Question Everything

Implications of a Sapient Governance, 2

More Hurdles

What role: Competition vs. Coordination

One of the more interesting dichotomies in complex systems is the tension between competitive processes and cooperative ones. As I argued in Sapient Governance II - Coordination Level whole systems that evolve to a stable steady-state condition are characterized by a preponderance of cooperative sub-systems, or regulated coordination. The human body is as good an example as any. Livers don't compete with hearts under normal circumstances. And new livers don't open shop to compete with the main one. However, I did point out that under stressful conditions, as when there are restrictions on input resources, that some form of regulated competition based on priority needs could ensue. It also turns out that during embryonic and fetal development competition among cells for vital resources plays a big role in shaping the form of the body tissues. But at maturity, competitive processes take a minor role and the body enters a period of regulated coordination and cooperation among cells and tissues. Unless, of course, a cancerous cell breaks the truce.

Competition is hailed in neoclassical economics as the engine of progress. Firms competing with one another in a free market (for customers if not resources) improve their production, their designs, and their service. As a result prices tend to fall for the same level of functionality or functionality increases for the same price. Competition is a good thing for development in the economy just as it is in the development of the body. Or at least it has seemed so.

In fact, in the biological world all development of populations, species, and ecosystems is through competition. Competition is one of the cornerstone bases of evolution. Competition among species for niches and competition between conspecifics for mates and food are at the heart of natural and sexual selection mechanisms. Operating on sometimes small improvements in form or behavior due to chance mutations, a more fit individual will tend to have more offspring and increase the frequency of that particular genetic variant in the gene pool.

Ergo, competition is a good thing. Under the right circumstances.

Notice that these examples pertain to the situation in which the system is in a growth/development phase. When the system is still 'immature' compared with a final steady-state condition competition serves to select the most favorable configurations. Biological evolution, we might expect, will continue to shape newer species until the Ecos as a whole is in some kind of steady-state with respect to the flow of energy. It is most likely unknowable as to when that might be.

With respect to the human population and our cultures, however, it may very well be that we will be forced into a steady-state condition simply because we are going to run out of high-grade fossil energy sources and the likelihood of finding some miracle replacement that can support the over-large population at a level of lifestyle to which some of us have become accustomed is looking pretty small. Renewable alternative sources, like solar and wind, will surely provide a steady-state flow but at a volume significantly lower than we currently enjoy. The implication is that a very much smaller population of humans, living in harmony with the Ecos, at steady-state will be the final mature form of our species and its cultures on this planet.

The idea that a final form of maturity might arise from the rapid contraction of a population actually has a very solid precedence in biology. For example when the mammalian brain is growing in a fetus and neonate far more neurons and synaptic connections are produced than are found in the adult. There is a literal exuberance of growth far beyond what is practical or necessary. What happens then is that synapses and some neurons end up getting pruned because they don't contribute to the success of the brain in conducting the business of behavior or perception (cf Wikipedia article on Neural Darwinism). There is a 'use-it-or-lose-it' rule in synaptic strengthening; if the synapse doesn't actively contribute to a neuron's firing it decays due to being starved of resources and the connection is lost. The strategy of life can be characterized as produce an abundance on a trial and error basis, and then see what works! Evolution and living, growing systems do not have foresight. This strategy, seemingly wasteful, actually works quite well. The wasted resources are actually recycled so the final optimized structure isn't really the result of a wasteful process after all.

So what we are witnessing in the human condition, of overpopulation and what will amount to culling by natural disasters and food shortages (if it comes to that) is really not much different from nature's other examples of over exuberant growth followed by selection of the fittest via competition. Of course, being the 'subjects' of this grand experiment isn't going to be an academic exercise. We can't imagine that synapses suffer from starvation but we can empathize with our fellow humans suffering. And we will feel the fear of being one of the cullees. But in most respects you cannot deny that we are a part of nature and subject to the same laws of nature as everything else. Competition has its downside in this regard.

But in one special regard humans are different from all other systems in the Ecos. We alone have developed a language and culture based social structure. These, as I have argued previously, transcend biology in a very important way. Our ways of organizing are emergent properties of our social brains. Our science allows us to ask and answer questions not even conceivable to our biological cousins. Whatever level of sapience we have evolved allows us to consider options not permitted of the rest of life. We have discovered and understood the relationship between and purposes of competition and cooperation. We could, if we are sapient enough, choose to pursue a process of maturation wherein cooperation becomes the predominant mode of economics.

An economic system based on cooperation and coordination is the end product of evolution and development. Competition has given us two hundred varieties of shampoo. How many do we really need? Competition is thought to drive prices down, but if the true cost of products and services is measured in energy units instead of floating-valued dollars, then prices will be based on rational costs. Drive the energy cost down and you drive the price down. That is a form of continuing development more like learning in the mature brain as opposed to organizing structures in the embryonic brain. It is the only form of development that is sustainable in the long run.

Perhaps one of the most compelling pieces of evidence that competition as a driver has reached its apex and needs to be phased down and out is the impact it has had on higher education. Universities and colleges compete for students. There isn't much they can do about the single biggest cost item in their budgets — wages of professors and professional staff (heaven forbid the administrators consider cutting their own numbers or paying themselves less!) So they resort to cheapening quality (see the excellent PBS video, "Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk (2005)") by hiring part time lecturers (please believe me when I say that many lectures are high quality teachers, but too many are not and the impact of part-time employment on those who otherwise would be is enormous), fancy packaging in the form of sports facilities and reputations for government sponsored research (a prestigious quality), and promotions by having wining sports teams, which includes recruiting players of dubious academic potential, sometimes by illegal means. This competitive environment has had exactly the opposite effect on the cost and quality of higher education than claimed for a competitive-driven market. And since higher education is one of the cornerstones of a progressive, free society, think what impact it is having on this country (USA).

What is the hurdle?

As with greed and profit motive there are two aspects. One is the fact that we live in a culture that lauds competition as a wonderful thing. It is easy to see why. Once upon a time competition was a wonderful thing. So the sentiment hangs on in spite of the fact that we need to be shifting to a coordinated economy. This factor could be changed with the right education, but it is simply not clear where this education will come from. Certainly not the schools and colleges that are themselves locked in the competitive arena.

The other, even more difficult aspect of the belief in competition comes from the low level of sapience in our species to begin with. Recall that sapience comes, in part, from being able to see wholeness, including seeing all parts as being connected in that whole. It also involves a moral sentiment (altruism and empathy) that go beyond the typical in-group/out-group mentality. The latter, an actually good characteristic for Pleistocene man when competition between groups of conspecifics was necessary, is still programmed into our brains and is at the root of so much racism and drives the soccer brawls in Europe. As long as groups have sentiments that they are different and better and see others as different and inferior we will be stuck in competitiveness as the principle mode of endeavor. Right now, look at what is driving our concerns about the level of math and science education in schools. It isn't that we think knowing more science and math is good for students for intrinsic reasons. No it is because we are worried that our country (us) will lose out in the global competitive market (them). As a result we will continue to frantically jam science and math down the throats of all students, turning most of them off on the subjects as a result. So the supposed problem will get worse, not better.

Why do you think competitive sports and so-called reality TV shows are so popular? The average human brain is programmed to thrill at such competitions. It's the reason young men seem so eager to go fight a war. Only a strong control over our limbic system from the prefrontal cortex can subdue these ancient tendencies. And I don't think many people have that wiring, let alone the processing power.

Mankind has long since reached a need to transition from predominantly competition to predominantly coordination mode of living. Competition between neighbors to see who has the biggest house or car, competition between firms for customers and diminishing resources, competition between cities to attract businesses, competition between states for shared resources like water, competition between nations for allegiance (e.g. between Georgia and Russia for South Ossetia) or resources (think US in Iraq for oil), all of these at every level of organization are starting to have more negative consequences than good.

The natives of Easter Island killed themselves through their dogged commitment to their religious and competitive beliefs. They could not change their minds about building those giant heads even as they were felling the last trees. Why? That is part of human nature. Once you believe in the goodness of greed, affluence, competition, and free markets, you will not be likely to change your mind about these either. This is the hurdle I see now. This is another reason I call it sapient governance. Only wisdom will reveal that we need to change our mind set in order to have a workable world that includes mankind. Changing that mind set requires a change in attitudes and understanding of competition and it requires overriding our base human nature. The former might be feasible if enough people who are representative of the latter will come forth to demonstrate this new reality.

A political interlude

My apologies for the delay in posting the next blog. I have been working on two follow up postings regarding implications from the sapient governance series. But like most of you I have been attending to the Democratic National Convention in Denver and it has been a bit of a distraction.

As some of you may have read in a prior post, "For whom should I vote?", I questioned the viability of the then presumptive candidates and lamented that I was very disappointed in the political process that left us with an old out of touch guy (this isn't ageist since I am old myself; its the out of touch part that counts!), a young "Dreamer" with no visible experience, and an old timer who had learned a thing or two about triangulation in the political game. Well the latter lost out a while back, so we were down to the out-of-touch and the Dreamer.

Out-of-touch is out of consideration in my book. That leaves the Dreamer. Now dreaming per se isn't a bad thing. Indeed it is a very good thing to have aspirations and hope. Of course the former need to be realistic. By that, and given the nature of the problems that face not just America but the world, I mean that aspirations to fix the problems must actually be physically feasible. Since there is so much hype and misinformation floating around in the public domain about energy, global warming, population, and especially human nature, this means we should be putting an emphasis on the scientific aspects of these problems to determine feasible solutions (and yes, I mean human nature is a problem!) So I have been delving into the Dreamer's cadre of advisers to see if, in fact, his aspirations are grounded in science.

The preliminary look-see wasn't particularly encouraging. Of maybe ten advisers named for his energy and technology group only one was an actual scientist. The rest were lawyers or had degrees (where listed) other than in science or technology. I would have preferred to see a more balanced retinue with more direct advice from a few scientists knowledgeable in the areas I mentioned. The reason is that a scientific-educated world view is quite different from a law-educated one. We've had a governance process dominated by lawyers for a long time now and I think it is time for REAL change in the way we make decisions. Once, not long ago, the major problems facing society were jurisdictional, disputes over ownership and rights, etc. Lawyers were sort of natural go-to folk to consider policies that helped regulate society along these lines. But today the problems we face have a technical basis that scientists and technologists are better suited to handle. Of course many scientists don't see themselves as policy people so there has been a supply problem on that account. But there is a shift going on. Many, particularly senior, scientists are more and more becoming interested in the policy side of these issues. If you read their popular books on matters like global warming, you see the final chapters being devoted to recommendations, or at least warnings about the consequences unless some action is taken. So the need for policy development based on scientific understanding (and this definitely does not mean interpretation by a lawyer) is slowly creeping into their awareness.

Having heard the acceptance speech, last night, by the Dreamer, I am encouraged a bit by the rhetoric. He clearly has a different stated intention with regard to following the advice of scientists (their scientific findings anyway). That alone will be an improvement over the current situation. But I don't think it is enough. I would like to see, for example, the Whitehouse science advisor position elevated to cabinet status — we need a Secretary of Science and Technology to oversee science funding and have a direct line to the President. But the kinds of promises made (e.g. clean coal) suggest that politics more than science is still driving the rhetoric. As some of you know I am very skeptical about the potential for alternative energy systems to fully replace the energy flow we have realized from fossil fuels and that means we will have a reduced energy flow to work with in the future. We may create "green collar" jobs but I doubt very much that they will be the basis of a thriving, stable economy. And I seriously doubt that we will see a growth economy as energy flow diminishes. So the implied promises being touted are suspect still. They are still in the category of dreams.

Still, people want to have hope. They want to believe that everything is going to get better. And right now the Dreamer is providing what the progressives and liberals seem to want. So I propose an empirical test.

Let's suppose (and I hope) the Dreamer is elected as President. Furthermore, lets suppose (and hope) that there will be a Democratic majority in both Senate and House. If those conditions obtain, then the next four years should tell us a great deal about what we should expect from the political process and its ability to produce workable solutions. Everybody is putting their money on the Dreamer reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They will be looking to him to get us off of foreign oil in ten years. They will look for him to improve the economy (meaning making it grow again) by a number of means, all of which will require more energy not less.

My hypothesis is that if I am right about the magnitude and nature of these problems, the political process and governance system in this country will not be able to even substantially start solving these problems. If they are solvable in the way the current crop of lawyer-advisers believe then the Dreamer is probably the best shot at moving us in that direction. But if I am right we will see at most a brief respite from our current accelerating downward condition (e.g. getting out of Iraq should reduce our expenditures, freeing up some funds to help out with the financial market meltdown). I suspect that by the end of the first term we will have a pretty good indication of how feasible all this dreaming is.

As always I hope I am wrong.

Implications of a Sapient Governance

Hurdles

Greed and profit motive

One of the most destructive forces now compelling the current economic system is that of personal enrichment. This is especially destructive since the pie is finite in size, taking more than one's share means someone else must lose out. Once, when the world had far fewer people in it, the pie appeared infinite in size and potential. People scrambled to get their piece. Now that the world is full of people and most of the pie has been grabbed, the finiteness is showing.

Somewhere back in history it became OK to be greedy. Adam Smith never really said so, but corporatist and capitalist world views have essentially used Smith's vision of self-interest driving markets (and conveniently left out the fact that Smith also promoted the development of moral sentiment — sympathy for others as a countervailing force to self-interest) as a virtue. The 'invisible hand' would take care of everything. Once, not really that long ago, people in many parts of the world held the view that taking advantage of lesser empowered folk was wrong. Usury, for example, was once considered immoral. Today venture capitalists argue that high rates of return on investment are expected because of the risk factors of such investments (for every one big hit they expect ten busts). There is logic to the argument, assuming one buys into the notion of gang buster's growth, but it simply fuels the idea that someone, an entrepreneur of capitalist, has every right to make mega bucks because, well, they deserve it.

But if my energy theory of money is right, and of course I think it is, then each and every richer person means there are many more poor ones to compensate. As long as new sources of energy were being discovered and exploited, as long as there was growth in the net energy available to do work, this model could be sustained on the basis that everyone would be better off. So it didn't matter that a few people made huge fortunes in spite of the inequity, because even the poor were materially better off. Certainly the rich felt this was justification. But so did many of the poorer. Especially as long as there was a large so-called middle class, a buffer, as it were, between the really rich and the really poor, the illusion of wealth production and gains could be maintained. But, again, this was a side effect of rapid energy production rather than any truly sustainable relationship.

Then too the middle class held out hope that they too might one day be wealthy. In the US, in particular, middle class incomes rose relative to prices through the 1960's and into the 1970's setting the pattern and the belief that this was to be the continuing saga for each new generation. We had world-wide slumps and fits and starts, but right up into the 1990's there was still a conviction that profits were to be maximized, share-holder value to be increased. Monetary wealth generation has become the ultimate moral sentiment. Indeed, in the minds of libertarians, corporatists, and capitalists getting rich is the only game in town. And the free market, code for no regulations by government, is the way to achieve it.

This whole story feeds the average person's limbic system. Everyone, at a deep emotional level, judges his or her well being as much by comparison with others around them. And material possessions has been drilled into the collective psyche as THE measure of well being. If you live in the smallest house on the block you will not feel good about yourself simply because you (or rather your affect system) will judge you inferior to those with larger houses. A check with the weak sapience judgment regarding the worthiness value of house size will probably confirm this. Or, at least sub-consciously, the desire for a bigger house, or one in the suburbs, will drive the intelligence machinery toward finding ways to acquire that bigger house.

We find ourselves on a treadmill. Actually, the evolutionists have a term they use to describe the continuous and accelerating escalation of evolutionary warfare between parasites and hosts — the Red Queen effect. This term comes from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and refers to the RQ character telling Alice, "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Our treadmill has been accelerating and now we are running just to stay on. The acceleration is due to a positive feedback mechanism. As we see some people get more wealth, we are driven to get more wealth for ourselves. And we justify our desires as good and rational, so we must acknowledge that others will have the same goals. And since some people achieve those goals, it simply reinforces in each of us that those goals are worthy and achievable. I suppose if there were infinite resources in this world it wouldn't much matter. But we know this is not the case. We also know that we are converting resources into toxic wastes that are killing other parts of the Ecos as well as ourselves. We now know it is madness. But can we stop? Can we change?

Is the sapient mind of an average person able to override the limbic system's pressure to use intelligence and creativity to find ways to make profits over their fellows? I would like to believe that good judgment and strong will (a way of describing the sapient damping of limbic desires) could change the propensity. But judgment depends heavily on tacit knowledge, if you recall, and that knowledge is largely cultural reinforcement of greed. Adam Smith first acknowledged the need for a moral sentiment toward sympathy and caring as a cap on self-interest, certainly as a barrier to greed. But I would argue it is more than just sympathy that is needed. It is also empathy and tacit understanding that if one is to have much more, then many must have much less. The moral sentiment should tend toward altruistic values. A sapient mind must understand and feel content with a sufficient material life.

I know. Now I am preaching. But I'm not really telling you or anyone what you should do. I am simply pointing out what attributes of mind will work within the constraints of a finite world with lots of people in it. We have to learn to share a limited amount of natural resources with one another if we are all going to survive. If this sounds like socialism than you 1) haven't understood any of my arguments about sapience to date, and 2) really don't understand the nature of the problem we face. If all people were both sufficiently sapient and sufficiently knowledgeable such that they produced good judgments, then the word socialism wouldn't even exist. To have a word meaning a way of living, you need a contrasting way of living with its own word. I claim that in a eusapient world, none but a sharing and caring style of life would exist (well I suppose throwback deviants would always arise). It would be second nature to be content with just the necessities (which, by the way, doesn't mean subsistence) and a few soul-fulfilling diversions without a need to have a better model of car just because a neighbor has one (after her old model finally gave up the ghost!) But we don't live in a eusapient world. It will take a lot more evolution to produce that. We have to find a way to produce a better sapient world. I'm always open to suggestions!

If you are interested in a very good perspective on this subject, please read James Gustave Speth's new book, "The Bridge at the Edge of the World"

Sapient Governance III -- Strategic Level

Strategic Management

Prior articles:

1. SG I, Part A - What would an operational level governance look like?
2. SG I, Part B - Operational level for human society
3. SG II, Part A - Coordination level (Logistical) for human society
4. SG II, Part B - Coordination level (Tactical) for human society

If you haven't read these you may not be able to follow the current posting.

Now in this installment:
SG III - Strategic Management

Having covered the nature of coordination level hierarchical control, I turn, at last, to strategic management, the highest level in the hierarchy. As with the prior installments I first discuss strategic control in nature to show that this is, indeed, the natural way to organize governance systems. In the essay I write:

A strategy is often characterized as a long-term program of actions, to be carried out by the tactical and logistic controllers, geared to position the entity in the most favorable way as the future unfolds.

But it turns out that for almost all of the natural living world strategic management is actually achieved by virtue of evolution. It is only in primates, especially the great apes, that we see the emergence of an explicit form of individually selectable strategic decisions in brains. In man the extent of strategic management is quite advanced. Natural human strategic thinking not only covers the individual but includes family, friends, and villages. It extends farther into the future than coordination planning. And it depends heavily on an accurate assessment of the environment, the dynamics of components in the environment, and of one's own (and the group's own) capabilities.

I spend some time explaining the evolutionarily recent parts of the human brain that are responsible for strategic decision processing and its relationship to the coordination level. I then discuss the strategic thinking/planning cycle and how it relies on a wealth of tacit knowledge in order for judgment to guide these kinds of decisions. That knowledge, I explain, is in the form of neural-based models of everything outside of that patch of brain, including other parts of the brain. Models are essential for forward thinking. One runs one's model of the world in fast forward in order to anticipate a more distant future while also running the models of tactical interactions so as to imagine what one should be doing in the future to best situate with the environment at that time.

Having argued that the hierarchical control model is complete in the human brain, I turn to human organizations as examples where the model has naturally evolved outside the heads of any one individual. Management science has begun to study these structures in a formal way. Most larger organizations and many small ones actively engage in strategic planning to do exactly what an individual is doing - trying to better their situation in their environments.

And finally I examine various governance systems that have evolved in different countries and different times. They all show the tendency to form natural management hierarchies. This tells us that our social enterprises are undergoing evolution toward that form. I examine some of the failings, especially at the nation-state level. But I argue that we have reached a stage in our development where we need to consider the whole world as one system in need of a complete, and hence sapient, hierarchical governance system. It would be complete with a well functioning strategic level of management.

This completes this series of essays outlining the main points of hierarchical, sapient governance. In future blogs I will take up these points in various ways as I continue to ask what kind of world do we want? And, what kind of world can we have?

Sapient Governance II -- Coordination Level, Part B

Tactical Coordination

Prior articles:

1. SG I, Part A - What would an operational level governance look like?
2. SG I, Part B - Operational level for human society
3. SG II, Part A - Coordination level (logistical) for human society

If you haven't read these you may not be able to follow the current posting.

Now in this installment:
SG II, Part B - Tactical Coordination

Coordination level control consist of two cooperating sub-systems, the logistical controls needed to coordinate internal operations where competition might otherwise disrupt smooth overall operations, and tactical controls. The latter are simply the control mechanisms that are used by an entity to coordinate its behavior with that of other agents in the environment and, indeed with the physical nature of the environment. Since too often agents are in a competing mode, tactics has to consider both behaviors for cooperation and those for protection. Following the same formula as the prior installments I attempt to show the nature of tactical control in natural systems. I then turn to existing human organizations/entities at all scales and show how elements of tactical mechanisms are already to be found, having arisen in the course of natural cultural evolution. I also attempt a brief review of how tactical and logistical mechanisms coordinate their activities, most often through a resource needs/allocation budget process.

I then observe what a sapient governance, global tactical approach would look like. The biggest single aspect of the human economy is balanced interactions with the whole rest of the Ecos — the ecology of Earth. Our tactical problem is how much natural capital can we obtain from the Ecos without robbing it of its regenerative powers. How much waste product can we emit into the Ecos, again without overwhelming its regenerative capacity? I argue that we are already starting to set mechanisms in place to try to answer these questions. The UN IPCC process is a model for doing so. But it is an insufficient mechanism given the rate and magnitude of the problems associated with global warming. Still the scientific eyes and ears (sensory and preliminary interpretation) and the attempt at collaboration to set policies represents a first approximation at a tactical mechanism with respect to our relationship with the Ecos.

One of the important issues I note is that ultimately coordination depends on there being strategic-set objectives. This is why a strategic level mechanism for the whole human race and its economy is so important. I point out that the UN is not really set up to fill this role. Yet strategic level decisions are going to need to be made in order to make our planet a workable framework for both mankind and the rest of the natural world. As an example of a strategic level consideration, I mention the exploration of space as a strategic objective for mankind. Another aspect of this would be setting tactical level goals for scanning for and eliminating celestial bodies (comets and meteors) that might harm our world. We would need to develop tactical mechanisms for executing that goal (the objective being to keep our planet from being destroyed by an impact), but the setting of the goal comes from a strategic objective.

The last installment will cover strategic control. In terms of a sapient governance for humanity this is the most cogent aspect of the argument for sapience in governance. As I have argued sapience involves strategic thinking. As a species we have yet to achieve such thinking for all of humanity. We have given voice to the moral imperative. Most people in the world want peace and sufficient prosperity that we are not in battle with nature for survival. We want to live in harmony with our environment and other peoples. We just haven't quite figured out how to envision it, plan for it, and execute the plan. But I suspect rather strongly that we will have to do so if we want to continue as a presence on this planet.