Top down government and top down business- its the same issue. Opprression is oppression. We fix what is closest to us first.
No it isnât. Business is voluntary and government isnât.
I can quit my job and work for a good leader, if my current company is lead by a bad one.
Governments make you do things and not do things and you have no recourse aside from going to jail or leaving the country (if that is even allowed)
Leaving the country, quitting your job, top down systems lead to the same place.
Not really⌠I can get another job in a few days.
My boss cannot send men with guns to make me do anything.
Companies do not have anything near the power of governments.
I like you. I respect your life time of experience and dedication and the fact that you are here. I also recognize youâre old enough to be my dad and have the same kind of perspective both of my father(s) plural had. I think it was Suarez that without my knowing it installed this perspective, but in retrospect I am grateful. At least its some hope for a better future and he had to have gotten it from a lot of smart people who had thought about it for a long, long time. But I am not Suarez and wonât be able to be remotely as persuasive. Suarez had enough real world business experience so that he didnât misrepresent or short shrift anything and heâs always been optimistic but sober about the odds in the books I encountered. It wasnât the liberal slant either, I think he strikes a balance that appeals to the sensibilities of most readers of his stuff.
I seriously doubt I am older than you.
I am a X, from what I could tell youâre a boomer.
Way too young to be a boomer
Opps I meant X for me.
@jreighley and @Warren I think a lot of this discourse is not adding value to the topic, and would have been better handled in PM between yourselves.
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Ok.
Typical vertical companies have suggestions boxes which is a kind of anonymous feed back system. Take it all the the way and flatten the organization into a conflict of interest free cooperative and a two way anonymous suggestion box for dialog.
If we would have had credit unions instead of banks, especially in the US the 2008 might have been avoided. Why even allow banks when they are inferior in every way? A credit union isnât trying to make money off of you. I can provide everything a bank can (yes they could be scaled) but the conflict of interest is gone and is the tendency toward monopoly. At worst they would make you money. Banks have proven themselves dangerous, the US had several fights over banks and central banks, one way to make states more livable would be to solidly and permanently replace banks with credit unions.
Also notice that in a credit union you have the perfect model of a DAO and even the model of a possible future pure software DAO with no employees, customers take the place of all the human roles. A credit union is a perfect stabilizing anti speculation device that helps retain the utility of money but cuts the edges off.
Let me note as well that in truly flat cooperative without supervisors, managers, execs, boards, stock holders with something like a real time anonymous decision making system, you donât end up needing a union (also owned by no one) as happened with the recent marriage of USX and Mondragon. Decentralization in all of its forms hardens society makes it more stable, especially in the work place. We have to begin to start exercising our decision making power over ourselves if we are going to be free.
And that means we do it at work all the time and without exception. When we make enough decisions on our own and get used to taking action under our own volition we rise above the power and reach of money we rise as a middle class and we cease to have a useless money dominated society. Thatâs getting our spine back.
I concur. Warren has on several different occasions advocated for what he sees as undesirable behaviors as being banned or made âillegalâ which in turn implies government and hierarchy which he claims to oppose. Seems rather contradictory to me.
So as for what youâve described of your plan @Warren without rehashing the entire thing let me see if I get this straight. You propose to create a type of forum in which there are anonymous discussion groups. Each of these discussion groups are comprised of a small to medium amount of people who are versed in the topic they are to discus. Each can cast a vote using a checkbox or some such method. Decisions that result from these discussions are not forced on others but are then what? Opted by other discussion groups or parties for implimentation?
In âourâ image? Are you calling yourself an empathy handicapped psychopath? Speak for yourself dude. Also consider the nuclear family is largely a product of the military industrial complex. Before that we had large extended families, clan families, that would act as oneâs support network. You kind of NEED large families when working farmland. And then there are the tribal communities of the First Nations. Again you NEED a strong sense of community if youâre going to survive living off the land. So just because right now the average American (and keep in mind not all of us are Americans) status quo is a nuclear family that doesnât mean EVERYONE adopts that lifestyle nor does that mean thatâs how itâs always been or how it always has to be for every culture.
Given that most families are non democratic I donât see why. And how do you define âinvoluntary statesâ?
Oh sure if you consider for thousands of years brand new.
Since when? What history books have you been reading? Which cultures have you been examining?
Then why would people be motivated to get off their asses and work in your system? People are motivated by how you make them FEEL. What is the motivational drive you are trying to promote? Why should people contribute to the projects you present? Why should anyone care if they donât get any recognition? But I think the real point is you arenât taking peopleâs feelings and motivations into consideration.
Yeah actually you do have to prove efficiency if you want people to invest in your system. I donât want you building some common core math system that teaches kiddies that 2 + 2 = 5 just because it makes them feel good. An ineffective and ineffiencent system isnât going to benefit anyone.
Yeah actually they do. Thatâs the point. To make change happen you make the old system obsolete. To make something obsolete you need to be more efficient and better than it.
Does it lead to slavery? First off fascism is not capitalism. Get that through your head. The corporation itself is not a capitalist entity as it requires the government to even exist and it requires the government to support itâs existence. THINK ABOUT THAT! Things like corporate welfare, subsidies, copyright, having some products banned (marijauna for instance) and some products made legal without question (oil for instance). How corporations and governments constantly scratch eachotherâs backs, how politicians are employed by corporations (take a look at how many government positions are filled by Monsanto higher ups). All of this is not capitalism, itâs FASCISM. Donât confuse the two. But more than this you say the average American is suffering as a wage slave? Did you take into consideration that the value of the dollar has dropped significantly and is continuing to drop? Have you taken into consideration the rise in the price of food? Or that the relative price of buying a house has gone up. Have you also taken into consideration any of the government regulations on any of these industries? Have you considered the fact youâre using debt based currency or that nations around the world are abandoning the U.S. dollar? Have you considered that as Monsantoâs stock falls, and that 90% of the food in the U.S. is GMO, that maybe they would up the prices? Or have you considered that the drought in Cali where a sizable portion of your food is grown would also affect food prices.
Have you also considered that complaining about hierarchies is not going to change any of this? Becoming self sustaining will.
They are also ignorant gits that watch television and think the news means anything. I have no sympathy. The sheep can go die at the slaughterhouse and go watch the Survivor while theyâre at it.
No my historically ignorant friend that is FEUDALISM and has been with us since the Roman Empire upon which the United States is largely based. Please pick up a history book sometime. Also if you examined law youâd see that we are in fact still considered property by the state so really what you summerize there isnât surprising. Of course they are treating their citizens as property. To the elites the citizenry ARE property, just serfs. But that isnât a product of CAPITALISM that is a product of EMPIRE and IMPERIALISM. Not to mention youâre confusing your political systems and your economic systems here. Capitalism is an economic model but what you are discussing are largely political models such as totalitarianism, fascism, impirialsim or democracy.
I agree somewhat. Once you allow lobbying, that is vote buying, your democracy has gone bye bye and youâre on the steady road towards utter plutocratic fascism. Although thatâs not to say democracy and capitalism canât coexist, you just have to keep the money out of the voting booths. However doing that is nigh impossible so youâre back to square one. Personally I donât really believe in democracy for this very reason because itâs inherently corruptable. Democracy only seems to work small to medium scale, it doesnât scale to larger populations too well without becoming unstable.
No itâs about about might makes right at all. Itâs about attatchment. Werenât you paying attention? Show me a mammalian species anywhere that DOESNâT attach in a hierarchal manner. Power dynamic + empathy = attatchment. Power dynamic - empathy = bully. There is that simple enough for you? I gave you links to the talks by Gordon Neufeld for a reason.
Also you disagree based on what evidence? There is plenty of psychological evidence to back up this position. What evidence do you have to refute it?
Walk into a bdsm community sometime and say that. If the Doms donât get to you first the subs will tear you to pieces for being so disrespectful and presumptuous. And AGAIN you are proposing your ideals be enforced on everyone. One moment you are bashing hierarchies and the next youâre creating them. Seems you only donât like hierarchies if they donât serve your purposes.
Not if you are ATTACHED to the person giving the orders. If youâre not attached then youâre right youâll rebel like all hell but if you are attached then itâs a different story. (Or flip it around if youâre on top and giving the orders.) The state knows this all too well. Thatâs why they have created schools so that children will become attatched to the state and not to their parents, and therefore fear the state and obey it instead of rise up against it. This is also why they make everyone in the military look the same and why your drill sergent is such an asshole, because they want you to bond with your team mates and hate your drill sergent. Itâs all about manipulating people and their bonds of attachment.
Some would call this the basis of psychopathy. Since how can one make an empathetic decision without emotional context.
Okay I think Iâm starting to see what you mean by âleadership.â You arenât talking about actual consentual leadership where one is supporting, nurturing and caring for those that follow them. Youâre talking about conquest at the point of a gun. âObey me or else.â Am I far off?
As I said. itâs empathy that makes the difference.
Oh and just in case you forgot. Ant colonies are also hierarchies, just like any other social insect colony, they have Queens at the top ordering around all the other ants. While maidsafe uses ants as an analogy for how itâs structured and programmed in real life there is no abolition of herarchies.
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People make their own decisions about what they are going to do together, these are agreements and it implies that if there is no agreement deliberation continues.
Typo.
Yes and that would seem to be why small cooperatives would seem like the most natural structure. I see these as groups of people who care about each other working together face to face for their mutual benefit .Its not a system of domination where there is constant worry about face saving, mutiny and uprising and all the waste, damage and stunted potential that creates.
Hence the cooperative decision system to help foster ongoing agreements and cut down on disputes and to help resolve disputes without matriarchal or patriarchal power structures.
Completely brand new given how long we were in the flat face to face states which by some accounts were not perfectly flat in some areas, but still quite egalitarian where they were flat.
Its the anthropological record, its prehistory and maybe pre-language and tools.
No I am. Its stuff Edwards W. Demming explored in his TQM. You donât recognize one because it comes at the expense of the non recognition of others. People who are properly motivated donât need little gold stars from an authority figure, its demeaning and immature anyway. They get it from their human face to face contacts when things are working right. They know they are esteemed without the self appointed score keeper. And again we reform systems and fit systems to people not fitting people to systems which is what recognition games are about, they are attempts to get people to jump through hoops and reinforce hierarchy. Appeals to ego.
These arenât about investment, thatâs the wrong model. Not asking for peopleâs money and its strings. Again and again efficiency and effectiveness isnât really the point, this isnât a return on equity game, its about ending that nonsense and helping people to find self reliance. Its about making sure they are able to be self directing and capture all of the gains of the labor and donât have it siphoned off by people who claim their waiving money around in the distant past entitles them to control and the majority of gain for ever.
No its radically better and more resilient just based on who captures the gain. And again hopefully people begin to cut the non democratic corporates out, they donât work for them and they buy from them. This model is already proven at its cooperative level. 1 in seven people globally. In the US over 3 trillion in assets and 500 billion in revenues annual. Its proven in credit unions. But here we are discussing automation and techniques to make them even better and flatter. But they kick but and are growing just based on where the gains go, they donât go to disconnected parasites. I think this is a model that can replace the state and the corporations. It is not the top down models of socialism or capitalism. But lets not kid ourselves social democracy top down socialism like in Norway and Sweden has always been life and death better than unrestrained Capitalism like the kind Teddy Roosevelt faced, thatâs always about treating people like livestock.
Iâve considered all of those things and its just part of the wage slaver narrative and privatizing all gains for the wealth and socializing risk. All those things were done in the US starting in the 70 in a response by elites to the threat of automation, including de-linking wages from inflation and ALEC and thousands upon thousands of other policy aims- stuff like the Powell memo. You can find this stuff in Jeremy Rifkenâs âThe End of Work.â Capitalism doesnât need to be defended, its the system that is failing and has never been good enough. Facism is on of the forms its prone to taking, its one of its liabilities. No matter what they say capitalism is a top down system, its not this Garden of Eden pablum. Its about banker (capital) control more than anything else. The corporation is a symptom of capitalism, capitalism is always aiming toward rule by money or plutonomy, that is what rule by markets is all about and why we have to constantly hear about. Its a casino market or Ponzi market or a monopolized market. And markets themselves have all sorts of externalities that the paid for types are always in denial about. Taks Fotopolous has talked a lot about and its history if you want to check it out.
Yes this is decentralization of the work place and it brings decentralization to peopleâs door step and it hardens their lives, their finances and their communities against abuse.
Looks like somebody else has to mind their passions when considering the pros and cons of the sheep state.
When you concentrate capital under capitalism you will get corporatism you will get feudalism which is what the corporate fiefdoms are.
That is what weâve always been told, but cooperatives and new tech look finally like a way to scale it. We can apply the credit union model to media systems or use honest search and up voting in FOSS DAO to get honest info systems. This is about getting rid of the bullies.
Thatâs not maturity and its not our obvious path to deeper maturity and human development. We donât need the strong father archetype or strong mother archetype. I hate to dismiss stuff at face value (almost always a mistake) but sentiment has to be correctly applied. We use sentiment and concern for everyone as the compass in our decisions but we consider them in a transparent way out in the open where all voices are heard so that foolish or shallow forms of self interest or fear are not allowed to distort.
Again no point in straw manning. You want to live next to a human CAFO, I donât. But even people brought up in and escaped from a human CAFO can see a better way of life if they witness in progress and are then likely motivated to be part of something better.
So we agree that the way forward especially with regard to sentiment is not about fostering learned helplessness or battered woman syndrome.
But you know what I meant. I too agree sentiment is first and emotion is first and at the core and logic is the handmaiden but lets at least have honest logic in transparent agreement-consensus-consent-decision making understanding that we never force people to do anything in such processes. No gun point stuff. Reminds me a bit of that stuff by David Hawking about Force vs. Power.
No, ant systems turn out not to be hierarchies like that. Each ant is actually pretty autonomous. There bond is organic. Its much much closer to a cooperative. The queen is simply part of their reproductive apparatus. Theyâve specialized reproduction.
.
Have you ever worked with co-operatives?
I have worked with a lot of co-ops and they donât âAll care about one anotherâ any more than any other business does. Its a business like any other business. People get fired. People get hired. People get promoted. People get passed over. Management makes decisions. Employees donât always like it. People donât get paid more than their corporate counterparts.
In short Your are idealizing something that it is doubtful that you have ever seen in real life.
Co-ops are a good idea in many cases. But you are raising them into a mythological fiction.
In truth, they are more or less like the rest of the companies you so hate.
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And this is all well and good if youâre not in a hurry but if you need to make decisions quickly this kind of processing can end up with people dead. This is why people hate beaurocracy, because it takes so bloody long for anyone to make a decision thanks to all the debating. Better to just leave decisions up to individuals themselves.
So one of the goals of the creation of these cooperatives, and therefore the app, would be to have each cooperative unit to be of a size where empathy could be maintained. But how can empathy be maintained in an anonymous environment? You seem at odds. First you talk about face to face and creating empathy and then you talk about being anonymous and taking ego out of the equation but attachment and empathy is very closely related to ego or havenât you been keeping up on how oxytocin works?
Which will interfere with parent/child bonding processes and subsequently with mating pair bonding processes and ruin the whole family unit. No. I canât see anyone in their right mind going for that. And I certainly wouldnât let you anywhere near my family as Iâd find you to be a threat.
Citations please.
Motivated by what then? Why is it immature? Why is that relevant? Plenty of people are immature. Whatâs your point?
They know how? And esteemed by whom?
No largely recognition games as you call them are born of a desire to aquire status. Status increases oneâs ability to attract a mate, gain standing with oneâs peers, ward off rivals, etc. These are nessesary skills for oneâs survival and are not going away any time soon. Let me break this down for you. How is using your system going to help me or anyone else become more attractive to the opposite sex? (Or in the case of gay people the same sex.) How is using your system going to increase oneâs status? Thatâs what ego is about, promoting oneâs survival.
Effectiveness and efficiency is ALWAYS the point. I donât care if youâre asking for investors or promoting self relience. I donât care if youâre trying to sell me lettuce or trying to teach me the best way to grow lettuce. It still want the most efficient return for MY investment in time and energy. Money isnât the only currency you know. If youâre building a power generator and distributing the plans for free GREAT but Iâm still going to ask how efficient and effective it is over the next power generator beside it. Efficiency and effectiveness goes towards the merit of your idea regardless of the currency you are trading in be it fiat, crypto, time, energy, whatever.
Itâs true we probably have all the tech needed to become completely self sustaining and there is no logical reason to work. But thatâs self sufficiency. Letâs assume that one became self sustaining. Then letâs assume oneâs efficiency exceeded oneâs needs so one is producing a surplus. What then? One can either sell it or give it away. If one gives it away one gets into a gift economy. If one sells it thatâs capitalism which you seem to hate.
No since you canât get corporations without the inclusion of government. Capitalism + government = corporations. But capitalism on itâs own does not equal corporations. Itâs only when you start making laws like limited liability and the ability to incorporate that you get corporations. Though youâll get no arguement from me about the feudalistic nature of corporations.
I seriously have trouble believing this as I have trouble believing any tech would be able to prevent someone who was determined to buy and sell votes.
Well you certainly feel comfortable making pronouncements and judgements about all of humanity donât you?
Speak for yourself. There are plenty of immature people in the world. Everyone matures at different rates and in different ways. Who are you to judge? Moreover who are you to say what others may or may not need?
No since one is not attached to everyone and cannot empathize with everyone. In fact there have been studies that show the larger the group concerned the less one tends to empathize. One tends to actually empathize and connect with specific individuals and THEN care about the group or region BECAUSE one has formed an empathic connection with that specific individual.
Things like self interest, fear and love have kept us ALIVE over the centuries. Itâs part of being human. Youâre not going to get a lot of credibility and support by trying to dismiss that.
First off comparing the bdsm crowd to âa human CAFOâ is insulting and offensive at best. And it displays your utter ignorance of the kink community or what I was talking about. But to use your grotesque metaphor the CAFO in question would have to comprise of cows that literally walked up to the farmer out of their field, mooed at him to get his attention, signed a contract of some kind agreeing to be mistreated, confined and eventually slaughtered and then calmly walked into their stalls and strapped themselves into their harnesses. Do you now realize how ridiculous your comparisan is? BDSM is about CONSENT, freedom, attachment and TRUST. Which is kind of what I was getting at. Something you are struggling with. Not every hierarchy is an abuse of power or based on coercion. THATâS the point. And just because you donât want to engage in a hierarchy or power dynamic of any kind does not mean that you can go around judging the whole world or go on some kind of cruisade demanding that everyone conform to your preferred lifestyle choices.
Did I not say good leaders try to create leaders not followers? Did I not say they try to foster self relience and self sufficiency? A leader nurtures and protects. Thatâs why they are often opted to be leaders in the first place.
Yeah, not democtatic and more corporation than cooperative. Theyâve been coopted. Sorry, bringing in the elements that negate the point and then saying its a dead end or been tried to no avail isnât compelling.
They donât have to have the hierarchy or even a neutered version of it.
Lets try a different approachâŚ
Can you give me some concrete examples of decisions within an organization that would be better left to a more democratic method than a expert within a hierarchy?
I would argue that decisions are made within business based mostly on mathematics and probabilities than anything decidable by popular opinion.
And it doesnât matter weather you are trying to earn a profit or just break even, Hard decisions where we sacrifice oppornunity x in exchange for pursuing opportunity y must be made time and time again. And those desicions are hard - require extensive study, and 100 people cannot study to get a better answer that 3 people doing an extensive study â And Studying isnât freeâŚ
So give some concrete real world examples. No academic theory â but real examples.
All decisions every last one of the, because money making and corporate efficiency and even corporate effectiveness are not what matters. What matters is making sure the gains and the power go to the people, what matters is putting people first and enabling them.
You are arguing for elitism, and monararchy and rule by money and plutonomy and the plantation. Youâre saying the slaves could never run the plantation better than their White master. All that study you keep going on about is available to everyone once power and resources are properly distributed and decentralized. You keep trying to argue for what has created this mess. Backwards information systems that have all info flow up ward in a way that black boxes and hands all power to a bunch of coke snorting inbred bastards, the Romneyâs and the ones that during OWS said we are the 1%. Sorry the royalists arenât worth the paper they are printed on.
We know, you donât agree, so go read Suarez, I am not going to be able to convince you.
No youâre arguing that. Youâre the one saying that efficiency and effectiveness donât matter. Efficiency and effectiveness DO matter because as you point out if a decentralized system isnât effective and efficient one can argue itâs not as good as a centralized one. Stop trying to tell people what they should or shouldnât want. If people want effecitveness and efficiency then provide it for them. Design a decentralized system thatâs efficient and effective and gets the job done better than itâs centralized counterpart. Example: Maidsafe, which does just that. Your system should not require resources to be distributed before hand because it is never a given that this will be the case. So how does your system handle centralized resources? How does it deal with centralized systems? Stop arguing that your brand new machine would work perfectly if only the sun would shine on itâs solar panel and inwardly cursing that you forgot to install a battery pack.
You failed entirely to give an example. Just more academic propagada.
I am not arguing for any of the things you are saying I am arguing for. We already went over the Slaves plantation example and I explained in great detail how My position was different than your portrayed it. Do you even bother to read responses?
If you are going to keep on building the same strawman and keep misportraying my position to be that. This is a dishonest discourse and it is a massive waste of time.
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