Ann Arbor, MI
February 18th, 2010
6:38 am
So, the battle cry is "Anarchists, unite!" ?
A different framework is that the problem is not that coordinated groups of people exist, but that such groups as they grow and age tend to become depressingly blind, inefficient, arrogant, ineffective, amoral, immoral, self-serving, and corrupt.
If you view that as a fact of life, smaller is better, fine. Discard the car and we'll all walk. If you view this as a design flaw, like a stuck gas pedal, and one that could be fixed, that changes everything. Fix the car so we can all go much farther than we can walk.
Humans are individually not very reliable, but these days much is known about how to build highly reliable systems out of unreliable components.
We have very sophisticated theory and tools in "control system engineering" about "checks and balances", regulatory feedback-loops, stability, responsiveness, etc. See for example "Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems" by Franklin, 5th edition. All kinds of cars, planes, and equipment is built using that stuff. It works.
"It has a demon, blow it up!" is a pretty primitive approach to problem solving. Why not use the technology we have to design and model large human organizations that might actually function correctly?
Or at least use it to simulate and model proposed changes and see whether, under broad assumptions, the changed model would perform any better than the current model.
The problem is almost certainly that it's not breaking on any given part, it's breaking "between the parts" on a system level. It's not the pieces that are wrong, but the way the pieces relate to each other that's broken.
It's like airplanes. A plane is a collection of parts, each one being too heavy to fly. The power of the plane is in how the parts work together, not in any one magic "flying" part that the others ride on.
It's not right to seek a leader who can fly, and it's not right to abandon the idea of large groups, corporations, governments, etc. in favor of us all learning how to jump higher as the best we'll ever do.
The structure CAN be made to fly. We HAVE the tools to do that. Now is the wrong time to quit.
A different framework is that the problem is not that coordinated groups of people exist, but that such groups as they grow and age tend to become depressingly blind, inefficient, arrogant, ineffective, amoral, immoral, self-serving, and corrupt.
If you view that as a fact of life, smaller is better, fine. Discard the car and we'll all walk. If you view this as a design flaw, like a stuck gas pedal, and one that could be fixed, that changes everything. Fix the car so we can all go much farther than we can walk.
Humans are individually not very reliable, but these days much is known about how to build highly reliable systems out of unreliable components.
We have very sophisticated theory and tools in "control system engineering" about "checks and balances", regulatory feedback-loops, stability, responsiveness, etc. See for example "Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems" by Franklin, 5th edition. All kinds of cars, planes, and equipment is built using that stuff. It works.
"It has a demon, blow it up!" is a pretty primitive approach to problem solving. Why not use the technology we have to design and model large human organizations that might actually function correctly?
Or at least use it to simulate and model proposed changes and see whether, under broad assumptions, the changed model would perform any better than the current model.
The problem is almost certainly that it's not breaking on any given part, it's breaking "between the parts" on a system level. It's not the pieces that are wrong, but the way the pieces relate to each other that's broken.
It's like airplanes. A plane is a collection of parts, each one being too heavy to fly. The power of the plane is in how the parts work together, not in any one magic "flying" part that the others ride on.
It's not right to seek a leader who can fly, and it's not right to abandon the idea of large groups, corporations, governments, etc. in favor of us all learning how to jump higher as the best we'll ever do.
The structure CAN be made to fly. We HAVE the tools to do that. Now is the wrong time to quit.
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