Too Big to Exist

When corporate or government institutions become too big and too socially destructive to exist, we need a graceful method of putting them on a diet and reforming their lifestyle.

The American genius for creating magnificently productive mega-institutions has a potentially fatal downside: we have, as a society, no idea how to downsize them when they "go rogue," i.e., become socially destructive. On balance, today, several of America's major mega-institutions--the Imperial Presidency, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Finance--either are or are fast becoming socially destructive. They are "too big to exist;" we need to figure out how to downsize them gracefully, reorienting them toward socially useful behavior.

Perhaps the first step toward this new way of thinking that needs to replace the tarnished old "bigger is better" mantra is to understand the evidence supporting the contention that these mega-institutions are so bloated that American and, indeed, global society can no longer afford them. (I call these social units "institutions" because each is truly a unified organization composed of, perhaps, separate governmental or private units, but operating according to a clear if unstated and frequently illegal set of monopolistic rules designed to maximize profit and power at public expense and, in the case of the Imperial Presidency, at the expense of the rest of the Government as well.) Consider the following examples of mega-institution misbehavior:

1. The Imperial Presidency, i.e., the rising ability of the White House and all its military-industrial support mechanism to overshadow Congress and Constitution on foreign policy, now employs something in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million mercenaries overseas, constituting an armed force capable of making independent war on most countries--completely outside of Congressional control and often beyond the reach of U.S. judicial authorities [see Jean MacKenzie, Jeremy Scahill, Glen Ford]. Since Augustus overthrew the Roman Republic with his palace guards and established the Roman Empire, we have known the profound threat to democracy posed by a mercenary army under the command of the chief executive.
2. Big Pharma, constituting the whole U.S. health care industry, has degenerated so far that, to boost profits, it now essentially writes off as a "business loss" all of the nationa's elderly with the almost universal cognitive problems associated with aging. At their most vulnerable, they are thrown into the arms of untrained relatives utterly unprepared for 24/7 nursing.
3. Big Oil, alb eit receiv ing billions annually in welfare payments from U.S. taxpayers, can destroy ever-growing chunks of the earth through careless cost-cutting measures and escape responsibility. For the rest of our lives, we will be watching BP's poison creep with Gulf Stream currents up the North American east coast and over toward England, while everyone complains about $4 a gallon gas, a price only a fraction of the real cost.
4. As for Big Finance, the cost of its irresponsibility is now glaringly obvious to everyone. At the very least, Wall St. should keep accurate books, and regulators should scrutinize them.

The traditional way of toppling rogue mega-institutions is of course well known: the "barbarians" did it to Imperial Rome, Lincoln did it to the Southern slave system, Gorbachev did it to the Soviet state. But as these mega-institutions take on global scale, the cost of violent overthrow rises sharply. We should be able to do better.

Key to the smooth downsizing of rogue mega-institutions is twofold: 1) the breakthrough understanding of the bottom line insight that a cherished social structure has outlived its usefulness as currently designed combined with 2) the identification of specific traits requiring elimination. Specific reforms (Step 2) without acceptance of the goal of institutional downsizing, and redirection into a socially beneficial mode misses the point. That was the mistake of the Wall Street bailout, which successfully saved the bad old exploitative system rather than taking the opportunity to dismantle it by, for example, rebuilding the wall between the stock market and personal savings accounts. Similarly, eliminating mercenary forces while leaving the political supremacy over Congress of the Imperial Presidency untouched will only have a temporary impact. Surgical removal of a specific cancerous tumor must be done in the context of lifestyle changes related to nutrition, avoiding pesticides, and exercise.

Rogue mega-institutions must be recognized as enemies of society and redesigned to return to their proper purpose of servinhg society. The Presidency's power should be balanced with that of Congress; stock market investments should b e used to stimulate growth, not gamble with people's mortgages and savings accounts; the health care system should exist to provide a universal right, not to make a profit; the cost of gas should b e set by government to reflect its true value, incluyding the cost of pollution clean-up and the cost of wars fought to get the oil. And no industry that takes welfare from the taxpayer should turn its leaders into billionaires immune from prosecution.

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READINGS:
To its credit, Washington is at least thinking about this issue. See comments by FDIC's Sheila Bair.

The Pattern of Democratic Decline

It is not about tinkering; it's about making moral judgments.

The ramparts of American democracy remain strong, if subtly undermined by long-term trends I have discussed elsewhere. The gathering hordes stand not at the walls but within and can hardly be called "hordes" at all, though they are, because a rampaging crowd of the rich is not what the term "horde" typically brings to mind. But it is the rich of America, not the poor of the world, who are focusing their energies against us. If American democracy is to be successfully defended against these, well, hordes--for they are multitudinous and they are running amok, then Americans must come to understand the context of events so they can give proper meaning to those events.

Obama & Derivatives: Stiffening Backbone?

Good news is hard to find, but there's a little in Washington this week and on the critical issue of (sorry!) derivatives. So I'll report it...

Health care reform was a great win for Obama; a small step forward for the American people. International relations to date has been a disaster both for Obama and for those hoping for a peaceful world (witness the collapse of efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the carnage in Afghanistan, and the failure to engage Iran). Finance policy has been a complete sell-out to Wall Street so far, but this may be about to change. Might the health care victory give Obama the guts to support actual reform rather than trying to “achieve” a lowest-common denominator back-room deal with Republican diehards? Standing firm on derivatives regulation and winning could just possibly turn Obama into a real leader. Then, his best move would be to read his own campaign promises.

If you don’t know anything about the intentionally mysterious Wall Street invention called “derivatives,” here is Derivatives 101, from Time’s Swampland Blog, 4/14/10:

Everyone agrees that new derivatives regulations are needed to head off another financial implosion, but there is huge disagreement about which derivatives should be regulated and how.

Complicating things further is the fact that the five largest banks--Goldman Sachs, Citibank, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America--control the vast majority of the derivatives market, and make a mint doing it. As it now stands, derivatives are largely traded over the counter, meaning they are private arrangements between two or more parties. Without a transparent market, banks are able to take a significant cut off of each trade, yielding roughly $20 billion in profits last year. The problem is that this same system conceals risk. Without transparency, regulators cannot know for sure whether banks or other parties in derivatives transactions actually have the ability to pay off their bets if things go bad. The system functions very much like a dimly lit casino, but in this casino some people bet with far more money than they have or can get. When the dice come up box cars, taxpayers must come to the rescue, or watch the markets freeze in fear.

A more authoritative bottom-line assessment was provided by economist Joseph Stiglitz last fall [Bloomberg, 10/12/09]:

Large banks should be banned from trading derivatives including credit default swaps, said Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist. 

The CDS positions held by the five largest banks posed “significant risk” to the financial system, Stiglitz said at a press conference in Brussels. Big banks should have extra restrictions placed on them, including a ban on derivative trading, because of the risk that they would need government money if they fail, he said in a speech today.

“We will have another armed robbery unless we prevent the banks, the banks that are too big to fail,” Stiglitz said. “We should say that if you’re too big to fail then you are too big to be. They need more restrictions, such as no derivative trading.”

My pulse is quickening, but I will really believe that Obama is serious about financial reform when he advocates that derivative trades be taxed.

My personal bottom line is simple: let the rich trade derivatives all they want, but with as much transparency as we demand from Iran on nukes and with taxation of the profits at a rate at least equal to the taxation of honest labor. 

If you thought the ideas of compromise as the route to peace and health care as a right rather than a cookie crumb trickling down from insurance company profit-making were hard concepts to understand, the legitimate use of derivatives in a democratic society will really curl your hair. But try: this issue is important.

Governance

Robert Reich's broad view of governance from his blog on 3/21/10:

...Reagan’s view of government as the problem is increasingly at odds with a nation whose system of health care relies on large for-profit entities designed to make money rather than improve health; whose economy is dependent on global capital and on global corporations and financial institutions with no particular loyalty to America; and much of whose fuel comes from unstable and dangerous areas of the world. Under these conditions, government is the only entity that can look out for our interests.

Reich did not say that government will look out for our interests obviously, but since you don't vote on the policies of Exxon-Mobile or Goldman Sachs or Xe, your only prayer is the vote you make to select your government officials...and the quality of your oversight.

"Change"...and Deception

Americans may never know the degree to which Democratic Party leaders actually intended to promote "change." Perhaps we the voters should have demanded that they "prove" their intent, just as they are currently demanding that Tehran "prove" that it has no intent to construct nuclear bombs. Whatever the intent of the elite, the people voted for change, and one key component of that was changing medical care from a business designed for the enrichment of insurance companies to a right of all citizens.

The right wing elite, concerned about its potential investment losses, is now claiming that legislating any requirement that everyone pay for health insurance would be unconstitutional. One wonders what they imagine we, as a society, are going to do when some irresponsible person who chooses not to buy health insurance gets sick - just watch them die? This is a classic example of the commons, a term everyone needs to know in this debate. The right wing elitists are classic free-loaders. Don't be tricked by their protests about "freedom."

You are not free to drive on the left. You are not free to refuse to pay for garbage pick-up. You are not free to take illegal narcotics. You are not free to refuse to "buy" health insurance for your sick car (i.e., annual check-ups). You are not free to refuse to pay taxes. Societies need rules to function. It is time the U.S. joined the modern world and recognized that a good society provides health care for everyone. One way or the other, we will all pay for that benefit: either we will pay to take care of the desperately ill (e.g., the beggar who sits on the street coughing and infecting everyone with TB) or we will gain the maturity as a society to decide to pay for health care to make the society healthier.

Building Civil Societies...Not State Predators

The Washington debate over the relative merits of brute force vs. state building is, in practice, vacuous. The real choice is between brute force and society building, an endeavor in which the members of the society must be central...and free to talk back to their foreign friends. The building of a centralized and powerful state structure divorced from society is the birthing of a monster.

The debate in the U.S. about how to resolve social instability in Muslim lands that may lead to terrorist attacks against the West frequently centers on the presumed choice between “state building” and military attacks on those identified as enemies. This raises a host of issues, not the least of which is figuring out whether or not Western victims actually are enemies, but that is another story. Here, I want to focus on the concept of “state building.” Bluntly stated, the above debate is so simplistic that it hardly has any value at all (even though on the surface the existence of a debate between war and state building appears to represent a huge step forward from the utterly brainless idea of blowing up everyone who expresses the slightest desire for independence or equality).

The only way “state building” will in fact represent a meaningful advance in U.S. thinking is if the concept is defined well enough to contribute to functioning societies. To put it differently, arguing about “more” or “less” state-building is vacuous. The distinction of value lies not between state building and military force but between effective steps to stimulate the rise of self-sufficient, stable, effective societies and steps that hinder such a process. Both war and the building of repressive state represent steps backward.

The missed point in most U.S. commentary on state building is the dangerously erroneous assumption that having a state is better than not having one (an assumption particularly unexamined in Washington and one that leads directly to assuming that anyone who has managed to seize power—say, via assassination—is a better person to work with than someone, e.g., Sam Adams, who “just” represents a patriotic movement demanding justice). It may in a given case make sense for Washington to deal with a local leader, but to assume that a Saddam or a Saleh deserves automatic respect while a dissident leader merits nothing more than dismissal would be a potentially costly (though hardly unusual) example of unprofessional behavior on the part of a foreign policy decision maker.

The assumption that a state is automatically better than the absence of a state would have been rejected instantly by a large number, probably a large majority, of the august men who created the U.S.A.: in no uncertain terms they placed rights (of both individuals and the 13 colonies) ahead of state power. Had the New England colonies insisted on giving priority to centralized state power, it is doubtful that a unified country would ever have come into being.

A discussion of “state building,” if not clearly defined, is dangerous because it is all too easy for Westerners to assume that means “a Western-style state” or at least “a centralized state.” There is no consensus in many non-Western societies that such a political system is desirable, not to mention any ability to create or manage it for the good of the population (a point sometimes realized all too clearly in a Washington insistent on obedience).

Without both a social consensus that a centralized state is the goal and the ability to manage it for the good of the people, the infusion of aid may amount to empowering whatever predatory mafia may happen to agree to sell itself to the patron. Washington is not the only patron vulnerable to such errors:

The republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia are flashpoints, and Chechnya, newly pacified after years of war, is again experiencing a spate of terrorist attacks. Moscow’s strategy of buying off corrupt local elites in the region has not purchased stability. Islamist radicals thrive on official corruption, interclan warfare, and the heavy-handedness of the police and security services. [Dmitri Trenin, “Russia Reborn,” Foreign Affairs Nov-Dec 2009, 69.]

A better phrase would be “civil society building.” What pre-modern societies often do need is a hand in improving civil societies that, under the stress of interaction with the modern world, have ceased working. Somali civil society, for example, began to fail in the 1980’s after years of superpower interference succeeded only in substituting a nasty dictatorship for old decentralized, clan-based decision-making processes. Similarly, Afghan society was derailed by decades of superpower interference seeking to design modern centralized state structures from the top down. In neither case were the new state structures, when they existed at all, (e.g., tax collection agencies, health care provision agencies, police) effectively connected to the underlying social building blocks of clans, tribes, ethnicity, and religion.

Even after accepting that the focus should be on civil society rather than central government, a danger still remains. Civil society cannot be “built” from the top down or from the outside in. Yes, a supportive global community can help protect a Somalia or Yemen or Bangladesh or an Afghanistan from external threats, but “society,” by definition, is composed of links among the members (Robert Putnam’s bowlers). Incentives can be offered, but the “bowlers” have to decide on their own to bowl together.

Example of how everything can go wrong include when a strong central state imports modern weapons and then gasses the Kurds or uses helicopters to attack villagers in punishment for participating in traditional religious ceremonies that have been banned by a repressive centralized state (as Yemen’s President Saleh is accused of having done). This video of the aftermath of a U.S./Yemeni regime military attack on a dissident Yemeni movement in December 2009 is not an example of "building civil society." Since the military structure of state government is easier to build than, say, a health care system, and easier to misuse for private purposes, it moves almost inevitably to center stage when a modern, centralized regime is imposed on a premodern, decentralized society. Creating a powerful state before a powerful national civil society has arisen to prevent centralized state abuses of power is exactly the wrong way to go about creating stable, peaceful societies.

So if the creation of potentially oppressive state structures is a key mistake to be avoided, what might be some ways to do things right?

Sponsor civil society dialogue. Demand that any central government desiring Western support first accept the idea of a national dialogue to be followed up by real steps to address dissident demands. One could imagine, for example, conferences to which all dissident groups would be invited. Of course, a predatory regime will use this occasion to identify dissident spokespeople. Therefore, the West needs to be proactive in making its own contacts with those individuals, raising their international visibility, and warning the regime that their disappearance will be taken very seriously. Washington’s first step regarding Yemen should have been to sit down with the leaders of the Houthi and southern dissident groups, not the provision of arms to the regime. Dissident groups should learn that they have peaceful choices. The same argument of course applies to Hamas. It’s not about approval; it’s about stimulating the marketplace of ideas instead of the marketplace of militias. The U.S. should present itself as the defender of peaceful political participation, not as the defender of pet regimes.

Use international peacekeepers to protect civil society, not the regime. In contrast to the Somali model, where an African peacekeeping force supports the government, station international peacekeeping forces in all regions of the country but with direct links in each region to the regional political structure. The goal of the peacekeepers would be to prevent the military suppression of dissident groups in return for agreement by the dissident groups to refrain from violence, thus both offering incentives to behave peacefully and marginalizing those who refuse. In the Somali case, even the most extreme of the groups, al-Shabab, is composed of various sub-groups. In Afghanistan, the heterogeneous nature of “the Taliban” has been widely reported.

The regime, enamored of its own power and privilege, will of course argue that this would “promote disunity.” Precisely so. In a pre-modern society, disunity is the goal. No consensus exists on the form that unity should take. That is the whole point. Until civil society has achieved consensus, confederacy is wiser than centralization. Moreover, the artificial imposition of unity from the outside will almost always go wrong: from Polk’s misunderstandings of Mexican politics through the Vietnam War escapade to the abysmal ignorance of the neo-cons about the complexities of global Islam, history has shown that Washington does not have the eyesight to perceive the George Washingtons or Abraham Lincolns of traditional societies.

Form an American "People's" Party

Can national government that puts the interests of the American people ahead of short-term elite interests be achieved within the contemporary party structure?

The steady decline in U.S. national health care management, financial system regulation, environmental oversight, and national security in recent years—trends not reversed by the election of Obama—all point to one conclusion: it is time for the American people to start defending their interests against the elite. In each of the above arenas, the perspective of the elite is exactly the opposite of the perspective of the average citizen.

Health care. U.S. health care for the rich is superb; it is “only” the workers, not to mention the unemployed, and our elderly parents on pensions, and the children of young parents just beginning their careers who risk being denied affordable health care. Not only does the elite have no health care problem; the elite also benefits from the current lucrative health care industry by being able to invest with the certainty of a profitable return: there will always be plenty of sick people, and as long as the health care system is designed to make a profit, a profit is exactly what it will make.

Finance. As for the financial system, the glaring contradiction between the recent surge in Goldman Sachs profits marching step-in-step with the surge in unemployment says it all. The U.S. national financial system still contains a good bit of money (at least so long as the Chinese don’t call in their loans); the allocation of that cash is the issue, and since the beginning of the new and now evidently endless Federal bailout of bankers and Wall St. gamblers, the elite has had little reason to complain about the allocation of the cash.

Environment. The environment is not even perceived by the elite as a “separate system;” rather, it is, for them, part of the financial system…just like health care. The environment, for the elite, consists of such goodies as national forests that their corporations clearcut, leaving behind a desert that cannot return to normal forest growth. Surely, the government (i.e., the taxpayer) at least gets a reasonable return for selling the national wealth to corporations? Well, no, actually the ruling elite essentially gives the trees away, in a classic “socialism for the rich” escapade that voters are too lazy to protest.

National security. National security is a bit harder for the average person to understand. The rapid spread of U.S. military bases throughout the Mideast and Central Asia (castles literally built on sand), the endless military victories in every “face-to-face” encounter between the world’s most high-tech force and 19^th century insurgents, the dramatic media portrayals of the day’s little troop surge, and dominant position in national debate of stern-faced generals calling for more war (because the generals opposing war seem to get themselves sacked and then blacklisted by the compliant media) all give the impression that—whatever Washington may be doing to the rest of the world—at least U.S. national security is being well defended. Unfortunately, those foreign bases are like the dikes around New Orleans: imposing structures but not designed for the job. Those bases would have stopped Stalin’s late-1940s push into Iran cold; they would have stopped the Soviet 1978 invasion of Afghanistan cold. And they would serve marvelously as launching pads for regional aggression. But in the context of Iraq or Afghanistan, they are recruitment posters for al Qua’ida.

The bases, the surges, the endless expensive high-tech conflict all do have one undeniable characteristic, however: they are very good for business. Blackwater, by whatever name, is doing booming business running a mercenary army outside of Congressional control, and the need for weapons and machinery and construction is endless.

So for the elite, these four critical national problems that are as plain as day to citizens simply do not exist. The state of health care, the state of the financial system, the environment, and the state of national security are, for the rich and powerful, not problems but opportunities. Speaking in another era about a different issue, in his series of 1858 debates with Steven Douglas, Lincoln criticized Douglas’ defense of racism as “blowing out the moral lights around us, eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this American people” [as quoted in Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals, 207]. Lincoln argued that the “real issue” was “the same spirit that says, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle” [208].

Many problems in life are unfortunate situations that man must learn to cope with. It is important to remember that the state of U.S. health care, finances, the environment, and national security result from choices intentionally made by the ruling elite. The critical problems in all four arenas do not result from nature or foreign enemies; we Americans did it to ourselves. More specifically, the elite did it for private purposes while the rest of us were out at the mall.

The rich are surely deluding themselves if they imagine that their exploitative behavior can endure endlessly, but there is little reason to think that they are worrying much about the lives their children will live: the view of the complacent is a short-term one. As far as their own personal prospects are concerned, on the other hand, the rich tend to know exactly what they are doing.

It is, for example, now well known that Wall Street investors were so sensitive to the possibility that they would be indicted under anti-gambling laws for the highly dangerous new derivative investment practices they planned around the turn of the century that they persuaded their Congressional allies to pass a law exempting them from the anti-gambling statues. So they gambled, they lost—provoking the worst recession since the Great Depression in just five years, and right before leaving office the Bush Administration used taxpayer funds to compensate them for their losses. The Democratic side of the ruling group, complicit in passing the original exemption under Clinton, avoided any serious protest.

And the key national security decisions being made by Washington in recent years have been choices not necessities, far different than, say, the unpalatable constraints faced by decision-makers when Hitler began his global adventure. But it is not just the obvious fact that Iraq was a war of choice unrelated to the struggle against bin Laden that makes the current situation so different from facing an invasion. The original decision to respond to 9/11 with war rather than a police action was itself a choice, as was the decision to invade Afghanistan rather than give diplomacy a chance. The argument applies to any number of major decisions since 2001 as well, including the choice to destabilize the 2006 Palestinian regime after Hamas won a democratic electoral victory, the choice to support Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, and the choice to rely on threats rather than inducements to influence Iran. Needless to say, aside from the occasional protest of a Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel, the Democrats were fully complicit in the fundamental U.S. post-9/11 national security strategy as well.

Given the depressingly rapid evaporation of the enthusiasm evoked by the electoral message of “change,” it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Democratic side of the ruling elite is far too complicit in the fundamental elitist policies on health care, economics, the environment, and national security to offer a strategic alternative.

In sum, it appears that only a reorganization of the national political structure akin to that when the then-innovative and crusading Republican Party was invented in 1856 will open the door to the policies required to protect American society in the 21^st century.

The very secretive White House discussions about Afghanistan, discussions that evidently focused on tactics to the exclusion of any serious examination of fundamental strategy, are the most recent and most blatant case in point. Was the question of a non-military solution that addressed the needs of the Afghan people and the dangers of a global heroin epidemic even raised by the little group of military men and conservative politicians at Obama’s table? Does Obama even know Malalai Joya’s name? The rigid White House attitude toward Iran, at a point where the Iranian domestic decision-making process had obviously crumbled into incompetence and needed breathing space for restructuring, and utter caving in to pressure by Netanyahu complete the circle: the wagons of traditional national security thinking in Washington are drawn tight against the arrows of innovation.

Similar arguments could be made for the attitude toward alternative policy options in the other key arenas, but perhaps a brief checklist of what those alternatives might be will suffice:

• Empire – oppose it, for empire is democracy’s worst enemy; cut back foreign bases and resurrect diplomacy as the conflict resolution tool of choice; on Afghanistan, take the moral high road by focusing on ending the drug trade and minimize American boots on the ground by urging a global Islamic crusade to protect the Afghan population; on Israel, support the population but oppose the Greater Israel mini-empire project;

• Health care – a service and a right for all;

• Environment – start with strict enforcement of current laws to protect the nation’s air and drinking water; restructure the tax system to, at a minimum, make corporations pay reasonable market prices for access to national forests and mineral resources; include environmental degradation in calculations of cost;

• Economy – regulate first, compensate second; compensate individuals first, main street second, Wall St. last; tax to encourage work rather than financial manipulations (e.g., tax each derivative trade at a rate greater than the income tax rate paid by the average American worker).

Those are just a taste of the banquet of policy options available to a patriotic U.S. government dedicated to serving the American public. But getting there will require that the American people realize their own best interests and organize to defend them.

Government: Not Size, but Purpose

Good governments--big or small--exist to serve; bad governments exist to exploit. That is the issue.

Governments always exist. The issue is not the existence or size of government; rather, the issue is whom the government serves. As long as Americans waste their time debating the meaningless question of how big a government should be, reform will prove an illusion. Perhaps that is why so many who oppose reform insist on raising this straw man.

The first time a local bully demanded subservience as the price of avoiding a punch in the face, government was established...or, one might respond, the first time two neighbors shook hands and agreed to protect each other from roving wolves. When Goldman Sachs wanted its bailout to pay it back for gambling away billions of investor contributions, it demanded Big Government. When Big Oil wants a tax break, it too demands Big Government. And of course when the American voter wants the world’s best superhighway system, he and she also want Big Government. Big Government for me; Small Government for you.

To really understand politics, it is necessary to discriminate between governments for special interests and governments for all (i.e., for “society,” hence the label “socialism,” which has nothing much to do with Cold War communism but just means that the goal is to aid society rather than one group). Some of the shrill voices warning about “socialism” (e.g., Palin) may not know this; many of them do and mean exactly what they say. They oppose policies that are good for society because they badly want policies that favor their little group.

To rephrase, “Big Government” is not necessarily “socialist” nor does Small Government necessarily equate with freedom. That $19B that the American taxpayer will never again see was the ultimate in Big Government but totally capitalist, in the robber baron sense of using government to steal from the masses. The Middle Ages in Europe were classic “Small Government” – if you had a horse and a sword, you could pretty much do whatever you wanted, including grabbing a peasant girl, making a private empire in the Levant, or setting up a private toll booth to tax merchants.

When “Big Government” stops Hitler or provides a large free trade zone (e.g, the whole United States), I love it. When it bails out millionaire gamblers or bombs pre-industrial societies to protect stolen oil (no, no, I was referring to Churchill in the early 1920s in Iraq), I beg to demur.

“Big Government” for society has indeed built the world’s greatest highway system in the U.S. It also created a public education system accessible to all (like the highway system). The education system is not very good, but that’s a detail: if you don’t like it, you are free to go to the library or sign on the Internet (both also brought to you—all of “you”--courtesy of Big Government) and educate yourself further. That’s a clue: Big Government that provides and/or regulates a safety net available to all but does not restrict individuals from pursuing higher goals is Good Government. Big Government that takes from the weak and gives to the strong is Bad Government. So, generally, is government – Big or Small – that constrains everyone to the official choices (e.g., the Soviet system of telling people what they could read). The distinction is between government for private gain vs. government for service.

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Regulation

The small word "regulation" is of course the elephant in the room of evaluating the quality of government. For one of many horror stories that is effectively being concealed from the American people about the way life is and the terrifying way it could be if government regulation were even worse, read up on the state of America's nuclear plants.

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Just for one example, today we in the U.S. (other pre-industrial and industrial societies made different choices) have a health care system designed for health industry profit, i.e., for private gain. It works brilliantly for that purpose. The point of health care reform is to design a system for service. A reformed health care service (as opposed to a health care industry) will, if ever designed, not make a profit. The public education system and the national highway system don’t make profits either. They are not supposed to; they exist to serve society. So should the health care system. It would not offer everything; “everything” is a pipedream. It would offer a safety net—details to be discussed, but for everyone. You are of course free to buy more health care just as you are free to buy a private plane or buy a book. How much "service" the government will provide is open to discussion; the concept of equal access to all is not open to discussion – not with a government designed to serve society.

Judging Government

Among all the cute phrases dreamed up by humans, perhaps “political science” is the most humorous. (I claim to be a political scientist, so I can say that.) I mean, you have to admit, there is precious little science guiding the actions of our leaders in regards to, say, the war in Afghanistan or health care or the regulation of Goldman Sachs. To be a little more polite, let’s say that “political science” is a goal. To bring us one step closer to that goal, which would presumably enable the creation of decent government, I propose the following simple metric for judging the quality of every official act by politicians:

Was their action on balance “for the elite” or “for the people?”

I am a political scientist; I can make the implementation of this simple heuristic as complex as you like. It can be arithmetic or really mathematical (e.g., based on calculus) or complex or graphical or philosophical. A nice little graduate seminar could be held on the merits of the various methods.

The point remains, however: if a politician does something that advances the interests of the society in general, that politician has done good; if it is just the elite that benefits, the politician has done bad. If you want good government, you need to be able to tell the difference, whether you are a political scientist or a barber…or even a TV news commentator.

Newsletter Giving Highlights of This Blog

Announcing: Newsletter Now Published

"Governing for the People"

This "behind-the-news letter" will summarize the key issues discussed in the Shadowed Forest blog in order to expose the real nature of government. The theme is judging the degree to which government is designed for the benefit of the elite or the people, a distinction that those doing the governing of course go to great lengths to conceal.

Cultural Taboos Threaten American Progress

American culture is evolving in ways that pose increasingly dangerous and unnecessary constraints on the ability of American society to imagine effective solutions to the highly interconnected set of foreign policy, economic policy, environmental policy, and health policy problems it currently faces.

Politics in the U.S.—at the level of policy-making—has a degree of rigidity, narrow-mindedness, and short-sightedness that causes enormous harm to the security and quality of life of Americans. The artificial constraints that American voters and policy-makers impose on themselves, the unstated and unreasoned taboos that are accepted without a second thought, have the effect of preventing Americans from taking full advantage of their vast natural and intellectual resources. The result is a set of interlocked policies that needlessly undermine American security and worsen the general quality of life in American society.

Taboos obstructing honest evaluation of fundamental policy choices prevent American society from moving effectively in new and desperately needed directions. The American system is based on open debate to find answers to complex problems. That is the best system yet discovered for resolving national problems, but it only works when society faces its options honestly. New directions do exist for addressing this set of challenges, but the roads will only be found if we are willing to look for them.

Ironically, these fundamental decisions—precisely the ones meriting the most meticulous public debate—are typically the public policy decisions made with the least care, the least debate, the least thought. The results include a foreign policy based on military force even when force intensifies hostility; health care as a business rather than a right; environmental policy favoring consumption now rather than preservation for future generations; and an economic policy that has more or less steadily been enriching the super-rich and impoverishing the rest since the Reagan era.

The careful reader may notice an underlying similarity among the four policy arenas: a foreign policy based on force benefits the military-industrial complex, an environmental policy favoring consumption benefits corporations looking for short-term profits, the economic policy benefits the Wall Street, banking, and real estate businesses; the current health care system benefits the insurance and medical businesses. And all four harm the average American.

That American society now faces a crisis in each of these four major policy arenas--foreign policy, economic policy, environmental policy, and health care policy--is now fortunately becoming widely recognized, though at an enormous cost (a decade of war against radical Islam, a still-deepening recession made in Washington, declining environment [see the New York Times' expose this past week of corporate poisoning of the nation's drinking water], and one of the least effective health care systems in the modern world).

The economic decline of American society, just to take one example, over the last half century is easy to see if one only recalls that in the 1950s, a man could support a middle class family on his salary alone, that by the 1990s a middle class lifestyle required that both husband and wife work, and that today a rising percentage of families face the perilous situation of the wife being a temp without benefits while the husband is unemployed. The overall economic trend is not “a natural result of the rest of the post-WWII world catching up.” That excuse contains just enough truth to be marketable, but the real reason is socialism for the rich. “Socialism for the rich” is not just a cute slogan, though few people ever stopped to think about what it really means until last fall’s billionaire bailout brought the idea to everyone’s attention.

Given the current recession, perhaps the most obvious example of “socialism for the rich” is taxing wages but not the profits from derivatives. This policy, if one thinks about it, sends the clear message that the U.S. government discourages people from holding honest jobs and prefers that the rich gamble on the market and, in particular, gambles by inventing financial tricks that enable the rich to evade legal requirements for collateral, instead building financial houses of cards. A more traditional but equally scandalous type of “socialism for the rich” is allowing huge lumber companies to clear-cut national forests (perhaps the most precious natural resource in the possession of the American people) virtually without paying any compensation at all to the thus cheated American taxpayer and, needless to say, without being required to restore the forests. Anyone who is shocked at this revelation need only drive on a side road somewhere in Oregon, notice the fine line of trees, and then walk 50 feet off the pavement: behind the screen, all you will find in a shocking number of places is a national desert.

Similar analyses could easily be made for foreign policy, environmental policy, and health care policy. The broader point is to figure out why Americans have such trouble reforming public policy. It is far more subtle than just “crooked politicians.” American voters consistently support politicians who favor socialism for the rich, environmental destruction, military force as the core of foreign policy, and health care as a business to enrich insurance companies rather than a natural right of all Americans. Intellectually serious reform candidates ran in the recent presidential election under Republic, Democratic, and several third party labels.

At the heart of this self-defeating American attitude toward public policy lies American culture, and unfortunately American culture is evolving in exactly the wrong direction. In only the last couple decades the trends toward irresponsibility (“it’s society’s fault”), winner-take-all, and bullying (whether it’s bullying your neighbor on the highway or Muslims worldwide) have become all too visible. Combine these negative trends in general culture with some highly pernicious cultural taboos that prohibit the honest public analysis of our public policy options, and the result is a social system condemned to self-defeating governance.

Maybe violence and overwhelming military superiority are the only way to achieve security. Maybe we want a country with sick poor people and great health care reserved for the “important” people. Maybe we can destroy the environment to our heart’s content and just keep inventing new ways of surviving (yes, I actually read a book making exactly this argument). Maybe the historic capitalist boom-bust cycle is the best of all possible worlds. Maybe…but that conclusion is not obvious. It deserves debate.

Alternatively, maybe allowing Muslims (e.g., Palestinians) to have their own countries and to play by the same rules as everyone else (e.g., nuclear policy toward Israel and Iran) would lead to a more stable and secure world. Maybe the provision of free, public, basic health care with the emphasis on nutrition and disease prevention for all would create a richer and happier and more productive society. Maybe saving our forests for our children would create a stronger America. Maybe America would be a better country if tax policy were designed to encourage honest labor and discourage irresponsible forms of Wall Street or real estate financial manipulations.

These are all fair questions. They deserve debate.

• Should the U.S. continue to give a blank check to right-wing Israeli militarists trying to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their own land? Or should the U.S. support Israel reformers?
• Should Iran be denied the opportunity to emerge as a regional power or be forced to accept limitations on its nuclear capabilities that are not imposed on Israel or even Pakistan or India?
• Should we learn to build more environmentally acceptable homes (i.e., not out of wood) in order to save our remaining national forests?
• Should we keep the current health care business that has produced the richest medical and insurance companies on earth or pay to create a one-class society where the poor and the unemployed have basic health care?

Unfortunately, such core questions about public policy are considered “off-limits.” Or, at least, those profiting from the current system are trying very hard to sell that viewpoint.

Sure, everyone talks about health care and foreign policy and economics and the environment, but look at content of the debates: it focuses on details. Should we, perhaps, modify the degree of Wall Street regulation a bit (while still leaving the main offenders in business)? Should we, perhaps, talk to international adversaries (in order to get them to do what we previously used the threat of violence to achieve)? Should we, perhaps, add a few soldiers in uniform to your Muslim country of choice or should we use mercenary forces out of uniform (but without altering the goal of our war)? Should we, perhaps, pass a new environmental protection law (but without holding corporate executives criminally responsible for their cheating on the laws already passed)? Should we, perhaps, add a sliver of the disadvantaged to the rolls of those favored with health insurance (but surely without endangering the massive profits of the health care industry)?

The basic questions that address fundamental direction are seldom voiced. They are taboo.

• A foreign policy of true compromise with reformist Islam is a taboo subject.
• A health care policy that rejects socialism for the health care industry and institutes socialism for the disadvantaged is a taboo subject.
• An environmental policy that punishes corporate polluters and preserves the environment (allowing economic functions only within those constraints) is a taboo subject (the recent New York Times expose of corporations polluting the nation’s drinking water notwithstanding).
• A financial system that controls exploitation and stimulates responsible productivity is a taboo subject.

Americans do have certain cultural/political advantages. Perhaps the greatest is the consensus that those who break taboos are not killed, so, yes, I can voice these complaints in safety, something I would not be able to do in, say, China, Saudi Arabia, or Iran. While I am grateful for this, it does not invalidate my argument. Taboos work more subtly in the U.S.: those who violate them may speak; they are simply ignored. In terms of having influence, if you challenge taboos, you will be cut out of the debate, will no longer be heard, will effectively no longer exist except as an official nonperson, an “…ist,” as in “racist, socialist, leftist.” In (we imagine) highly stable but tenuous Neolithic times, banishment of those who broke village taboos by speaking out may have enhanced group survival; in the contemporary rapidly evolving world, it invites disaster.

The U.S. has an historic power advantage over its adversaries (even after a decade of behaving like a rogue elephant), the best academic establishment on earth, and enormous resources. These advantages give American society an incredibly fruitful array of options. That is, Americans have the collective power to do an unimagined range of different things...if they can open their minds sufficiently to imagine taking new directions toward a fundamentally more just and effective society. Whatever the route to a perfect society, we will never find it (or even succeed in treading water in today's world) if we censor ourselves from discussing the basic options about the fundamental direction of public policy.

Learning to Govern...from Wolves!

Even wolves seem to govern themselves better than the U.S. has been doing recently...

“An alpha animal may be alpha only at certain times for a specific reason, and, it should be noted, is alpha at the deference of the other wolves in the pack….The social structure of a wolf pack is dynamic – subject to change, especially during the breeding season – and may be completely reversed during periods of play.” [Barry Holstun Lopez, Of Wolves and Men, p. 33.]

Compare this wisely flexible social sophistication with the winner-take-all attitude that has been gaining increasing domination over U.S. society during the last decade or two. In the U.S., a politician, bureaucrat, or corporate executive is increasingly likely to have the ability to enforce his or her control all the time, across all issues to the limits of that leader’s purview regardless of his or her competence on the issue under consideration. Managers can sneer at staff scientists, politicians haughtily dismiss the results of their own review committees, and arbitrarily make and enforce decisions based on nothing but their own personal, uninformed preferences.

Such immature and irrational behavior is not only not widely condemned, it is lauded as demonstrating a trait now increasingly perceived in the U.S. as among the most meritorious of all: “toughness.”

And wolves have had the reputation of being wild and uncivilized beasts!

The above glib generalizations surely do not apply everywhere to the degree that they apply at management levels in Washington and on Wall Street, and I would welcome counterexamples as rays of hope for the future. That said, the argument is serious and the results harmful to society.

A foreign policy based on the military suppression, with endless slaughter of noncombatants, of social movements (e.g., radical Islamic protest against Western domination of the global political system) is a prime example of the harm that can result from granting uninformed leaders the power to ignore the counsel of experts and make arbitrary decisions.

A second outcome of this mode of socio-political organization is the confused health reform debate currently raging across the land. Uninformed politicians are tossing out a stream of ideas, while all ignore the specialists who understand that the core issue is whether or not in a modern civilized and democratic society, health care should be a profit-making business or a “right.”

When policy is controlled by “winners” rather than people with knowledge, it tends to be arbitrary, ineffective, counter-productive or even carefully designed to benefit only the policymaker. These traits appear clearly not just in the counterproductive military attacks on Muslims or the endless decades of argument over the health care mess that never produce real reform but in the perfectly needless recession created from scratch by tough but self-focused or brainless “leaders” who never bothered to think that bubbles always burst, in the idiotic faith that Iraqis would welcome U.S. invaders “with flowers.”

Even wolves seem to realize something Americans don’t – that leadership should be about more than “toughness;” it should be a function of competence.

Boom for the Rich

America is becoming a two-class society - the rich are booming, and the rest are declining toward third world status.

Don’t believe the hype about the recession ending. Note carefully how much money is being earned by those who call for patience. The elite wants you to think the economy is doing well because, for the elite it is. The rich really are getting richer, as a result of that nice trillion dollar buyout, although these days there may perhaps be fewer of them.

The reality unfortunately appears to be that the U.S. is being transformed into something like a third world economy for the mass of the population with an increasingly irresponsible “party elite” (as in “having a party”) perched like a monstrous fungus on top.

As for the overall economy, the recession is deepening. A quarter of a million new job losses occurred in August, to which you must add the roughly 125,000 per month required to keep up with population growth, for a real deficit of about 375,000. A big chunk of that came from construction, which contracted despite it being summer. One can only imagine what we may face in February.

More importantly, the gap between the rich and the rest, growing since the days of Reagan, is continuing to grow despite the recession. This gap undermines American democracy but was (barely) tolerable when the whole economy was booming. With the government skimming trillions – literally! – off the top of a declining earning base to reward Wall Street billionaires, the widening gap between the rich and the rest is no longer tolerable.

The proper way to manage a recession is not to enrich the rich but to keep people employed doing useful work and staying in their homes. Today, the politician/banker team would rather see homeowners on the street and their homes in foreclosure, slowly rotting away. Would it not be better for the banks to hire the homeowners to maintain the houses in return for being allowed to live in them? But no, the banks are just letting the vacant houses pile up. Ever wonder what will happen to the value of your home when the banks finally put all those houses on the market?

FDR’s visionary efforts to regulate banks and hire the unemployed to build hiking trails are forgotten in this economic catastrophe. Instead, protected by its Washington buddies, Wall Street executives concentrate on coming up with new ways of stealing money from the working class. The latest scheme is to bundle your life insurance policies for sale in a nice tidy package to rich investors, who bet that you will die fast enough to provide them with a profit. So…why should they agree to replace the current health care system that is designed to generate profits for the industry with one designed to keep people alive?

Why Americans are having such a hard time waking up to this social grand larceny is a mystery. It is shocking enough that Americans are in denial about the behavior of Washington in distant places like Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia (hint: Iraq, Iran, and Somalia have oil; Gaza has gas that the Israelis are stealing; Afghanistan/Pakistan is proposed as a pipeline route from Central Asia; can’t have those places acting independent). But oil isn’t the only issue; policy toward such regions is surely complicated.

However, the mismanagement of the U.S. economy by the Washington/Wall St. tag team of good buddies is not some distant mystery. We all know what they are doing, and we can all see the effect – the foreclosures, the unemployment, the vacant storefronts.

Forget it. Don’t get yourself upset. Just go watch TV…until the sheriff comes to kick you out of your house. After all, you can always get a job in Afghanistan!

Victory in FATA: One Toothache at a Time

The way to win the conflict with terrorists is not through a military
struggle for domination but through social networks - one tribesman with a
toothache, one unemployed father, one schoolchild at a time. Sustained, low-key, flexible, delicate, bottom-up (i.e., helping individuals) solutions will be the key to success. [See also "Confrontation With Islam," Dec 10.]

The essay below by Ashley Bommer in Pakistan's Daily Times about what is missing from U.S. policy toward Pakistan's tribal regions and how the U.S. could develop a positive policy is so important that I have reprinted it in full.

Ms. Bommer points out how a policy of socio-economic suppport rather than military suppression might be devised by working through accessible social networks to make contact with people who are current inaccessible to the West...but very much accessible to competing networks. The way to win the conflict with terrorists is not through a military struggle for domination but through social networks - one tribesman with a toothache, one unemployed father, one schoolchild at a time.

Tribes versus terrorists

Ashley Bommer

Because the US has no presence on the ground in any capacity, Americans are seen as the aggressors, and the militants are seen as the protectors. There are a few exceptions; in Bajaur, for example, some tribesmen regard the militants as the enemy and are fighting back. Sitting next to a four-foot-tall water pipe, I asked the tribal leader in front of me: What does victory mean to you? He sputtered smoke, raised his bushy white eyebrows, and said, “Victory. How can you have victory here?”

The United States went into Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda. But seven years later, what has the US achieved? It has spent over $170 billion in Afghanistan, and yet Al Qaeda and the Taliban are growing stronger. We know that the road to the heart of Al Qaeda now leads to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan. Last month, Vice President-elect Joe Biden, referring to Al Qaeda leadership said, “That’s where they live. That’s where they are. That’s where it will come from. And right now [the threat] resides in Pakistan.”

Yet the US has no presence in the FATA. It has little contact or communication with its people and leaders. It provides little support, healthcare, or aid to the population there. America sends in missiles and air strikes that infuriate the people rather than aid and emissaries to engage them. It is no surprise that the US has not won their support.

But there is a way to do so. People who have influence in the “unsettled” tribal areas live nearby, in settled areas. These tribesmen move to the settled areas for economic and security reasons, and they are the lifelines of their home villages. The US must establish dialogue with and services for these influential people in order to build a bridge to the tribesmen in the unsettled FATA areas. These leaders already know the tribal chiefs, spiritual leaders, and tribal customs and codes. They also know who the enemy is and can play a role in isolating militants from local people.

A friend from the region described the FATA as “a forgotten age” where only the “law of the jungle” prevails. These unsettled areas have become infiltrated by a multinational anti-state terror network (Al Qaeda, Taliban, the Haqqani network, and roughly 14 definable anti-state elements operating in the FATA alone), which the US government calls “anti-coalition militias” and are far more sinister and interconnected than the West imagines. With five years of Iraqi experience — and powerful communication and financial support behind them — this network is growing rapidly.The FATA tribesmen are completely aware of this situation. When asked, “If Osama bin Laden was in the house next door, would you notify the authorities?,” the answer from the tribesmen I met was a resounding “no.” As Frederick Mackeson, a British colonial officer, observed of the tribesmen in 1850, “their fidelity is measured by the length of the purse of their seducer, and they transfer their obedience according to the liberality of the donation.”While the enemy weaves in and out of the tribal areas, living and interacting with the people, the US fights the war against Al Qaeda superficially through military air strikes and covert special operations. Homes are destroyed and people die.

And, because the US has no presence on the ground in any capacity, Americans are seen as the aggressors, and the militants are seen as the protectors. There are a few exceptions; in Bajaur, for example, some tribesmen regard the militants as the enemy and are fighting back — for now.According to the Pakistani Centre for Research and Security studies, 90 percent of the FATA’s inhabitants live below the poverty line, earning less than two dollars a day. To a newborn, life will be a struggle for survival in a war zone.

It is not just America’s presence that is lacking. The Pakistani government provides little to no services in this area. And the international community is absent as well.The links between the settled and unsettled areas started over a century ago. Facing tribal unrest and incessant fighting, the British proposed to settle the tribes from Waziristan (present-day North Waziristan and South Waziristan) in British territory. The Secretary of State wrote to Queen Victoria, “The pacification of border tribes by preserving in the exercise of humanizing influences is more likely to be permanent than their subjection by military force....[and would] afford a reasonable prospect of rendering the people on the frontier line between our territories and Afghanistan peaceful and friendly neighbors.”The British moved some members of the tribes from the unsettled areas of the frontier to the settled (colonial) areas. Prior to this policy, the British had spent 15 years and countless funds repressing and punishing the tribes, without result. The essence of British policy continues today in the FATA.

There are effective local organizations, such as the Sarhad Rural Support Program (SRSP), with which the US could cooperate immediately in the settled areas to get started. These organizations work with the people to assess their needs and then build the institutions to deliver care. SRSP has the capacity; they just need direction and financial support in order to expand. Once dialogue and cooperation are established with the tribesmen in the settled areas, inroads can be laid into the tribal unsettled areas.

Yes, the British were ultimately defeated. But they left a unique roadway to the FATA through the adjoining settled areas. It is time to get back in the driver’s seat.

Technical note for analysts:
Ashley Bommer paints a picture of some 14 distinct anti-Western networks that are currently expanding operations in the region and strengthening cooperative links among themselves. Any social network analyst would immediately see this as an exceedingly dangerous structure because of its combination of flexibility, resilience, dispersion, and adaptability. Many conclusions can be inferred from even this simple description, e.g., that their goals and modes of behavior and willingness to compromise will differ; that the use of force against them will push them together; that no obvious target for attack will exist; that the nature of the threat will adapt rapidly and unpredictably; that opposing them with rigid, hierarchical external pressure will work about as well as punching a pillow to make it flat; that, regardless of the force, energy, resources, determination employed, bigger--from the perspective of anyone competing with these anti-Western networks--will probably not be better. Rather, sustained, low-key, flexible, delicate, bottom-up (i.e., helping individuals) solutions that fit into niches voluntarily offered to them by the local culture will be the key to success.

Do We Still Know How to Govern Ourselves?

All of our big national systems--national security, finance, health care, and governance--are in crisis. This pattern of failure suggests that fixing the mess will involve more than just replacing individuals or parties. Rather, these systems have become so complex that one wonders if American society still knows how to manage them.

Today, America’s most critical national systems have all become complicated beyond the comprehension of any single managing entity. Regardless of intent or determination, they can quite simply no longer be controlled.

First is what I will call the “national security system,” by which I mean both the protection of the U.S. and the conduct of foreign policy (which is associated but broader, in that it concerns not only U.S. security but other international goals). Second is the financial system, which I mean to encompass not just Wall Street and banks but the whole economy. Third is the health care system, including not just doctors and hospitals but also insurance. One could include other systems, such as one of looming significance – the system of maintaining the environment, but I will conclude the list of critical national systems for the purposes of this essay with the most important of all: our system of governance, encompassing democracy based on civil rights, tolerance for dissent, parties with different policies, and separation of powers.

Today, the national security system, the financial system, the health care system, and the system of governance all are not just too complicated for any single individual or managing entity to understand but seem to have become complicated beyond the ability of society as a whole to manage effectively. Widely divergent in terms of process, function, and the particulars of the challenges each faces, these four major national systems nevertheless share the obvious “feature” that each is in crisis. It can hardly be doubted that if all four national systems are simultaneously in crisis, then the nation as a whole truly faces a challenge. Beyond that rather obvious conclusion, this pattern begs the question: Do we have the knowledge to manage our increasingly complicated society?

As our technology and power and desire to satisfy all of society increase, we intentionally build more and more elaborate systems to deliver the goods. The more democratic we become, the higher the proportion of citizens who have significant involvement in designing these systems, which means that they become more complicated, like a house with many competing carpenters. Big, complex social systems tend to evolve without clear central direction, i.e., to evolve on their own, leaving society to keep up as best it can.

Partly as a result of this process of evolution and partly as a result of gratuitous mismanagement by executives intent on abusing the system, all of these systems are now teetering on the edge of a cliff. It would, of course, be easy to focus on the abuse, as innumerable articles in the media have done concerning the financial system since the Federal bailouts began during the fall of 2008. Important as abuse may be, to focus on it misses the deeper issue of whether or not we still have the capacity effectively tomanage the core systems of our society.

More ominously than suggested by the above metaphor of systems “teetering on the edge of a cliff, they stand like mountaineers roped together with rubber bands, every jiggle of each system throwing all the others off balance. When standing on the edge of a cliff, it is advisable to plant one’s feet firmly on what little ground there is. If, instead, you are not only jiggling but fail to recognize why you are jiggling, then you “have a situation.”

Having just observed that no one person or group can even understand the functioning of one of these major national systems, we are now forced to conclude that in order to manage society effectively, we must grasp how they all function together! Are we in the midst of a war that “must take precedence” over all else? Are we facing a financial crisis that “must be resolved first”? Sorry, in our modern world, the only answer that will work is to resolve the problems of each in the context of all the others (though certainly not necessarily in lock-step since the time scales of key dynamics in these systems vary, imposing yet another layer of complexity).

Among the various easily overlooked systemic factors contributing to the mess are at least two that must be understood. First, these critical national systems are constantly “self-adapting,” i.e. adapting as the result of a multitude of internal changes planned by no one. The second easily overlooked systemic factor impacting the evolution of these national systems is that each system affects all the others.

We need to learn to view these individual systems (or “sub-systems” of the “American system”) as complex entities that are both very complicated and constantly in the process of changing on their own, without direction from any responsible human agency, where “responsible” means people officially charged with managing. Instead, myriad lower-level individuals make endless unofficial, untracked, misunderstood decisions. These decisions are either unknown or at least their long-term implications are unknown even though they add up to forces that fundamentally reshape the system. These systems change for two reasons: because they are made up of a large number of interconnected components that are constantly jostling around, pushing each other in myriad directions and because each subsystem is connected with all the others.

The result is that the system evolves via self-adaptation into something that is not only new but unplanned: no one is in control. This, as one might expect, leads to surprise. Since society has already put a great deal of effort into designing these systems to maximize output, it should come as no surprise that the surprises generated by our loss of control are usually unpleasant.

The details of the dynamics pushing this process in contemporary America are essentially unknown, but much can be said by way of shedding light on the subject. Stay tuned…and contribute your own insights!