The Evil Necessity

10 days ago, Mr. Sailor blogged about government as an evil necessity. He expresses a view that is common in today's political discourse, especially conservative and libertarian discourse. In my last blog, I noted that I myself have subscribed to this point of view: that no government is ideal, but if we must have one, then the least government is best. Government is like a good sewerage system: necessary, but best kept out of sight and not mentioned, unless it breaks. In his first Inaugural Address, President Reagan said it this way: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Though President Reagan was speaking of a rather narrow moment in history, most people who revere him extended his sentiments to all governments in all times. All government is the problem.

I disagree. Bad government, of course, is horrible, and history is full of examples of bad governments. History is also full of examples of bad art, bad science, bad education, bad religion, bad families, bad business, and other bad institutions; however, I do not want to rid life of art, science, education, family, business, and religion because some of it, even much of it, is bad. All of these institutions represent the struggle of humanity to rise above the primal ooze and make something more of life. I'm pleased to be a part of that struggle. I readily admit that that struggle is not over—we still have much work to do, and we will make more mistakes—but I'm not willing to rid my life of any of these fine institutions. Together, they create the life that I enjoy.

They also cause most of my aggravations. Our institutions are not perfect, but I think they have the potential to be better (I don't much believe in perfection). That is what this class is all about: exploring a new kind of institution based on network rather than hierarchy. I think that art, science, education, religion, family, business, and government are all shifting from hierarchical structures to network structures, and I want to understand that shift. The shift is about to hit the fan, folks, and I don't want to be up shift's creek without a paddle. Shift happens, and this one will be big.

I'm beginning to think, also, that some kind of organization is imperative for humans. In his book A Crowd of One, John Henry Clippinger says that cooperation and collaboration are hard-wired into our DNA, just as surely as competition is. Humans will find a way to group themselves and form institutions to make those groups work.

This is a different view than that currently in vogue. In his blog, Mr. Sailor mentions the ideas of 17th Century English philosopher John Locke. "What John Locke said, put in very simple terms, is that people exist in a state of nature. Now this state of nature is a winner take all, kill or be killed kind of place that none of us would really like to live in. Take away all laws, regulations, rules, morals, etc. It is a place of absolute freedom and, arguably, absolute chaos."

The 17th Century saw nature as a place of tooth and claw, winner take all, survival of the fittest—a brutal, nasty place where only the strongest could make it, and then for only a short, brutish while. The only way to temper this nasty nature of humanity, this original sinful nature, was through strong institutions: family, religion, and government. Hobbes was for a very strong, absolute government to control the nasty hordes. Locke, on the other hand, wanted to temper the power of government through his social contract. But both men believed that if left to themselves, people would revert to brutish, self-centered behavior.

Modern biologists are questioning this view of humanity by insisting that trust and reciprocity, cooperation and collaboration, are as much a part of the human genome as is self-serving competition. Our complex structures for cooperation have been instrumental in the success of our species. Clippinger says:

Trust is not simply an abstract idea, but a kind of circuit of neural responses that seek and reward reliability and reciprocity. … The fact that reciprocity and trust are two forms of social interaction that are encoded in the brain is strong evidence of their evolutionary endorsement. They are as much a distinctive part of our human nature as are our hands or our bipedalism. … They are one of the unique adaptations that make us human. … This conclusion of a growing number of evolutionary scientists runs headlong against the classical laissez-faire economists … who contend that only individual self interest … is the primary motivator of human activity. For them, everything revolves around self-interest and the individual. … Both these points of view, however, are becoming progressively less tenable (83-85).

Note that Clippinger is not saying that self-interest is not a factor in human society. It is. Rather, he is saying that self-interest is not the only factor, or even the most significant factor, as we were taught by classical theorists. Rather, Clippinger says, "The prevalent presumption among 'political realists' and free market economists that the only tenable means of promoting cooperation is through coercion and the lure of self-interest subverts the very conditions for social stabilization that they say they are trying to encourage" (85).

I'll close by making these thoughts relevant to our class. A class can be either a group based on collaboration in which all members, including the instructor, interact for the good of the group, various members stepping up to take various leadership roles to make things happen (me doing discussions and picking the book, Gabbie Billing doing the Facebook group, etc).

Or it can be based on coercion in which certain members, usually the instructor, become the alpha males, the leaders, and whip the other members into doing whatever the leaders want, using grades and humiliation to manage class behavior.

1. Which class do you prefer as an ideal?
2. If you prefer the collaborative, network style of class, then how do we deal with slackers, those members of the group who take from the group but don't give back, don't show up, don't carry their weight?
3. How do we maintain trust and reciprocity in the group without coercion?
4. Is some coercion always necessary?
   

A Progressive Role for Government

One of the big themes in both Chapter 9 & 10 of The World Is Flat is the role of government in helping a county transition to and succeed in the flat world. This helps me continue the discussion I started in response to Mr. Sailor's issues with my classroom comments.

I agree with much of what Friedman says about government, and it's worth exploring. For many people in America, government has become a bad word, second only to liberal. People have almost nothing positive to say about government today, and I have myself numbered in their ranks. When I was young, I was most irate with the government, with the Establishment (the target of much hippie hatred), especially with its Viet Nam policy. I was convinced that life couldn't improve until we rid ourselves of the hated government with all its bad rules.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

I have come to recognize government as one of the great civilizing achievements of humanity, along with art, religion, commerce, education, and science. I don't know of a culture with more than 150 people that has developed and succeeded without a government. Even clans of 100 people or so usually have a leader and some rules for group behavior, a kind of proto-government. A group of people needs rules for group behavior, procedures for resolving conflicts, and strategies for developing and protecting life, private property, and the commons, those resources that are shared by the group. These are the functions of government.

Friedman seems to agree. Government has a role to play in the success or failure of all of us, and we ignore, or fight, that role at our own peril. When Friedman defines compassionate flatism (an intentional play on George Bush's compassionate conservatism), he says, "The job of government … in such a flattening world is more important than ever. It is to embrace globalization and understand that a fairer, more compassionate, and more egalitarian society lies in a web of policies aimed not at strengthening the old welfare state—or abolishing it and just letting the market rip—but at reconfiguring it to give more Americans the outlook, education, skills, and safety nets they will need to compete against other individuals in the flat world" (378).

Friedman is saying that the old liberal/conservative battle over welfare state vs. free market is becoming anachronistic and moot. We should be "reconfiguring" our institutions and policies to shift from hierarchical structures to network structures. We should move beyond arguing about whether our lives should be managed by a hierarchical government or a hierarchical market. Rather, we should be working like mad to leave hierarchies of all kinds behind and to embrace global networks. The networks will win. As Friedman says, "Barring some geopolitical explosion, the world is going to get more and more globalized and flattened, as surely as dawn will follow dusk" (378).

So if, as Friedman suggests, government has a role, then what is it? First, Friedman says, government must provide leadership. Government must help people develop a realistic sense of how the world is changing and what is needed to succeed in this new world. Government must call the people to action, mobilizing them about a common goal—like putting a man on the Moon or developing new energy sources.

Next, government must provide a new safety net appropriate to the flat-world platform. Government must abandon the promise of lifetime employment and shift to the promise of lifetime employability. Most importantly, workers need "portable [health and retirement] benefits and opportunities for lifelong learning" (383). Government must work to improve education "to get more … people innovating and collaborating on the flat-world platform" (408).

Then, government must help develop the nation's physical infrastructure—"from cheap Internet bandwidth and mobile phones to modern airports and roads"—to connect more people to the flat-world platform. And finally, government must help develop the nation's legal infrastructure, providing the right mix of fiscal policy and rule of law "to manage the flow between … people and the flat-world platform" so that people "can not only imagine new products and services but also bring them to life and take them to the marketplace" (408).

Why should government do these things? Because "poor people grow out of poverty when their governments create an environment in which educated workers and capitalists have the physical and legal infrastructure that makes it easy to start businesses, raise capital, and become entrepreneurs" (413).

Some specific questions about our current presidential race:

1. Which candidate can provide the best leadership? Which one has the highest vision for our collective future and can call us to meet that vision?
2. Which candidate's views most closely embody what Friedman calls compassionate flatism?
3. Which candidate has the clearest understanding of how our world is changing and how we can manage those changes?
4. Which candidate is committed most to lifetime employability and lifelong learning?
5. Which understands the educational demands of the flat-world platform?
6. Which candidate will invest most in building America's physical and legal framework so that more of us can imagine new products and services, bring them to life, and take them to market?

Be prepared to write about these things. And be able to support your view with at least one fact.

Listen! Is That Spring Breaking?

I trust you all had a wonderful Spring Break. And a safe one. Yes, I'm old enough to think that and then say it.

Anyway, please check your gMail. I've created some reading guides for you to complete and turn in next week. I'm adding them to your requirements for this class. Let's face it: too many of you can't make yourself read the book. Our class discussions have been rather puny, and I think it's because too many of you haven't read the material. The guides will motivate you. If you've read the material already, then the guides will be easy to complete. If you haven't read the material, then the guides will provide motivation, because you really will make a poor grade if you don't turn in a fully completed, totally accurate guide. The only acceptable grade on the guides is 100. All or nothing. Pass or fail.

And yes, you owe the class two guides for next week. We've fallen behind in our reading, and we must double up over the next three weeks to catch up and finish the book before the end of the term.

Oh, and welcome back to class.

Son of a Son of a Sailor

If you haven't been reading Tim Sailor's blog Common Sense, then you've been missing some of the most interesting discussions in this class.

Mr. Sailor has quite consistently taken me to task for some of the things I've said, and some of the things he thinks I said, in class. This pleases me. At least, he is thinking about what we've been talking about, and that's about the most any teacher can hope for. At any rate, I owe him a response or two, and I've decided to make the response here in this blog, since I suspect that not many of you are reading his blog. Too bad.

Anyway, in his last post, Mr. Sailor seems to suggest that I am opposed to capitalism and to competition. I am not. However, I am opposed to unmoderated capitalism and competition. Both, I believe, lead to societies that no one really wants to live in. I defy anyone to show me a pleasant culture built upon unfettered capitalism and competition. I don't think such a place exists, or can exist.

Let's start with a convenient but useful definition of capitalism from Wikipedia: capitalism refers to an economic and social system in which the means of production are predominantly privately owned, are operated for profit, and in which investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a market economy. It is usually considered to involve the right of individuals and corporations to trade, using money, in goods, services (including finance), labor and land.

First, I favor private people owning the means of producing the goods and services that they offer to society for a profit. I do not favor government owning all the businesses, and I do not recall saying anything like this in class. However, I did say in class that I'm in favor of restructuring the kinds of organizations, both private and public, that we have formed as businesses and governments to produce goods and services. I believe that network, flat structures are more powerful, flexible, and capable than hierarchical structures. Many modern businesses believe the same for they are busy restructuring themselves to meet the challenges of succeeding in a flat and very capitalistic world. Other kinds of organizations are also shifting from inflexible hierarchies to flexible networks. I've already mentioned the military in a previous post. Recently, I spoke with my brother, who is a bishop in a conservative Christian denomination, and he told me of how his church is struggling with the forces that are reshaping their organizational structure into something that is less hierarchical and more network oriented. He was speaking straight out of Friedman's book, though he had not read it. So not only businesses, but militaries and churches are changing. I think every organization will eventually change to a network structure, more or less.

My focus in this class, then, is not on capitalism, communism, or any other kind of economic system. Rather, my focus is on the structure of the organizations developed to run either a capitalistic or communistic society. I favor network structures over hierarchical structures, whether in capitalist countries or communist. I think that both capitalism and communism will work better with a flat, network structure rather than with a monolithic, hierarchical structure. In most cases, I prefer capitalism to communism, but that's really a different discussion.

I also favor a market economy, but not a so-called free market. I prefer a managed market economy. I do not know anyone who genuinely favors a free market, if they think about it. By my definition, a free-market allows anyone to produce any good or service anyway they can and to sell it to anyone they can for any price they can. The dynamics of the market itself sets the rules on prices, availability, and exchange. The government does not interfere - at all.

This, of course, sounds great until you think about it just a bit, and then most everyone can think of some goods and services that they do not want produced or traded in their markets. Many of us, for instance, do not want a free market in babies, or people, or drugs, or weapons, or sex, or any of a number of other things that we want to restrict from an economic market. We do not want producers to foul the air, land, or water when producing goods. We do not want producers to produce products that are dangerous—for instance, toys that are painted with lead paint or medicines that produce birth defects. We do not want children buying adult products. We don't want criminals buying weapons. In short, most all of us want to manage our markets and not just leave them wide open to anything. That's the correct decision, I think.

Finally, I am not for free markets because they seem to undermine the ability and even responsibility of humans to make intelligent, reasoned, informed decisions about what we do. Free market proponents say something like: "Don't interfere with the markets! Just let them function naturally, according to the laws of supply and demand, and everything will work out for the best." I can't think of any other human activity where we make those kinds of promises and people believe them. Imagine telling the CEO of General Motors, "Don't interfere with your company. Just let everybody function naturally, and everything will work out for the best. You don't have to make plans, implement policies, make hard decisions, lead your workers in a new direction. Just let the market work."

Sounds silly, doesn't it? Well, if such a laissez-faire attitude will not work within an individual business, why do we expect it to work with business in general? Those who favor free markets seem to want to avoid the hard work and hard decisions that humans have to make in life. Unmanaged markets have had enough disasters to convince most anyone that they are not the best idea on the block. When free-market Americans rushed in the 1920s to strip the U.S. southern plains of its prairie grass and plow 15 million acres of sod into wheat fields, they directly caused the greatest ecological disaster of the 20th Century: the Dust Bowl.

Of course, managed markets have also caused disasters, but I have more faith in managing the economy than in allowing the damned thing to manage itself. Well, more on this later.

In the meantime, let me know where you stand on the free vs. managed market issue. Where do our presidential candidates stand on the issue? Which of them mostly strongly supports free trade? Is it possible that we are developing a set of business standards that will channel a business to function regularly and fairly without oversight from government? Is that an improvement? Who will develop these standards? How will we insure that businesses adhere to those standards without cheating?

The Not-So-Quiet Crisis

In Chapter 8, Friedman says that we are in a quiet crisis. I don't think he is referring to a lack of noise; rather, he's referring to our lack of attention. We Americans are in a crisis, and we aren't paying attention to the fact that we are losing our edge.

Friedman says that "wealth in the age of flatness will increasingly gravitate to those countries who get three basic things right: the infrastructure to connect as efficiently and speedily as possible with the flat world platform, the right education programs … and, finally, the right governance … to enhance and manage the flow with the flat world" (343). According to Friedman, we aren't currently focused on doing any of these three things correctly.

1. Do you agree with Friedman? Are we doing that poorly with maintaining our infrastructure, our education, and our government?
2. Do you agree that these are the three vital elements for the success of a country in the flat world?
   
3. What was the promise of the 1996 Telecommunications Act? Has Congress failed us?
4. Which of the presidential candidates has the best plan for revitalizing our infrastructure, our educational systems, and our government?
5. Why is infrastructure so important?
6. How would you change our educational system?
7. Is it time for a new country?
   

Blows Against the Empire?

I'm sensing that some of you students, maybe many of you, are suspicious of my enthusiasm for the flat world. You may be thinking that I am nothing but an old revolutionary who hates our current world, who wants to wipe out all our institutions and rules, and who wants, finally, to replace it all with a new Utopia, that many of you find rather scary. I can see how you might form this opinion, so I want to address it.

First, my style of teaching is often flagrant, and I'm quite capable of saying outrageous things in the classroom that not even I believe, but I'll say them if I think they will prompt you students to think, to challenge, to question, to protest, to engage an issue. So please don't take everything I say in class as my most carefully considered and devoutly held opinion. Often, it isn't.

Then, you may think that I'm saying we should all adapt to and adopt the methods of the flat world. However, the word should implies that I think the flat world is good and that I am trying to convince you to believe as I do. Frankly, I have no idea whether or not the flat world, if it comes about, will be any better than the hierarchical world it displaces. I am convinced that it will be different, but not necessarily better. I will say that I'm generally optimistic, so I'm hopeful that the flat world will be an improvement, but I don't know that it will be. I will also say that I think the flat world is coming, whether good or bad or whether we want it or not. I want to understand the flat world better, given that I will have to live in it. This desire to understand the flat world is why we're reading the book.

A small book I'm currently reading called A Crowd of One by John Henry Clippinger is helping me to clarify my thinking about the flat world. Clippinger is a senior fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School, and he is a frequent participant in the Highlands Forum, "an invitation-only meeting funded by the Department of Defense (DOD) and chaired by the assistant secretary for networks and information integration" (1).

According to Clippinger's book, the US Military is rethinking how it structures itself to defend the interests of the United States, and it is moving away from long-standing hierarchical structures to network structures. Clippinger says, "One of the most persistent themes throughout the Highlands meetings has been how to achieve force transformation. How do you transform an organization in which hierarchy is both the source of authority and the reward for achievement, into one that is faster, more adaptable, and open to individual initiative, in which authority is neither set by rank nor given as a reward? … How do you rethink the primary mission of the Pentagon, which has historically used force as the primary vehicle for defeating an enemy, … and convert it to use other means—such as economic, medical, cultural, and educational inducements to transform adversaries who increasingly are not nation-states, but networked 'asymmetric' opponents" (5). The new Defense policy that evolved from the Highlands Forum "was named Network Centric Warfare (NCW). In embracing the idea of the network, the military welcomed a radical new synthesis of ideas and technologies that, at their most dramatic, sought no less than to redefine human nature itself" (5). I'm convinced that if even the US Military is taking the shift from hierarchy to networking seriously, then I should, too.

First, Clippinger says that we are rethinking human nature: "In contrast to well-entrenched economic and organizational models that operate on the assumption that human beings are selfish, individualistic, rational actors, the new sciences are showing the human beings are also innately cooperative, with highly evolved and highly adaptive strategies of collaboration, trust and reciprocity. By understanding how such innate human social competencies function, it becomes possible to design and implement the next generation of post-Enlightenment institutions." (13).

People, then, have an innate drive to cooperate, as well as to compete. If Clippinger is correct, then cooperation, or collaboration, is at least as important to the success of the human species as is competition, perhaps even more important. "Until the mid-twentieth century, evolutionary theory tended to look at natural selection as an individual and not a group phenomenon, and regarded competition—the survival of the individual fittest—not cooperation, as the principal driver of evolution. … [However,] the ability of different species to function cooperatively has tremendous survival value. Those that manage the most complex and flexible forms of social cooperation enjoy a reproductive advantage (57). … Empathy and reciprocity are not merely ideals, but rather ESSs (evolutionarily stable strategies) that seem to be the encoded behaviors of many species (59)." In other words, we are built to cooperate and collaborate, not just to compete, and networks are better structures for collaboration than are hierarchies.

This has profound implications for the US Military, insists Clippinger, especially in light of the increasing rate and impact of change in the world brought about by expanding technologies. He says, "In a variety of scientific and technological circles, there has been a shift toward the notion that networks of the small and the agile that can control and direct themselves are far more effective than a few, large, non-networked, hierarchical organizations such as traditional militaries, governments, and corporations. … Stated bluntly, the time-honored, classic doctrine of controlling an adversary's or competitor's behavior through brute force is about to be rendered obsolete. In the long term, physical bullying, either through punitive conflict or through attrition, is an attenuated, costly, and ineffective method to get people to change their behavior" (32, 33).

So, what's the Sunday School lesson? Well, I think the networked, technology-fueled flat world is coming, like it or not. About the only thing that can stop it is nuclear war, a world-wide epidemic, or an asteroid strike. I think it has great potential for encouraging and promoting cooperation and collaboration among people, but people can be cooperating for bad as well as for good. My job, then, is to understand this amazing shift as well as I can.

And to enjoy the ride.

Flat & Unflat

Just in case you are beginning to think that all this flat world stuff is really happening, here's a reminder that it won't be as easy as reading a 600-page book. In her blog E-Learning Journeys, blogger Julie Lindsay takes a look at Mumbai, India, and notes that even where the world is, in fact, beginning to flatten, it still has a long way to go.

And forgive the sarcasm in the previous post. I just couldn't resist poking a bit of fun at those of you who don't seem to be able to read a whole book.

You Are Not Alone … Almost

You can find reports here of people who have actually read a whole book. Weird.

Finding Your Firetruck

In Chapter Seven, Friedman insists that we Americans have the right stuff to succeed in the flat world. He is most optimistic about our potential. He says:

Put all the above together and you have America's secret sauce—a mix of institutions, laws, and cultural norms that produce a level of trust, innovation, and collaboration that has enabled us to constantly renew our economy and raise our standard of living. There is nothing about the flat world—nothing—that Americans cannot handle, as long as we roll up our sleeves, educate our young people the right way for these times, and tend to and enrich the secrets of our sauce (336).

That's the key for us as a society, but what is the key for us as individuals? What can you and I do to remain fluid and resourceful enough to capitalize upon the flat world?

According to Friedman, we've taken a first big step by attending a liberal arts college, by exposing ourselves to a very wide, horizontal education. Unfortunately, too many of us have not developed the passion necessary to take advantage of that wide, horizontal education. I still hear complaints—indeed, heard them just this past week in my classroom—against this course or that and how it could possibly be of any use in our careers. It seems that our standard of value for any course is its immediate utility in a career that we don't yet have, and this utilitarianism saps our passion for learning.

Here's the point: while you must have a plan to focus your efforts and to keep you moving in a direction toward graduation, still you really don't know what career you are going to follow. Indeed, you are most likely to have multiple careers during your life, many of which do not even exist now. You have no idea what course—or what professor or colleague—is going to be useful to your unknown careers.

Then, utility is such a low standard to apply to learning. Utility, of course, is important, but it cannot compare to enrichment for inspiring passion. What course best prepared Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer, to create the first modern personal computer and change society? It wasn't a computer science course, but a course in calligraphy, the ancient Japanese art of writing. Of course, he didn't know it at the time—he was just floating left and right, absorbing—but later, after he had invented the first Macintosh computer, he realized that the calligraphy course had been instrumental in developing his technological marvel.

So how do you cultivate a passion for learning? First, slow down. You can't find your firetruck, your child-like passion, if you're in a huge hurry. You won't have time to look horizontally, left and right. You can only see straight ahead. You will miss all the Hungarians in your life (more about that in the video). Something happens to us through our careers as students, something not so good. I just read a story about a professor who visited a kindergarten class and asked who could sing, dance, and draw, all three. Every student raised his or her hand. He then visited a college class and asked the same question. Of course, none raised their hands. The professor concluded that education is the process of teaching us what we CANNOT do. Where did the passion of those kindergarten kids go? Where did yours go? You need to find it. It won't just make your life richer, it will also make it more useful, more likely to sustain 30 to 40 years of productive work.

So consider Ben Dunlap's thoughts on the Hungarians in our lives, those unexpected people, courses, and events—those black swans—that make life interesting and that we will miss if we are not open to a range of possibilities. Enjoy. And no questions this post. You make it up.

Let Your Fingers Do the Walking

At the end of my last post, I asked you to call me. None of you did.

Perhaps you were unsure of what I was asking you to do, so I'll tell you. I want you to click the button in the top right corner of this window. It says: Call Me! Click here and GrandCentral.com will call your phone and connect you for free.

Here's what will happen:

1. You click the button, and GrandCentral will present a screen for you to enter your name and phone number (you should be near your phone and in a place where you can make/take a phone call).
2. Enter your name and number, and click to keep your number private.
3. GrandCentral then calls my office, my home, and my cell and it calls your phone, connecting you to me if I answer any of my phones, or to my voicemail if I don't answer.

What's the point? Well, I don't have to publish my phone numbers on my blog, but I can still make my phone available to anyone reading my blog. And you don't have to redial three different numbers trying to chase me down. You get all numbers with one call. Neat.

So call me. Push that button. But I don't answer my office or my cell very much on the weekend. Still, try it.