Maidsafe Evangelist Profile - Niall Douglas of The Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation

[chadrickm]

@ned14

Employee and customer owned corporations are highly successful economic units and compete head to head with capital owned corporations, and have done so since their inception with the Rochdale Principles. They are at their zenith in Europe where they began followed by South America, but even the US has a surprising concentration - I vaguely remember reading that 60% of US agriculture is directly produced by cooperatives, and 80% mostly so.

That said, they are no panacea. They have their own pathologies.

So am I being naive or not? Can you explain more about the diseases you see within these types of organizations? As I understand what you mention below and define myself as simply corporate welfare or crony capitalism (ultimately socialism) no matter if it’s done by a coop with many members and thus influence or by those that buy influence to get their agenda’s passed. Beyond this what are more of the pathologies in your opinion?

@ned14

The UK’s Cooperative Group which are a sort of “customer owned conglomerate” and are an enormous retail presence in the UK are probably going to have to be bailed out soon by the UK taxpayer. That happens, on average, every 25 years or so. What is unfair is that despite competing directly agains the other three big food retailers, they are the only ones who get direct government support like that.

[ned14]

@chadrickm

That said, they are no panacea. They have their own pathologies.

So am I being naive or not? Can you explain more about the diseases you see within these types of organizations? As I understand what you mention below and define myself as simply corporate welfare or crony capitalism (ultimately socialism) no matter if it’s done by a coop with many members and thus influence or by those that buy influence to get their agenda’s passed. Beyond this what are more of the pathologies in your opinion?

Unhindered capitalism taken to scale tends to lead to a tyranny of the few. Unhindered cooperatives taken to scale tends to lead to a tyranny of the many. Government is in fact a very good example of the ultimate consumer owned cooperative, the electorate quite literally own the government, with the exception of the remaining monarchies, but in the end democracy makes it the same thing: just as a consumer owned corporation will give one voting share to each member, so do democratically elected governments, and thus outcomes are similar.

So, as much as cooperatives are a great solution for anything with significant public goods, or where there is very slow innovation combined with high barriers to entry (farming and insurance are great examples, telecommunications or most public utilities are another), and indeed the empirical economic literature is fairly clear that these types of organisation are optimally efficient, they are pretty terrible for anything involving innovation, or any other form of rapid change, or anything with low barriers to entry. This is why our present society has the business form makeup it does.

I wouldn’t get so hung up on socialism vs capitalism. There is no actual difference, they both came from similar philosophical roots, and you can get a highly capitalist aggressive cooperative (my Canadian banking service is good example, they have just swallowed three other cooperatives this year alone) just as you can get a highly socialist shareholder owned business (Google is a classic example). The corporate form is nothing like as important as the organisational culture and to an extent its leadership in determining whether a form does good or bad on average.

Niall

[chrisfostertv]

The corporate form is nothing like as important as the organisational culture and to an extent its leadership in determining whether a form does good or bad on average.

Cybernetics seems to have been designed to flatten the hierarchy, thereby changing the organisational culture?

For anyone interested in this topic, this video is a good overview:

UMS The Universal Management System, Goodbye to Organization Charts

[dirvine]

This is another amazing series from Adam Curtis perhaps even more so than the mayfair set (IMHO). It reaffirms some of my thoughts for sure and shows very surprising facts about Freedom and manipulation etc. Like everything there is no panacea and we need to learn from history for sure. Of course digital freedom for me seems much more of a no brainer just now. As long as its not controlled by computers who judge people of course. Thats too big an area to even contemplate. As we move on though if we allow programs with a ton of if statements and lack of fundamental algorithms then we will be up the creek. I think deep rooted fundamental rules are vital for moving forward, quick scripts and db queries are the enemy in much of those matters. Overcomplexity kills most things and we do a great job in our societies of just that, so this is a great series to watch while coding to make a better world

Disclose.tv – Observing world events unfold in the grand theater of our time.

[chrisfostertv]

I think the Adam Curtis film that most relates to algorithms would be

All watched over by machines of loving grace

[ned14]

It isn’t for no reason that the long term best selling book on statistics is called “How to lie with statistics”

BTW Chris have you read “The Confessions of an Economic Hitman?” yet?

Niall

[chrisfostertv]

@ned14

have you read "The Confessions of an Economic Hitman?

His other books: Shapeshifting, The World Is As You Dream It, Psychonavigation, Spirit of the Shuar

Not buying into his hitman story…

[ned14]

@chrisfostertv

His other books: Shapeshifting, The World Is As You Dream It, Psychonavigation, Spirit of the Shuar

Not buying into his hitman story…

Heh. Yeah, I’m told he’s much less space cadet when you meet him in person. But it’s a bit like the guy who stared at goats, if you’ve ever watched that docu on him you are never quite sure if he’s for real or not, equally from FOIA he does seem to have worked where and when he claimed, and I should not be surprised that an org as large as the US military would maintain a capacity for fringe ideas and approaches. After all it’s pennies of budget relatively speaking, and probably for an outsized occasional payback given the very low investment cost.

Niall