and Media magnet.

This Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account (also called a P.U.D Account: Pooled/User-determined) with accounting and reporting makes previously non-viable and therefore non-existent transactions feasible and FUN.

Further, the account, once established persists whether funded or not and has functions related to social networking for civic and other purposes. Chagora takes no part of the transaction between the donor and recipient. For both sides it’s financially equivalent to giving directly through the recipient’s website.

(Some questions to think about: Why will this structure first draw lesser-known candidates, causes & charities? And why will this then force the larger players to become the biggest supporters?)

The Monetization
Advertising, Charity/corporate sponsorship opportunities, accounting services, supplementary promotional services, third-party affiliations, media fees, etc.

• For 2005, there were almost 48 million itemized returns with average cash charitable contributions of over $2,800 and 87 million nonitemized returns with average cash charitable contribution of over $200.*

• There are approximately 20,000 new non-profits created every year, many temporary.*

• Charity Services, Campaign/Cause Services and Corporate-Charity Sponsorships are each individually multi-billion dollar opportunities. As are those temporary and smaller nonprofits in particular.

• The Donor/User Account Portal is attractive for advertisers whether at the Chagora website or the website where a Chagora widget is offered.

• There is very strong potential for natural monopoly with proper development and configuration. For that reason some form of public (not government) ownership may be best.

* From “The Nonprofit Almanac 2008” by Kennard T. Wing, Thomas H. Pollak, and Amy Blackwood, Urban Institute Press, Washington D.C.(ISBN 978-0-87766-736-0).

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Technology & Representation

Speech and Association - Fundamentals of a neutral Hub in a Developing Internet Landscape

The Role of Political MicroDonation and Electoral/Geographic Networking Facilitation

Prototype & FAQ: Chagora

From Iyal Sivan's "The Connective"

"The Connective refers to the global culture emerging as a result of the proliferation of information technology.

A connective refers to a distributed network made up of voluntary participants, organized around a specific interest or context, with each member seeking to achieve an individual goal.

To be connective is to be expressly designed or predisposed to take advantage of voluntary loose associations, or the resulting efficiencies, in order to gain personal value.


From Iqbal Quadir, founder of Grameenphone of Bangladesh:

"If concentration of power has contributed to poor governance, the solution must lie in dispersing power… ICTs empower from below while devolving power from above, resulting in a two-pronged attack on abuse of state power that has left so much of the world’s population languishing in poverty… ICTs can be the means to both freedom and development by blindsiding obstacles to both."

*ICT = Information & Communication Technology

Capability Enables Responsibility

A Citizen's responsibility in an area is directly proportional to his or her ability to have an effect. Without improvement in mechanisms of meaningful involvement, we will see a continued growth in apathy, frustration and ultimately a resort to less healthy forms of expression.

Tom Crowl

Structure & Function: An Online Public Square

The Internet is bursting with good causes charitable and political, but in many ways they're handicapped by being both scattered and thus lost to the vast majority... and at the same time a sort of echo chamber only engaging those already engaged!

This dispersal also forecloses other capabilities both desirable AND essential.

CHAGORA as briefly explained here is the key to resolving this dilemma by creating the essential Internet Public Square. This is catalyzed by three capabilities.

These three capabilities are discussed more fully below and elsewhere but briefly are:

• MicroDonation with unified accounting and reporting for both sides for charity and cause-based entities (any legal contribution from mere pennies to legal limits)
• Electoral/Geographic Networking Facilitators
• Related Live Elements

CHAGORA MUST be non-partisan, transparent, secure, trustworthy and EASILY available to all!

CHAGORA is not simply a nice idea.

Political MicroDonation is an essential element for re-balancing the civic marketplace.

See http://www.chagora.com/ for proof of concept, faq and further information.

America is much more than some clever structure to facilitate individual success.

America has a meaning.

While it has certainly been tarnished by its own actions both now and in the past, and been accused of sins for which it is not guilty; and those for which it is...

Behind it there are ideals which must survive for the sake of more than just us, but for the sake of the whole world.
Some of them are certainly:

No one person has a monopoly on truth.

Power must be dispersed.

Structures must contain checks and balances and self-correcting mechanisms.

Fundamental rights must be guaranteed to all.

Citizenship is both a privilege AND a responsibility.

Freedom can be transitory; it is not guaranteed but must be guarded.

Wisely!

I speak of America as an idea. An ideal. The reality has always fallen short. But there are things that can be done.

Chagora - The Underlying Theory

Why Chagora?

Political MicroDonation and Non-Partisan Electoral/Geographic Networking

The Chagora solution, as is often the case, came about by stumbling across the right question, not the right answer. The answer was easy.

In this case, finding a FIXABLE “why.”·

The FIXABLE “why” is: Why won’t the politicians listen?·

The FIXABLE “because” is: Because lines of true power are lost, blocked and/or impeded.

Examining both the conditions under which the Public Square originally arose and how those may be translated so as to now create a vital Online Public Square one comes to the conclusion that there are two requirements:

A. Viable “Money/Speech”

When the Supreme Court struck down certain legislative limitations on Campaign Finance Reform based on the concept that there is some equivalence between money and speech they are correct as regrettable as that may seem. Speech is very broad. It’s everything from a question, to a contribution… to a kick in the pants. And you know that where groups are smaller we find easier lines of communication between followers and leaders.

Political MicroDonation (under $1) refers to a potential for viable and frequent Money/Speech. It’s the capability to securely and near effortlessly contribute to legal candidates, causes (taxable to giver) and charities (tax free to giver) in ANY legal amount. In a sense so you can throw a quarter at a candidate as easily and painlessly as you could run into him or her on the street and give ‘em a piece of your mind when we lived in smaller communities.

This is a partial compensation for the loss of proximity which was essential in the development and sustainabiltiy of effective representative government.

The MicroDonation capability is an essential Proximity Substitute.

It's especially necessary for interest-group lobbying and for opening up opportunities for new candidates and ideas from the grassroots.

It's the Power of Small Money, Large Numbers & Immediate Feedback.
And it's a fundamental requirement for political speech in scaling representation!


B. Electoral/Geographic Networking Facilitators

We’re all getting fairly familiar with the whole new world of social networking! It’s a great thing… whether you’re a skateboarder, a musician, a religious follower or a nudist… you can find your group.Facilitating attractive and secure ways for you to connect with neighbors within each of the multiplicity of electoral districts to which you belong is essential for a viable Online Public Square.

It is also essential to provide tools to assist citizens, candidates and groups within local communities who can then sustain themselves with local support?
The self-government ethic, like charity, really DOES begin at home. And the breakdown on this level permeates up through the system. Effective local systems of opinion, power and motivation are REQUIREMENTS for good system operation on broader levels.

This is a compensation for the changes in scale which have limited effective citizen participation on the local level.

The Electoral/Geographic Social Networking Capability is an essential Localization Facilitator.

Prototype & FAQ Chagora
LinkedIn Civilization Systems LLC

Just 90 seconds both giving very basic idea of Chagora and hopefully drawing a mental link for you between the recognition by the Roosevelt Progressives of the importance of addressing "systems" and Chagora as carrying this idea forward to the developing internet "geography".

Building CHAGORA: A field of dreams? If we build it will they come?

Whether for a charity, candidate or cause, whether a donor OR recipient… Why would you choose CHAGORA? The answer for both of course is because… it’s a better way.

There are certain constituencies which do well when brought together on the internet; eBay united the guys wanting to hold a garage sale with those wanting to go to one. And it created features like PayPal to facilitate that unification.
What will bring donors and recipients to Chagora?

For Donors:

· One-time sign-up for persisting account with multiple uses whether funded or not

· The MicroDonation capability especially when operating within a Live event and/or with others in group action

· Employer Connection – option through your employer to contribute something each month to Chagora Account

· Employer ability to match your charitable contributions per any agreement

· Unified accounting providing a single statement for all your charitable and political contributions both taxable and non-taxable

· Localization capabilities providing additional opportunities to locate and support LOCAL entities now disempowered

· The attraction of associated corporate coupons, sales, offers etc. available

For Recipients:

· There are approximately 30,000 non-profits created in the U.S. every year. Many of them are temporary (e.g. a candidate or fund for a memorial) and/or Local. Much like the little guy holding a garage sale (eBay) they will be greatly attracted by a central place to conduct their business.

· Smaller parties, candidates and charities (whether local or not) will also be advantaged by being able to operate on a larger field at a lower cost.

· Opportunities for parties, candidates and charities in conjunction with Live MicroDonation Events.

· Corporate sponsorships and linkages with unique and varied options.· Better opportunities for locally oriented non-profits whether charity or political.

· It’s where the Donors are!

· Because of convenience, the ability to contribute in smaller amounts and its reach to those donors previously neglected, CHAGORA also results in more contributions overall both in numbers of contributors and total dollars.

The Synergies (No discussion of what builds Chagora can be complete without some discussion of the synergies.) Here are a few things to remember:

· If a User opens an account to contribute for ANY reason, he will easily understand that it’s to his advantage to do his next from the same place. And then the next, and the next… for life!

· In all Live Events recipients and media provide free advertising for Chagora

· Smaller candidates, causes and charities will be the biggest initial supporters… and the larger will have no choice but to follow

· Media love scores, polls and feedback… The MicroDonation Live Debate is a huge media magnet during political seasons.

· Corporate sponsorships are free advertising for Chagora.

· While it's own developing and persisting User base quickly facilitates its Electoral/Geographic networking this is greatly enhanced by the adoption of Google's OpenSocial standards.

The internet as a new & evolving “Electric City"

Hugo and Nebula award-winning author William Gibson, coiner of the term “cyberspace”, has referred to the internet as being as important to human evolution as was the development of the city. He’s right! In fact, he may be understating the case.

A district whose careful development is crucial to not only the life of the city, but to the life of us all awaits construction. A scramble is already underway to find the special hooks that will catalyze the stable settlement of that district.
Because evolution whether biological, technological or cultural is about choice. And as systems evolve, as choices are made… some capabilities are enhanced, and others may be diminished… forever.

So we must take great care as we build this new “Electric City” that its structure and design serve us well since patterns developed here may persist for a great length of time… and so that we do not accidentally foreclose critically necessary capabilities.
I speak of perhaps the most vitally necessary corner of this new city: the Public Square.

What are its characteristics? What will drive its creation? What’s it worth?

CHAGORA - The basics

Chagora is a single online system offering donors and recipients for both Charity & Cause-based Non-Profits:

1) MicroDonation w/ Unified Accounting & Reporting

2) Electoral/Geographic Networking Facilitators and

3) Live Functions & Feedback


A little later I’ll define these catalysts more specifically.