Civilization Systems

Leveling The Transaction Landscape: Technology and the Campfire

2011-04-18T05:24:00.000-07:00

We can now share our voices, images, information and opinions... just about anywhere in the world; and retrieve the same from others at almost no cost. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at its roots is about reducing the cost... and broadening the availability... of human transaction.

ICT is really about the future catching up to the past... to a time when we could transact across the world we knew without a need for technical assistance.

In this post I'm going to discuss why transaction and networking costs on at least some if not all types of peer-to-peer financial transaction... and for transactions especially of very small size... also must be eliminated and how to do that.

To get to that I'm going to start with a little on the very earliest history of politics. Because the most heated transactions have always involved making decisions... and its here where I first saw the need for improvement in financial transaction technology as well as a solution.

While always contentious, politics used to be much simpler. That's not to say it's ever been a smooth process or always arrived at correct conclusions... but it was simpler in a technical sense.

What do I mean?

In a hunter-gatherer society there were no TV ads... no targeted spots... no corporate lobbyists. Getting your opinion across was person to person... and that could be with words, gestures or a spit across the campfire.

Our interactions were proximate and the weight of opinion could be easily felt. And that's because the landscape placed little burden on them. Both words and spit were cheap and available to all.

That changed when our societies got bigger than our voices could carry. All kinds of transactions, not just the political ones became more complicated... they needed technologies to assist them: Not just ATM's and ballot boxes... but laws, governments, and money itself are technologies! SCALE requires human designed constructions to assist in transaction.

Fundamentally altering the cost of transaction and/or the types of transactions that are practicable gets at the root of how a civilization operates. Yet we seldom think about those costs in any serious sense.

That'd been on my mind for a while. That cost of transaction...

Then it hit me!!!

I was watching a report in early '07 about some state law that had been passed... an obviously idiotic law in the general public's opinion which is what sparked the news story. The point of the story being how the relevant law maker had been gifted with $50,000 by a special interest to insert the provision into some bill.

What hit me was: I bet at least a half-million have heard that story and are as ticked off as I am... and if they could hit a button and send 25 cents to the opponent of that lawmaker or that law... we'd have a better system...

In other words, if the political transaction can be liquefied...unburdened of the cost and effort that prevent meaningful participation... if it was made as easy as giving the guy in the next hut a piece of your mind... we'd return to a better balance of opinion representation... which in time brings a better level of debate and better decisions.

Being able to add your opinion to the mix... is a fundamental. No kidding...

So I invented a way to do it. What are the needed requirements to be fulfilled?

The Pooled User-determined Account

No Landscape cost on transaction: i.e. no added transaction costs; unlike a general utility PayPal or dedicated systems like Facebook credits monetization doesn't rely on the transaction
Micro-transaction must be viable: scaling a healthy political culture requires both reducing the burden and increasing the frequency of participation
One-button transaction capability: purpose is defeated if participation requires anything much more than... literally spitting across the campfire. And ya gotta be able to spit securely...

The Mechanics:

(While this was originally designed to address the meta-political problem of a seriously un-level playing field, as it turns out this is also a method and model for a General Utility Internet Wallet which can out-compete any existing model while enabling needed transactions now impracticable thereby both funding and empowering the development and implementation of further capabilities including but not limited to a more resilient Commons and more enabled individual within it. (Like PayPal but cheaper and capable of more things.)

For the geeky amongst you: The Patent issued 01/11/11

And for the rest... A Walkthrough (a charity here example but could be for anything):

A first simple and obvious requirement is that it must be a financially equivalent transaction for the payer and payee whether the transaction is via this system (let’s call it Chagora for now at least) or if you went directly to the recipient’s website…

Donor wants to give $20 to Red Cross…

User can got to Red Cross website, whip out his Visa and give $20… Red Cross pays transaction fee to Visa and Red Cross gets, I don’t know … $19.50 or something… doesn’t matter.

User goes to Chagora… puts in $20… Chagora pays Visa transaction fee… Chagora transfers $20 to Red Cross and recoups the fee for a $20 Visa charge from Red Cross. Equivalence…

Okay, let's try something different with that $20 you put in this dedicated account...

You get an email to “Join the rest of us here at Greenpeace (or whatever) click here and give 25 cents to repair our ship damaged by whatever…

So you click the button and give 25 cents… how would that work? And be secure?

The button links to your account… a 25 cent PLEDGE is made (importantly not an immediate transfer) is recorded to Greenpeace…
You, either immediately or on a pre-determined (by user) periodic basis receive an request for email, IM, or similar confirmation for that pledge alone or a list of pledges to confirm or deny individually.

Okay, now what happens to those transaction charges? (remember it came out of an original $20 deposit whose transaction charges were paid by Chagora) …

Back to explaining the P.U.D. Account mechanism:

When you put money into your Chagora account your money goes into one or more POOLS… but your information and decisions regarding its distribution remain with YOU!

So when you designate that 25 cents to Greenpeace… (to make the example simple)

It’s combined with other pledges to Greenpeace to reach $20… Greenpeace pays the charge on a transfer equivalent to $20…

Its a little more complicated in actuality but that’s what is essentially accomplished.

In essence money and Information go on separate tracks when you make a deposit in your account. When a User deposits money in his/her account certain rights are lost and certain rights are retained.

For example… let’s take that $20… When you put that $20 into the account you can’t take it back out… You no longer ‘own’ it… but (and this is the critical element) you retain CONTROL over its distribution… down to the penny… (some kinds of trusts work like this… but this is for everybody).

Of course, then the obvious question is… okay… NICE… but aren’t there going to be some costs incurred by Chagora that have to be covered somehow?

Yes! Of Course… In fact, monetization outside the transaction is essential... and not as difficult as one might think... especially if ultimately a User-owned and controlled Utility. (note: legitimate investment is desired and profit should be expected... I want this built right and not on a shoestring... but only with investor agreement for eventual buy-out by its own User-base. Anyway that's my vision... open to suggestions... I'm just skeptical in all honesty of kumbayah entrepreneurship.)

See Chagora Assumptions for a bit more on monetization. This post focuses on the mechanics.

And finally why I believe this is a needed and fundamental technology:

The Universally-owned Transaction Landscape is a needed check and balance on other organized forces.

(Such a network may also provide home for certain information which can remain under the control of the User alone rather than under government or corporate control.)

Finding Roots in a Shifting Landscape: Facebook and the Future of Social Networks

2011-01-20T16:01:00.000-08:00

Facebook is dominating the social network space (at least in the West)... and it certainly helps its users in staying 'connected' with their Dunbar's Number-sized network... and to reach beyond, expand and re-configure that network with a variety of additional connections of differing strengths and persistence.

But I'd hesitate to say its dominance is permanently secure.

Certain 'inventions' will inevitably arise given the development of the landscape that makes them possible. They are emergent properties of the new landscape. Seen in this light the literally revolutionary capabilities we see arising are general properties of this new landscape rather than particular to Facebook.

Peer-to-peer networking is going on all over the web... from Twitter to LinkedIn to Yahoo groups and You Tube... and the mobile web, camera ubiquity and the obliteration of distance are already out of the wings and on-stage.

However, like with online search before, once a tipover point is reached in some functions concentration becomes self-reinforcing and difficult to shift. Alta-vista may have been first in that field... but Google's holding the prize.

So it is with Facebook post MySpace. A tipover point may have been reached... But I wouldn't count on it.

Its future may be aborted after achieving wide penetration but only marginal utility. There is nothing other than inertia (all my friends are here)... and a few games I understand are popular with some to keep their numbers up. While its general peer-to-peer capabilities are here to stay... Facebook has no lock on them.

Because while Facebook is leading the pack, it doesn't address the requirements for deep peer-to-peer association in any substantial way. It doesn't understand their ancient roots in proximity and capability.

(As I write this edit... Egypt is experiencing its remarkable revolution... and Facebook, Twitter, and social media generally are critical players... and deserve the credit! I'd only contend that the more general capabilities of these peer-to-peer networks still lack the necessary tools for moving from catalyzation of a broad reaction to the more granular forms of association and organization necessary for guiding longterm solutions. In other words, while ICT is finally awakening people to capabilities they didn't know they had... it needs to do more about assisting in... what happens then. To use a phrase I heard Fareed Zakaria use when referring to the jubilant crowds in Tahir Square... they will still require meaningful 'platforms of power'...)

I'd contend that the missing root has to do with hosting and assisting co-operative transactions involving Commons-oriented interests (admittedly a sometimes imprecisely defined space).

Facebook and other such sites are trying to bridge a longstanding gap as ICT quickly goes global. In evolutionary terms its essentially instantaneous:

There is a FUNDAMENTAL SCALING ISSUE IN HUMAN SOCIETIES associated with NATURAL HUMAN COMMUNITY SIZE (Dunbar’s Number), THE ALTRUISM PROBLEM* (there’s a problematic discontinuity between biological and intellectual altruism) AND COGNITIVE LIMITS (the attention economy).

*Social Networks & The Social Organism: Healing the Breach

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEB IS THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN PEER-TO-PEER RELATIONSHIP SINCE THE MOVE TO SETTLED EXISTENCE!

The birth of agriculture brought about fundamental changes in the requirements for transaction. These requirements arose with scale... and coincided with the birth of currencies and finance as necessary transactional technologies.

That was a CRITICAL change in the nature of transaction.

Within a hunter-gatherer group ALL inter-personal transactions were in:

Politics - the exchange of ideas for individual and group decision to enhance the survivability of that group and any allies.

News/Journalism/Information - the exchange of information so as to improve individual and group decision to enhance the survivability of that group and any allies.

Charity - the exchange of collective 'wealth' within the group for achievement of better social balance... and again... to enhance the survivability of that group and any allies.

Aesthetics - the exchange of 'creative forms' to enhance a non-material based sense of well-being or accomplishment and... to enhance the survivability of that group and any allies.

While there was inter-group barter pre-money... It was only with the move to settled existence that the commercial transaction and its attendant technologies (finance, banking, law, etc.) arose.

I believe there is a value and maybe even a necessity to facilitate and unburden these Commons-focussed transactions... and the peer-to-peer co-ordination of them. And I believe properly developed... it establishes a very stable and very useful network with collateral benefits.

The model...

The Commons-dedicated Account Network:

A self-supporting , Commons-owned neutral network of accounts for political, charitable and speech related monetary participation... which in order to properly network and scale individual capability must allow a viable, one-button, secure and financially unburdened micro-transaction. Such a network ideally should maintain its own cloud and bank. Accounts may be created and/or maintained with zero balances and/or only momentary balances during a pass-through transfer (monetization model requires no burden on the actual transaction.)

A simple but functional demo at http://www.Chagora.com
Patent #7,870,067 granted by USPTO 01/11/'11

(Essentially like Facebook credits except for Commons-oriented functions instead of games, etc. as well as very importantly not adding to the transaction costs)

On The one-button secure transaction: a method for enabling a simple mobile or other web-based secure transaction suggested by David Brin in his book The Transparent Society whereby a simple input (whether a click, swipe, or bar-code scan, etc.) constitutes essentially a pledge rather than a call for an immediate movement of funds... and that confirmation can come later via (e.g.) an email that perhaps collates multiple pledges for acceptance or rejection. (He suggests a reputation system for handling issues of a user's pledge reliability.) Further, since payment comes from a dedicated account holding limited funds and w/o access to user's general accounts... risks and liabilities are significantly reduced.

On final ownership... and for needed positive cultural feedback potentials... a modest proposal:

For this network to operate as a For Profit enterprise ultimately under what I hypothesize as a sort of Universal ownership.

Universal ownership:* (Admittedly an idea in flux but perhaps not entirely impracticable): one share per living human... non-transferable... expires with death... profits to be distributed NOT EQUALLY... but rather as a drawing right to food, shelter and basic healthcare for those lacking them. (Governance of such a structure or collection of interacting but similar structures becomes an interesting question.)

*Being a practically-oriented though neophyte entrepreneur, I understand both the need for investment and a generous return on that investment. I believe these can be accommodated.

P.S. Seeking co-founder and associates if any interested... I don't know jack about startups... and hate organizing crap... I know ideas don't matter but they keep me busy... and I like this one!

P.P.S. While essentially a simple financial innovation... To see how it may relate to privacy and Online ID see the following article by Nancy Scola at TechPresident and my comment:
What's to Actually Like About "Obama's Online ID"? CDT's Aaron Brauer-Rieke Explains...

Re-Igniting The Enlightenment: On Building Landscapes for Decision

2010-12-12T06:39:00.000-08:00

from NPR online In Politics, Sometimes the Facts Don't Matter
”New research suggests that misinformed people rarely change their minds when presented with the facts — and often become even more attached to their beliefs. The finding raises questions about a key principle of a strong democracy: that a well-informed electorate is best.”

So how do you build a capable electorate? Should we care? Maybe we should just leave government to experts?

These are issues I've given some thought to. (Though, regarding the quote above and assuming the first assertion's truth in many or even most cases, I don't see how that suggests that anything OTHER than a well-informed electorate would be best.)

The real question is how fixed or variable that first assertion of rarely IS given different cultural environments...

And if certain cultural environments promote a more questioning and reasoned approach to decision making than others... that environment must be considered 'healthier' and those qualities encouraged.

Authoritarianism could sadly be considered more efficient by some even well-intentioned powerful forces... I'd assert that the complexities and vulnerabilities of a highly complex civilization, its requirements for relatively open communication and information exchange, and the nature of the Ultimatum game make consensus INCREASINGLY imperative (and increasingly difficult to attain) as civilization and technology develop.

(This is also an argument for aiming towards a globe containing multiple independently resilient, while perhaps quite culturally diverse, economies rather than aiming towards excessive global interdependence.)

Lawrence Harrison has a couple of books ( The Central Liberal Truth and Culture Matters ) filled with essays that address issues regarding the relationship between environment, technology, governance and values... and the success or failure of a civilization as well as the capabilities of the individuals that make it up.

I make no assumption that my own endeavor (A For-Profit, Commons-owned, Commons-dedicated Account Network for political and charitable contribution initially catalyzed by a micro-transaction capability) should it become broadly employed immediately yields suddenly all-wise citizens and assured 'crowd wisdom'... however the real sense of meaningful participation it can offer, its facilitation of an increased frequency of participation (importantly especially at the neglected local level) and its allowance for a granularity of opinion I believe are key elements in learning the skills of political decision needed for good citizenship.

And, of course, the network itself then offer potentials that go well beyond the formally political and extend to everything from funding journalism to organizing neighborhood gardens.

I also assert that a unique Commons-ownership structure not only lays the groundwork for an effective counter-force to excessively powerful private concentrations...

But does it in an essentially 'neutral' or 'apolitical' way... in other words the counterforce arises out of the very 'structure' of the landscape thereby created... rather than by any particular political position of this network... EXCEPT for an expressly laid out adherence to Enlightenment principles which must be rigorously attended to in its Terms of Service and design for governance. (Especially for what is envisioned as a universally-owned, trans-border network.)

Is this a demand for imposed monopoly for such a network? NO! First because its unnecessary, this network can and will grow on an opt-in, voluntary basis. While I'm convinced its an area which will tend towards natural concentration, I also believe that neutrality and Commons-ownership are essential for best capability and preservation of its independence... as well as providing impetus for its catalyzation and stability.

I also believe this provides an opportunity for 'distributed resilience' outside of the control of any single possibly threatening authoritarian opposition... It's quite possible such a network can build and support it's own cloud as well as its own distributed network of account depositories. Further it may be possible to construct such network so that it literally would be unable for any single or central element within it to censor the speech and association of its membership. But fairly, it must be recognized that these are difficult issues without easy answers.

Finally I'd suggest the belief in the lack of any meaningful participatory capability is a central element in the growing cynicism and distrust of large institutions generally.

Capability ENABLES Responsibility

Nothing here is set in stone. But I believe this is a vitally important public landscape which I'm rather consciously trying to catalyze. I invite all inquiries and welcome any opportunities to speak on this or related issues. Forgive this assumption... but I believe it would be worthwhile for this concept to get a bit of air.

Governance is everybody's job. Take the leap!

Why Politics MUST be Localized

2010-10-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

"All politics is local"

This is as true today as when Tip O'Neil uttered the phase... and as it's been from our beginnings.

But the speaker and the context were focused on the strategies engaging the politician and the campaign... NOT on the problems facing the citizen in becoming a meaningful participant in civil governance.

Changes in culture and technology from the growth of suburbs to the nature of work and the structure of finance have by themselves tended to fracture local communities and concentrate power, wealth and status.

At the same time the actions of our political parties have abetted this disconnection of our citizens from their government (and visa-versa). Whether the issue is gerrymandering, revolving-door opportunism, state election laws, the structure of candidate debates... or the FEC duopoly...

Politicians favor a closed and comfortable status quo. These problems have been going on for decades... all politicians are against gerrymandering yet somehow it continues... all politicians lament the problems of money in politics and yet the problems expand... all rail against the incredible expense of candidacy yet ignore simple solutions...

The pernicious effects of the slow degradation of a citizen's ability to participate have expanded while the public has become numb and alarmingly passive about the degradation of the common man's role in civic life.

This has given us disastrous governance and an out-of-touch groupthink within a political/economic elite that has come to increasingly favor those with whom they are closest... and upon whom they are most dependent... large contributors and their interests... Large contributors that set the boundaries of debate and set the bar for candidacy.

Here's a simple fact: The Political class WILL NEVER address these meta*-political issues

*Issues concerning processes and mechanisms of governance (how the plane is designed rather than where it's going)

Nancy Scola asks in a brief TechPresident piece: Can Online Politics be Local?

Not to be too cute... but ultimately... It damn well better be!

What would-be nation-builders have difficulty understanding is that representative government requires a culture of civic awareness and participation, a civic ethos... and for the long term... a culture of skepticism that shuns fixed ideologies and political appeals to lizard-brain impulses.

For a capable electorate you need a political environment that sustains and encourages thought and debate... and that has to build from the ground up... with everyday experience... repeated frequently.

From Julian Zelizer (a professor of public affairs and history at Princeton in a brief article Facebook politics is fleeting )

"What makes Facebook politics vulnerable is that it lacks the local element that has always been so crucial to politics... The most durable forms of political organization have usually depended on local organizing... Facebook politics seems different. National conversations are as powerful, if not more powerful, than local networks. The experience of being in such a movement is often virtual, requiring nothing but a few clicks on a keyboard."

Peer-to-peer interaction is the very foundation of politics and stretches back at least to the neolithic...

"Hey, Aga! Ooga says we should go east to hunt. I think that's a bad idea... we should go talk to him and see about going west!"

Very, very locally based politics... face-to-face politics.

An everyday experience... politics repeated frequently.

We lost the capability for that kind of immediacy with the rise of organized agriculture. Representational forms of government are all attempts to address this loss of proximity which arose with scale.(see The Foundations of Authoritarianism )

Sadly, we have a much LESS sophisticated electorate than what is possible. And our politics are slowly breaking down those cultural characteristics so essential for a healthy social contract. Lizard-brain emotionalism and simplification are thriving. Many are quite satisfied with that situation. It doesn't require conspiracy by leadership... only group dynamics and the neglect of the "altruism scaling problem" (essentially the biological basis of cronyism)... a problem who's solution does NOT require teaching people to be nicer (though that may be a result)... but rather requires the empowerment of horizontal networks via facilitation of meaningful peer-to-peer empowered association. (That's not all it requires but its a vital element.)

Is a vote for someone you don't know... on a list put together by forces you have no meaningful control over... backed by interests that may not be your own... by means intentionally discouraging careful thought... democracy? Does it build or even seek to access crowd wisdom?

We could all live in plexiglass boxes and have a couple of buttons put in front of us every few years representing whether we want blue or red leadership and we could call that a representative form of government.

The Enlightenment is not some automatic certainty from now till doomsday. Its a fragile and 'skeptical' cultural perspective that's always had to face opposition from interests that find simplification and irrationality to be forces more easily aroused. The lizard brain approach works and is ultimately very, very dangerous! No matter how 'righteous' the causes a leadership coterie believes itself to hold.

I'm suggesting that the Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account* is a fundamental component necessary for citizen engagement now made possible by the rise of global ICT and the web. (And while I'm discussing it here in the U.S. context I believe it has global utility that's equally vital especially in this period of rapid global cultural transition.)

*A self-supporting , Commons-owned neutral network of accounts for both political and charitable monetary contribution... which for fundamental reasons of scale must allow a viable micro-transaction (think x-box points for action in the Commons). The resultant network catalyzes additional functionality for co-ordination of other 'social energy' utilization. (If desired, It's also the most neutral and ultimately politically viable method for the public finance of elections.)

This is essentially a libertarian structure... however by establishing it as "Commons-owned" it acquires unique characteristics which allow it (in total) to operate as a counterbalance quite literally protecting the Commons from excessive concentrated control.

This capability only needs to be offered for it to be utilized and for the network to grow, though there are various bootstrapping strategies which, I believe can substantially hasten the process.

The utility of the micro-transaction in citizen-organized lobbying via such a platform even if used only occasionally by some and never by others... eventually drives development of a stable base with great attraction for ALL potential donors and recipients.

Since such an account network has attractive utility for the user even when unfunded... or only occasionally funded for immediate dispersal... And offers multiple opportunities for the recipient side to expand reach... as well as the nature of the network's ownership and governance...
(Note: for a better understanding of the mechanism and simple demonstration see the demo and faq)

It leads to an unusually stable user-base.

This then presents the potential for direct peer-to-peer co-ordination for political, and geographically localized political and civic co-ordination.

Intra-network systems of peer-to-peer communication can be structured along the lines of dating web sites offering means of graduated levels of anonymity encouraging the building of online local political relationships that can then more easily become face-to-face trust relationships... even amongst those with differing opinions... a key goal.

Further an account holder's pages can be geared to various levels of electoral/geographic scale, each with its own focus depending on the user's designations and degree of desired anonymity.

And while this has value globally as well... it's in neighborhoods that we will begin to see potentials for new leaders to arise and a vitalization of repressed desires for participation. Capability ENABLES Responsibility! Our future depends on engaged citizens... and without consensus on a fundamental fairness to the system and potential for participation... a vacuum forms which fills with cynicism.

It's easier to find a group of people interested in purple skateboards on Facebook (or MySpace, etc.) than it is to connect with people on the next block.

Localization MUST be facilitated for the individual to fulfill his or her role in the Commons.

Here's an ad-hoc hypothesis... A viable and sustainable global civilization MUST be built in harmony with the individual AND social drives out of which we came. Human nature may change over millenia but not within election cycles.

We can encourage the development of the sort of personal neighborhood associations on which thoughtful decision-making depend.

I'd hate to think... that since the political parties prefer the current system... and that concentrated interests fear loss of influence... or that because corporations naturally don't support potentially competing 'Commons-owned' enterprises... that the Commons has no constituency representing it!

[This is related to why being (quite literally) owned by humanity as a whole is such a vital element... and makes this a vital seed structure for political/cultural evolution... perhaps that's hubris but I think it just might be true and is worth at least a moment's consideration.]

Its not enough... and its the wrong focus... to place all the emphasis on how to more cleverly empower candidates and parties to analyze, influence and carve-up voters with lizard-brain approaches... the top down approach to political influence...

It's time to work from the bottom-up... to empower citizens and communities! The Internet is a landscape. Our evolution will be shaped by it for good or ill.

Call me an Adam Smith Progressive.

Let's build this already! Unlike obvious problems like gerrymandering and so many other areas in need of electoral reform... this one doesn't need to wait for the agreement of politicians and concentrated interests. Let's call it a respectful end run around the blockage in our political arteries.

Empowering the Commons: The Dedicated Account (Part I)

2010-08-28T11:01:00.000-07:00

The ability to harvest very small contributions from very large numbers easily and painlessly is vital for achieving any semblance of a level playing field for an empowered citizenry whose influence is handicapped by entrenched forces of concentration.

What is the Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account?

Its a self-supporting , Commons-owned neutral system of accounts for both political and charitable monetary contribution... which for fundamental reasons of scale must allow a viable micro-transaction (think x-box points for action in the Commons). The resultant network catalyzes additional functionality for co-ordination of other social energy* utilization. (If desired, It's also the most neutral and ultimately politically viable method for the public finance of elections.)

In other words its pretty much just what the name says.

It's an account belonging to an individual whose proceeds can only be used for Commons-related expenditures. Operationally at this point that comes down to causes, candidates and charities. It's not really much different than X-box points for the same-named game system. But instead of $19.95 for 1600 points... here its more like $20 for 2000 pennies...

Instead of a system with points for games and entertainment, making very inexpensive purchases through a Microsoft dedicated platform viable...e.g. 40 points (about 50 cents) for some Avatar outfit (nothing wrong with that if that's what you're into)...

Its a system facilitating pennies for politics and charity (and all other legal contributions as well) making the scaling of very small contributions through a Commons-dedicated platform viable...

In this case... e.g. $20 would get you $20 worth of contribution capability... Transaction costs are passed through without any add-on... just as if you'd gone directly to the recipients website... (monetization is from other sources which will be covered in Part II)

Why is that important? If I want to give $20 to something why should I need or want some special account?

If that's all you want to do... and all this system had to offer... frankly, you'd be right. But this system offers much, much more. While it may not be apparent at first... perhaps the most important thing it can do is make a viable micro-contribution possible in the political area... especially for citizen lobbying and the development of grassroots leadership.

Not only will you be able to give $20... or $200... or even $2,000... but you'll be able to give 20 cents!!!!

HUH??? That's supposed to be a big deal? Actually its a much bigger deal than may be apparent at first.

It will begin to allow meaningful competition in the political landscape.

Especially when combined with capabilities for electoral/geographic networking (as well for networking along other lines) by account holders and those wishing to harness the shared Commons-oriented interests of those account holders. (more on this in Part II)

And even more so when the account connects to Commons-related functionalities beginning at the local level that are of great use even when the account is unfunded (many can and will deposit say $20 and immediately pass it on to one or more recipients... and unlike X-box an account can be opened without any deposit at all).

Which then becomes a stable platform for the next time you want to contribute... and hence forms a very stable User base.

It becomes your home for contribution and community interests. And this has great appeal for potential recipients... including the approximately 20,000 non-profits created every year... many temporary... and all needing gateways, pay systems, accounting services, etc.

Let's see why a 20 cent contribution might be appealing to someone to either make, receive or co-ordinate. Here's an example...

In 2007 and 2008, the insurance industry contributed a record $46.7 million to federal parties and candidates.
( Open Secrets)

Whoa Nelly! No wonder we're up the creek! That's a lot of money! That's almost 20 cents per year per registered voter. Let me repeat that... 20 cents per year per registered voter!!!

Which means that if over the course of a year you could somehow motivate a citizen to cough up 20 cents you could outdo the insurance industry! (In truth there are other 'contributions' that are made indirectly via revolving doors and shared social circles... and there are many other industries lobbying... but the point stands. There's power in very small money from large numbers if it can be harnessed.)

The truth is... as hot as people are... most people NEVER give to a cause, campaign or candidate... But most DO make a contribution to a charity... In fact by the hundred$ of billion$ they do.

SO... if you can provide a stable and secure account home... and if you can supplement it with an attractive set of useful capabilities via associated web-based features... such that a User feels comfortable using that vehicle for contribution generally as well as other purposes related to community from the local to global level...

You're going to vastly increase the number participating in the political marketplace... completely alter the dynamics and targets of political fundraising... and (believe it or not) most likely ultimately reduce overall expenditures because of collateral capabilities such a network and platform can offer.

In Part II, I'll lay out some details of what I believe to be some of that significant additional functionality, how it can be bootstrapped more easily than may be apparent... how it can be monetized (some of that should be becoming apparent... but note: it doesn't add to or draw from the transaction between the donor and recipient)...

And in Part III some long term potentials globally (as well as risks) and the theoretical underpinnings which I believe are important for the evolution of civilization.

For some of that theory stuff see:
On Creating Communities

Money and the Machinery of Representation

Decision Technologies: Currencies and the Social Contract

Can't say as it'll fix everything... but someone's gotta do something.

*Social Energy: Individual and collective decisions operating within the limits of available resources and natural law which result (quite literally) in the product you see as a civilization. A decision here is defined as an idea + an action. Decisions can be motivated by any number of factors. Technologies result from previous decisions thus becoming available resources. And decision here is defined broadly… everything from “Let’s build a pyramid for the pharoah!” to “I’ve got a headache I think I’ll lie down.”

All we see that is a civilization can be most fundamentally defined as a product of decisions: ideas + actions.
If you think about it you’ll realize that all you see made by mankind can be nothing else.

“Money” in this context then can be seen as an inherently imperfect allocator of this ‘social energy’…
It can be seen as a store of ‘decision right’s'… and its out-of-whack.

This post is at the request of the P2P Foundation (The Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives) whose principles and goals I very much support.

Quantum Politics: Crazy speculations on the Physics of Decision

2010-08-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

online.physics.uiuc.edu

I hope you'll forgive this brief interlude for wild speculation... there's no theory here... no conclusions... just letting the imagination roam.

The other day from the physics arXiv blog:

Quantum Entanglement Can Be A Measure Of Free Will, Say Physicists

Which briefly argues that the spooky action at a distance of quantum entanglement proves the existence of free will. At least if we assume that quantum physics has validity.

I've have had a strong belief that this was the case for quite a while. If one wants to look for "God in the Machine" that's some food for thought! Though the way I look at it... what it really means is...

It's ALL UP TO US!

The future of this planet... as well as whether consciousness will expand in the universe generally... Is up to consciousness itself. But there are many consciousnesses here? So then it's vital that collective decision systems operate well... and further that the decisions and actions of individuals and groups support good, critical thinking.

Politics is the field where significant group decisions are made and implemented.

Meta-politics refers to the mechanisms and systems by which collective decisions are made and implemented.

Constitutions, election laws, voter rights, campaign finance... etc. are ALL "meta-political" issues.

There will be no meaningful progress in political decision until meta-political problems are addressed.

It doesn't matter WHO you elect if other faulty mechanisms foreclose the possibility of good decisions being made and implemented.

I believe we may well be in just that sort of position.

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."

And then today arXiv has a piece... which prompted me to finally post this crazy speculation... I have good company... eccentric company... but company not completely off the reservation...

Fine Structure Constant Varies With Direction in Space, Says New Data

Very speculative... (but that's the food for imagination)... and if data over time confirms this, it has interesing implications for the Anthropic principal regarding the delicate balance of constants necessary for the evolution of life.

If constants aren't constant... (that is they vary over time and/or space)...

Isn't it interesting to speculate whether life... and especially consciousness itself...

May influence the value of certain constants?

Decisions... decisions...

are at the root of existence.

To be or not to be?
Is this the question the universe asks itself?

Political Fundraising: Act Blue, Facebook and the Missing Network Imperative

2010-08-19T06:59:00.000-07:00

On TechPresident in a brief piece by Nancy Scola yesterday I learned that Act Blue Friends Facebook with New Donate Tab

Act Blue is doing its marketing in new ways for new technologies. And I suspect the other party will soon follow with similar buttons. I can scarcely fault them for it... and then others presumably will follow as well.

More opportunities for political involvement. That's a good thing.

So this isn't a criticism... they support many things I also support. But I want to point out an important distinction between Facebook's network nature and the nature of an Act Blue or eventual Go Red network.

I believe this distinction is important for the future of the individual's relationship to the Web in governance and the decision process for good representation.

Facebook's potential membership is intentionally universal... not much different than an electrical grid... it's goal is to serve as a neutral network. (whether they or any other neutral, peer-to-peer network is good or successful at it is a different question... here I refer to the goal of ubiquity for the network.)

However this universal membership is granular in its opinions and interests... composed of autonomous individuals... associations are varied and ad hoc... they also will constantly evolve... and it contains a myriad of sub-groups of almost any type often not in agreement and/or scarcely related by geography, political party or any other criteria than sharing human DNA.

Sort of like planet Earth itself come to think of it!

It might be called a universally distributed network. It's social energy* comes in many flavors and from the complexity of myriads of individual world views.

*social energy: a civilization or any social organism is quite literally is a product of countless Decisions (Decision = an Idea + an Action) by individuals and groups operating within limits of physical reality. We then can see culture as an expression of net social energy. But 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.

An Act Blue (or hypothetical Go Red) network is self-selecting in its membership...

and dominated by its network hosts. This isn't necessarily bad. It's just different. Like a fan club on facebook is distinct from the whole network.

The importance of this should be of a concern for the citizen and democracy itself. It's not a concern for Act Blue or others similar.

Unless the user decides to have a great number of buttons on his page handy for those times when his opinion may cross the lines delineated by those damn buttons and the parties and hosts they represent...

This is going to accentuate a compartmentalization of his own opinion which may be of understandable attraction to a Party...

But works AGAINST the GRANULARITY of opinion... and furthermore, the encouragement of that granularity that representative government requires.

Our current system in not encouraging capable citizenship and fair representation of opinion and issue complexity. This has allowed 'issue-bundling' by parties which can forestall movement on issues, even with consensus for decades.

This is not optimal for crowd-sourcing conclusions and reaching consensus... in fact, it's disastrous.

The obvious solution then... for the best governance...

is that while Act Blue and others should certainly be free to continue their work.

A politically neutral utility accessing a politically diverse network for contributing to ANY legal cause or candidate is optimal for the best crowd-sourcing of decision.

That neutral network IS a universally distributed network.

What would be the characteristics of such a network?

The Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account

*A Self-supporting , Commons-owned neutral network of accounts for both political and charitable monetary contribution... which for very fundamental reasons of scale must allow a viable micro-transaction (think x-box points for action in the Commons). The resultant network catalyzes additional functionality for co-ordination of other 'social energy' utilization. (P.S. As an additional potential application...Its the most neutral and ultimately politically viable method for the public finance of elections.)

Extinction requires only inertia.

We've reached that critical point where...

Enlightened Evolution requires tools...

Carefully thought out tools.

Regarding the role of micro-contribution <$1: These, while perhaps never becoming dominate in gross amount... may serve a vital function in certain situations and as an attractant for more frequent participation... and especially for growth and stability of the User-base. This element and other specialized capabilities advantage this dedicated system over other generalized systems such as PayPal, credit cards, debit cards, etc. This system takes nothing from the contribution between the donor and recipient.

I believe its also a critical and logical response to the Citizens United decision.

Democracy is touted by all. But building a capable, politically informed and thoughtful citizenry isn't encouraged by the current incentive structures in the political system.

Sad to say, under those conditions ultimately NO party or candidate is able to fix anything... the problems are in the structure itself.

LinkedIn: Civilization Systems Llc

Democracy needs representation!

Thanks for listening.

Money and the Machinery of Representation

2010-07-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

Political fundraising...
as well as Congress, the Presidency, the Judiciary, political parties, the news media and many other institutions and practices, both formal and informal are the machines of representation by which we determine our course.

The history of ALL these mechanisms is brief. And none has ever operated perfectly here or elsewhere. For those that were formally designed the creation process was tumultuous with much debate. Most of the debate came down to a concern with:

balancing mechanisms for listening to the people while guarding against the rash, lizard-brain impulses that can turn a meeting into a mob...

while ensuring that the government itself should not become a threat to those whose consent is required for governance...

and all taking place within a context that achieves consensus NOT by universal agreement on any specific law or policy, which is a very rare event...

but a consensus that rests upon a common faith that the process was generally fair and that the intention was for the common good to the extent those representing us could determine.

This almost impossible task takes place within an ever-shifting landscape of physical conditions and cultural memes.

In more recent parlance we could say our decision-system-designers were striving to engineer dynamic structures so as to balance the stability needed for practical operation with those forces of creative disruption essential to address the shifting relationships of inter-twined feedback loops in any complex/chaotic social organism (A self-recognized and internally governed economic/political grouping organized for basic survival).

Money is also a decision technology.

While many attempts have been made to address the issue of money in politics, imbalances in influence have continued to grow with perverse results for our nation and the principles upon which it was founded.

I believe the following is an essential (but by itself likely insufficient) structure for addressing this imbalance:

A neutral mechanism for Commons oriented contribution incorporating citizen-focussed networking facilitation. And further that a viable capability for very small political contributions is a vital element of and catalyst for... participation and impact.

The Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account.*

*A Commons-owned neutral platform for both political and charitable monetary contribution... which for reasons of scale must allow a viable micro-transaction (think x-box points for action in the Commons). The resultant network catalyzes additional functionality for co-ordination of other 'social energy' utilization. (P.S. Its the most neutral and ultimately politically viable method for the public finance of elections.)

This simple piece of political-financial machinery is as much about restoring a sense of fairness as it is about whatever funds pass through it.

It's also about providing a mechanism for participation by a much greater number at a much higher frequency at all levels of governance... as well as a resource base for organizers seeking to tap the 'granularity' of political opinion that often crosses established political lines.

Perhaps ironically and paradoxically... I also believe it will ultimately result in a decrease in the influence of money in politics by catalyzing other reforms which will lessen its necessity.

The focus too often in political fundraising is on the politician and party. On what strategy will bear the most fruit... both in monetary terms and in eventual votes. On building political careers and embedding factions. The politician quite rationally understands that in the present environment he or she is going to need a lot of money to get elected... and will need the support of those who can provide it.

Healthy governance requires putting the focus on building citizens and the tools that make for good citizenship.

Too often the citizen is simply considered as a political consumer. A relatively uninformed and malleable commodity who can easily be manipulated by carefully crafted images and phrases.

And all too often this is true. The technologies of opinion manipulation are well developed and advancing daily. There's a lot of commercial interest behind it.

But we can hope that there are other technologies that can build a sense of informed responsibility. But these are technologies that have no constituency at present.

Commercial approaches to political advocacy are becoming very dangerous. To the extent they are successful in the short run... they become disastrous over time. They've bred cynicism and distrust. They've bred contempt for politics and politicians and the institutions through which they operate... (and more contempt for corporations than is generally recognized).

And ultimately they will breed contempt for law and a search for alternative routes to a justice which was promised but withheld.

My goal here is that this neutral technology, this capability... must be at least offered. Not that it should be imposed or in place of any other method.

Perhaps it won't be used. Well, fair enough... at least we can say then it was tried. But I think it will be used. And I believe I can make a case for why.

[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 (especially its limits and actual operational effects), Dunbar's number (a hypothetical natural human community size), proximity and... 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.]

Personal Democracy: Disruption as an Enlightenment Essential

LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/culturalengineer

Decision Technologies: Currencies and the Social Contract

2010-07-07T08:39:00.000-07:00

The contention of this brief post is a simple one: That at root all currencies are political and inherently imperfect technologies for representation of social energy. And that a viable social contract and a viable currency are both dependent on a very difficult to define, but critical metric: the fairness consensus.

All that you see as a civilization is a product of individual and collective decisions in an intricate complex/chaotic dance operating within the constraints of natural law, resources and chance. ALL OF IT!

And the interplay of all those decisions... which really just comes down to a bunch of people doing whatever it is they do for whatever reasons they're doing it... I'll call social energy for the time being at least.

Social Energy: individual and collective decisions operating within the limits of available resources and natural law which (quite literally) result in the product you see as a civilization. A decision here is defined as an idea + an action. Decisions can be motivated by any number of factors. Technologies result from previous decisions thus becoming available resources. And decision here is defined broadly... everything from "Let's build a pyramid for the pharoah!" to "I've got a headache I think I'll lie down."

All we see that is a civilization can be most fundamentally defined as a product of decisions: ideas + actions.

Now let's talk about money... a decision technology!

i.e. Money transmits a decision from an individual that in turn motivates one or more associated decisions (an idea + an action) to a another. (e.g. You get the idea go to work at a job in expectation of the receipt of a currency which acts to transfer the intention of the employer to the employee that that job should be done. And you, in turn use that currency to impel ‘decision’ in others.)

Interestingly... advertising in both its design and means of transmittal and torture techniques and devices are also decision technologies.

There's an ongoing debate between the 'hard money' side (gold, commodity-based systems, etc.) vs 'fiat' systems (sovereign issuance of currency directly and/or the creation of debt through Central Banks or similar systems...)

But NEITHER can do any more than seek to direct a significant part (but not all) of the social energy of the society with which it's associated.

The total available social energy within any society has a physical limit. But within that limit it may be highly variable... and money is not capable of handling all those variables alone... contrary to what many economists seem to think.

In other words, what a society actually IS arises as the product of available NET social energy over time: A sum of decision vectors never actually in complete harmony.

E.g. A nation in the midst of revolution has a whole LOT of energy... but very little net social energy until a new social contract can arise and begin to better align these decision vectors.*

*Food for thought: this doesn't suggest the opposite, that fully co-ordinated decision vectors are optimal... or that some 'brave new world' can eternally maximize social health, I'd suggest whatever health is possible can only be achieved in a state of criticality (a delicate balance between order and chaos). For a biological analogy see No Gene is an Island . It turns out that both too ordered and too chaotic response are dangerous for many living systems. In cells where we see an overly ordered immune response... its non-optimal because its too static, the system can’t respond to new challenges in its environment. While on the other hand, chaotic response balloons disturbances until they overrun the cell preventing the cell from keeping its interior suitable for the chemistry of life. It’s been hypothesized for a long time that living systems are critical... There's a Goldilocks zone at the threshold between order and chaos called criticality. We could call that a vibrant democracy in a social organism!

SO:

Both fiat and commodity-based monetary systems are bound up with this social energy variable as are all currency formulations... and limited by its condition. Money and finance are decision technologies...

Now given that the above way of viewing a social organism could have some value, it may have worth in some of the discussions taking place on our current global situation.

The health of a society has much more to do with the nature of the distribution of a currency: the how's and why's of that process as well as the degree of concentration than current theories seem to recognize.

BOTH fiat and hard money systems have inherent problems related to bias in their origins. And that's whether the bias arises accidentally, intentionally or even subconsciously... neither can ever provide a perfect pathway to perfect decisions and no currency ever will.

This suggests a need to re-assess the true definition of investment within a social body and especially mechanisms related to credit (and/or currency) creation and allocation. But that will have to wait for another time.

(Though here I'd suggest that the metastasizing of the financial sector is a result of the subjective bias inherent in the current Central Banking system... even if well-intentioned and with at least some of them believing it was for the greater good. The idea that the FED can be neutral is inherently false. Frankly, as it's now constituted it's biologically impossible. But hard money systems are subject to biases connected to accidental discoveries or crop failures, etc... and ALL of them are subject to being gamed when business and government team up in the effort.)

There is no perfect solution here that I see...

Other than to realize that constant attention to how currencies are distributed across the social body is critical... these are eternal political questions that inherently imperfect economic mechanisms may not be able to properly address. We are dealing with a complex-chaotic system not well suited to fixed approaches. There is NO final economic formula which will allow abdication of the need for constant tinkering.

Recognition of the import of net social energy, as difficult as it may be to measure, also clearly suggests that there is a limit to the degree of imbalance in both currency and political power distribution (related to concepts of justice... see: Ultimatum Game)...

Further, well-recognized network effects TEND TOWARDS INCREASING CONCENTRATION at whatever nodes attain early dominance within a persistant network This is not much different than galaxy formation, frankly.

Which suggests that some limit on wealth accumulation (tax progressivity, death taxes, etc.) are essential for a healthy social organism... see Aristotle for some very early background on this.

Politics AND Economics are Decision Technologies.

These technologies both have serious underlying problems. This essay deals with only one in particular.

Ending with a question, a hypothetical:

If in significant numbers people began to self-organize and say, form neighborhood farms... let's say they tore up their very un-ecological, water-wasting lawns...

and started gardens for vegetables, or even raising their own neighborhood chickens and fish...

Would that raise or lower the GDP? If so why? Does that suggest any re-thinking regarding the metrics used?

(And please... all you Left/Right fixated weenies... I'm talking neither commie-pinko-central-planning nor survivalist-militia-neo-anarchism... I'm just talking about expanding the potentials for facilitating creative entrepreneurship by re-building community capabilities on a local scale.)

Where are incentives driving civilization? What are they doing to that net social energy? How does the Commons fare?

I believe rational mechanisms for better decisions in both politics and economics are possible... though there seems little interest in seeking them by those currently steering our careening globalization train.

P.S. What happens when too much is in hands that most value the control of even MORE of these social energy tokens? [i.e. When greed (an often useful drive rooted in the survival instinct) becomes pathologically rewarded by the social body*.]

What happens is this... the Net energy drops precipitously... the social body suffers. Nothing is gained.

*and THIS problem... this tendency towards oligarchy and concentration... which has faced and will face every civilization... is rooted in another scaling problem: biological altruism and its connection to natural-human-community-size and the resultant isolation and distortion of decision mechanisms in hierarchical networks. For a brief illustration (in my humbleacious opinion) see my very brief essay Compensation and the Social Network .

Anyway, just an unemployed Commons-oriented entrepreneur making it up as he goes along. The current paradigms seem to be faltering.

Personal Democracy: Disruption as an Enlightenment Essential

2010-06-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

Change is inevitable.

Nations and civilizations are not exempt. And no political formula or philosophy can provide a perfect path through the ever twisting currents of that inevitability.

Humans are social creatures. We are individuals dependent on and members of... groups. There are no exceptions. Both the dedicated individualist and adamant collectivist are living a lie. Neither approach can shape a philosophy that is a workable guide to human action.

In times of social stress whether a gradual evolution or a radical revolution befalls a civilization will depend on a myriad of factors but all will in some way lead back to this:

Are its systems of decision able to keep up with changing circumstances?

In a piece the other day (Two Theories of Change) David Brooks briefly contrasted two sides of the Enlightenment:

One side exemplified by Thomas Paine... that by pure reason better forms can be envisioned and society should not be bound by some social inertia, but rather be ready to "sweep away arrangements that had stood the test of time"...

And the other by Edmund Burke who "believed in continual reform, but reform is not novelty. You don’t try to change the fundamental substance of an institution. You try to modify from within, keeping the good parts and adjusting the parts that aren’t working."

And Brooks concludes: "The Scots were right, and the French were wrong. And out of that truth grows a style of change, a style that emphasizes modesty, gradualism and balance."

Its hard to argue with a conclusion that modesty, gradualism and balance are preferable to guillotines and chaos.

But it's not philosophical preferences that will determine how change will occur when it becomes unavoidable... it's how well a nation or civilization adapts! It's directly tied to its decision mechanisms.

Paradoxically, it's the desire for stability that most assuredly leads to revolution. Success can breed its own destruction. And that's because success engenders stagnation... a cultural resistance to change, challenge or re-think structures and assumptions which may have once served a society well.

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
C. P. Snow

Living systems (like civilizations) are healthiest in a state of 'criticality', which is a delicate balance between a stagnant order vs. a chaotic collapse.

Democratic structures are intended as methods for encouraging continuous, peaceful revolution to maintain that delicate balance. They are mechanisms of intentional disruption. But these structures themselves need continual attention. Because inevitably there develop entrenched interests favoring a status-quo who will game whatever system is in place. Entrenched interests are not inherently bad... or rather the interest may not be bad, but the entrenchment is.

The stagnation in Western democracies, their increasing inertia and stratification, the loss of civic cohesion and a growing fear of a homogenized globalism dominated by an entrenched corporate and financial elites... are all products of a long-continuing erosion of capability for those essential but uncomfortable disruptive forces that truly representative decision systems facilitate.

In simplest terms, as I stated in a post almost two years ago:

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."

For political parties or a government to convince that they really want that necessary 'criticality'... that truly creative tumult...

They're going to have to be serious about wanting citizen involvement.

Democracy IS Personal!

The fault lies not in our stars... but in ourselves.

Build the tools necessary.
Facilitate the citizen's ability in the public square.

(Enabling networked Citizen lobbying is essential and doable. I'm unclear about what we're waiting for? And its not the only needed step.

e.g. According to the CRP, the finance, insurance, and real estate sectors -- those that would be regulated by the financial reform bill -- showered $2.3 billion onto candidates, leadership PACs, and party committees since 1989...

WOW... that's about $115 million every year!

Well, that works out to about $1 per year per registered voter. Doesn't sound like so much then does it. That's because most people don't comprehend scale very well. It's not that all the voters would get together every year to give $1 to some 'anti-finance' bloc...

Its that technical systems can and must allow for the same kind of scaled response to political issues which organized economic interests enjoy and with much more granularity than our two parties prefer you to involve yourselves with.

Evolution requires innovation.
Revolution only requires inertia.

(So far inertia is way ahead.)

Please support the Individually-controlled / Commons-dedicated Account* and other reform efforts. Government IS a technology. This capability is such a fundamental of speech and association that if the Founders had the technology, this right would have been guaranteed in the Constitution.

*A Commons-owned neutral platform for both political and charitable monetary contribution... which for very fundamental scaling reasons must allow a viable micro-transaction (think x-box points for action in the Commons). The resultant network catalyzes additional functionality for co-ordination of other 'social energy' utilization. (P.S. Its the most neutral and ultimately politically viable method for the public finance of elections.)

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 (especially its limits and actual operational effects), Dunbar's number (a hypothetical natural human community size), proximity and... 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.

See On Social Energy, Enterprise & Expanding the Technology of Money

Technology, Human Development and the Social Energy Grid

2010-04-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

In Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's article "Atoms are the New Bits (February issue) , he wisely observed:

"Transformative change happens when industries democratize, when they're ripped from the sole domain of companies, governments and other institutions and handed over to regular folks."

The potentials in manufacturing and invention are well covered in the piece. This general concept is also an essential element of the Asset-Based-Community-Development (ABCD) approach for building more sustainable local production and economic resiliency for depressed populations and the planet as a whole.

But there is an industry which, while absolutely vital, employs a very stagnant and inherently problematic technology. And the Internet's explosive expansion has brought some of those problems to the surface because of its capabilities in handling complexity, volume and velocity in human networks and human-to-human transactions of all kinds. That industry is the credit-creation, currency and resource allocation industry...

This isn't about political ax-grinding or the Right or the Left. It isn't about ancient conspiracy theories or 2012 Mayan calender quackery. And it's not about destroying central banks, the dollar or globalization. I'm interested in pragmatic solutions... not ideological panaceas. It's about long-standing fundamental issues with scaling hunter-gatherer social structures.

Civilizations are built by Social Energy

That is, a civilization quite literally is a product of countless Decisions (Decision = an Idea + an Action) by individuals and groups operating within limits of the physical world. We then can see culture as an expression of net social energy. But 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.

Currencies and credit are needed technologies for the channeling of this energy. But they are fundamentally imperfect ones and always will be for more reasons than can be covered in this brief post.

The Individually-controlled / Commons-dedicated Account* concept under Commons ownership is a simple technology that builds on the existing system but provides an essential neutral framework around which additional associations for social energy organization and allocation may be more easily created. Essentially its a vision for what I believe is an essential tweak to the developing global organism's DNA so to speak. It isn't an attempt to destroy the current monetary system. (That may well do that on its own. In which case some redundancy would be wise. In truth we currently have only one system.)

Problems with the existing system have locked-up vast reservoirs of human potential by inhibiting localized possibilities of credit-creation amongst vast populations.

While the original impetus for this new structure was the neglected potentials of networked citizen lobbying by enabling a viable Internet micro-transaction for political contribution... it soon became clear that this is a lever with much greater import and potential application.

The technology for the creation, storage and allocation of social energy must be expanded.

In a post a couple of years ago I wrote:

"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."

This obviously needs more detail. Here's a few brief posts on this if interested:

On Social Energy, Enterprise & Expanding the Technology of Money

The Foundations of Authoritarianism

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

The Problem in Scaling Altruism: Where's the Intelligent Life?

I believe its essential that transactions for Commons activities be facilitated and uninhibited. And that this capability is actually a fundamental of speech and association... vital if this new landscape is to facilitate our evolution.

This isn't about 'pitching a startup'... frankly, I wouldn't know how to start one. Nor is it about making people nicer or simply encouraging contribution though that may well occur. It's about recognizing a necessary and neglected role of the Internet in speech and association.

I'm not trying to start a business. I'm trying to catalyze a needed institution.

And I believe the Internet industry is it's proper sponsor. (Similar to C-Span's sponsorship by the Cable industry)

P.S. I'm not looking to run this. I'm its evangelist. Though I've certainly invested all I can in its advancement.

The Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account

Demo: Chagora
*The Individually-controlled / Commons-dedicated Account: User account dedicated to Commons-oriented expenditures (charitable & political) but with a couple of added essential characteristics. (1) It facilitates a viable microtransaction (mechanism might be thought of as analogous to Microsoft's X-Box points) with import in networked citizen lobbying. (2) And mechanisms facilitating User associations and co-ordination along electoral/geographical (and other) lines for related purposes. The resultant network offers additional potentials for speech and association. One of which is facilitating creation and use of dedicated scrips which can be defined and used by groups that create it for localized purposes (analogous to things like Mall-dollars that shopping centers sometimes employ as promotional vehicles but available here to other associations for Commons purposes).

The Problem in Scaling Altruism: Where's the Intelligent Life?

2010-04-08T05:44:00.000-07:00

Where's E.T.?
Where's the intelligent life in the universe? Are they out there? And if they are... Why are they so damned quiet*?

It's starting to look like there's lots of planets scattered around the galactic neighborhood; the elements essential to life seem to be fairly typical components. Getting them all together in just the right mix has gotta be tough but the number of potential incubators is enormous.

Seems like a safe assumption (though that's a fair challenge to the whole concept!) that life... at least some simple kinds of life must be poppin' out all over the place.

Ans if some planets evolve some creatures that find some advantage to thinking once in a while... planets that have the good fortune to become fertilized eggs for intelligence in the universe... you'd think someplace might have hatched! Let alone matured.

But have any?
Maybe not!

If not could it be because they never resolve the scaling problem in biological altruism? They never resolve its inherently conflicting nature...

They never resolve being both devils and angels at the same time.

Because altruism can drive both our gentlest impulses as well as the most brutal acts against our own species as well as others.

The effects of biological altruism in humans (especially its unavoidable attenuation with loss of psychological or physical proximity) are strongly rooted and have persistent characteristics that are legacies of our long evolution in small groups. This has had, and continues to have substantial repercussions for scaled social networks which if not addressed inevitably leads to extreme imbalances and collapse. Paradoxically, it also quite naturally leads to excessive social stratification if unchecked. I don't argue for NO stratification... only that there are actual limits beyond which stratification becomes deadly to the social organism. (see The Foundations of Authoritarianism and its links for more on this)

Intellectual altruism is a somewhat different animal. It requires things like legislatures and laws to compete adequately with biological imperatives. It's a recognition that the biological side has some limits. It's intellect over biology.

We here on Earth only have a few civilizations past and present to really look at. And whether or not we sustainably make it off the planet is anyone's guess. Elements of the Drake equation regarding this particular stage are recognitions that we're dealing with unknown probabilities here.

So we speculate on what the cultures of other worlds might be like...

Let me make this speculation:

An evolutionary process on any Earthlike planet (similar gravity, water in all 3 phases, etc.) that makes it to the stage of producing operationally intelligent life (that is, self-aware and able to manipulate the environment) will confront the problem of scaling social networks because of issues with biological altruism.

And ONLY those that solve this will make it out of the cradle.

This idea rests on assumptions that:

Operationally intelligent life will be social
Social organisms inevitably develop biological altruism
Physical size and associated cognitive limits will be roughly similar to those on Earth resulting in a similar 'natural human community size' (Dunbar's Number) as well as limits associated with what we now hear called an "attention economy"

Hence, social scaling issues may be endemic for intelligent life forms.

And we're not going to be hearing from those that never figured that out.

There are no fundamental technological issues with getting us off the planet. I'm not saying its easy... just that I have no doubts about it physical practicality OR desirability.

It's the social, economic, political issues... the scaled social network issues that can stop our march along the Drake Equation and on to the stars. It's these sorts of social/technical issues left unaddressed that give me greatest pause.

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 (especially its limits and actual operational effects), Dunbar's number (a hypothetical natural human community size), proximity and... 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.

*For a more detailed discussion of the Great Silence and related concepts see David Brin's The Great Silence: the Controversy Concerning Intelligent Life in the Universe

Credit Creation and the Building of Sustainable Economic Ecologies

2010-02-01T10:34:00.000-08:00

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 (especially its limits and actual operational effects), Dunbar's number (a hypothetical natural human community size), proximity and... 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

2010-01-30T10:39:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-28T08:38:00.000-08:00

...“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.

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 (especially its limits and actual operational effects), Dunbar's number (a hypothetical natural human community size), proximity and... 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.

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

2009-11-19T08:07:00.000-08:00

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 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

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 (especially its limits and actual operational effects), Dunbar's number (a hypothetical natural human community size), proximity and... 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.

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

2009-10-30T06:00:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

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... near 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 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

2009-09-09T08:12:00.000-07:00

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.

The Commons-dedicated Account Network* catalyzes fundamental capabilities for interest-based association and becomes an essential element necessary for building trust in our Social Organism ...
*A self-supporting , Commons-owned neutral network of accounts for both political and charitable monetary contribution... which for fundamental reasons of scale must allow a viable micro-transaction. Empowering the Commons: The Dedicated Account (Part I) / Demo Here

[The unrecognized potential for... and essential right to... meaningful citizen participation catalyzed by the political microtransaction via its self-organizing and ubiquitous distributed network 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:

*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

2009-09-01T05:48:00.000-07:00

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 2) : The Approaching Trains

2009-08-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

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!

On Creating Communities (Part 1)

2009-08-10T06:23:00.000-07:00

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). Thanks to L. Williamson for her interest and the invitation.

The 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 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

2009-05-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

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?
Wide divisions in wealth, power and status have existed at least since the birth of agriculture and we've done pretty well (from a biological perspective). 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 private property and beneficial market mechanisms survive? Or is this some dream of a communal utopia with some innovation reward system thrown in?

Competition, creativity, healthy ambition and a market for them all - whether around a hunter-gatherer campfire, in a football game, or driving a business enterprise - are essential. But neither those qualities nor the social organism as a whole, can thrive or ultimately survive a terminal Tragedy of the Commons .)

Government is a technology... as are money and finance, by the way.

They're broken.

If we spent as much energy on improving these technologies as opposed to gaming them... If we got as excited about improvements in our collective decision mechanisms as we did about a new IPad we'd be in much better shape.

Its really up to you.

"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

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.

Finding Roots in a Shifting Landscape: Facebook and the Future of Social Networks

The Foundations of Authoritarianism

2009-05-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-18T05:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-08T07:15:00.000-07:00

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

(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

2009-02-21T04:55:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-16T05:16:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-14T06:35:00.000-08:00

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.

2-minute YouTube Video - Technology & The Decision Landscape

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Leadership & Trade - Understanding System Failure

2009-02-12T08:29:00.001-08:00

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?

2009-02-07T07:33:00.000-08:00

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.

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The Chagora Live Debate Function

2009-02-06T19:58:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-01T12:50:00.000-08:00

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!

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CHAGORA ASSUMPTIONS

2009-01-13T12:23:00.000-08:00

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).

LinkedIn Civilization Systems LLC

Facebook Tom Crowl

twitter CulturalNgineer

Technology & Representation

2009-01-09T17:51:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-04T07:58:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-21T07:11:00.000-07:00

Structure & Function: An Online Public Square

2008-06-30T07:06:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-12T02:11:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-07T08:09:00.000-07:00

Why Chagora?

2008-05-31T07:46:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-31T06:52:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-05-31T06:24:00.000-07:00

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"

2008-05-30T05:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-30T04:53:00.000-07:00

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.