The "code" for democratic capitalism was written at Bretton Woods in 1944. It followed the initiation and rapid rise of consumer advertising and public relations, which began in the '30s and picked up steam in the '40s. I gave a TEDx talk in Albuquerque last weekend in which I put out a call for a "Bretton Woods 3.0." The talk should be posted on-line next week.
Merle Lefkoff On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 9:38 PM, Arlo Barnes <[email protected]> wrote: > *Some Incomplete and Scattered Thoughts* > I missed some of the discussion and will have to catch up once I get the > number of unread emails I have at least less than the current year :P but I > don't see why true transparency wouldn't affect people becoming dominant > through a better understanding of the system - would not that understanding > be public knowledge if indeed all parts of the system were transparent? > Unless we are talking about gut instinct / intuition, in which case > inequality is probably unavoidable. > >> Proprietary Code (PC :-) has a place if people are willing to put up with >> it, but then most people don't realize there are alternatives. That old >> Freedom vs. Security thing seems apropos here. Many people are quite >> willing to put up with a little less freedom for a little more security. >> I'm not sure where I come down on the issue of whether or not those who are >> so disposed deserve neither. >> > I think Mr. Franklin's point was that you get what you deserve (which is > true only in narrow contexts) and they will certainly get neither. In other > words, if you want something done right, do it yourself :P > >> Sometime I empathize a lot with the libertarians, but given our millions >> of years of evolution, largely as a communal species, I suspect that >> libertarian thinking is mostly an adolescent point of view. >> > Many people would agree with you, but I also think the whole point of > community is that we keep each other "in check", that is, on the path > towards some goal. We can't do that if we don't have the freedom to be > different from one another, which requires some degree of autonomy. It's > like balancing an ecosystem. At the risk of mixing metaphors, there have to > be enough wolves to keep the sheep in check but also few enough to keep > them from hunting the sheep to extinction (of both populations). No, I > think that definitely mixed the metaphors / crossed the streams. Oh well. > Anyway, my point was that adolescence is often claimed to be one of the > most formative parts of people's lives, along with maturity, if/when that > comes along. > >> Sent from my PC email client (Mail.app) running on a PC OS (Mac OS) >> running PC hardware (MacBook Pro) - geez, what a hypocrite I am >> > As I think you were heading towards with your previous comments, one > shouldn't be faulted for the shortcomings of the system wherein one > resides, in this case the consumer computer market that makes a couple > sub-prime setups most convenient. > >> I just listened to Amy Goodman's interview with Robert >> Riech<http://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/13/inequality_for_all_robert_reich_warns>on >> his new film, "Inequality for All". >> >> Still puzzling over that title, but then I was in and out of the room > while my parents were watching the show. > >> Isn't a Democracy a system for supporting "code development"? And >> isn't Economics the primary execution environment for that code? It seems >> like much of our discussion about transparency in government and >> accountability is not unlike demanding that we be able to read the code >> that is being executed. Democracy itself is the act of writing code; the >> rules of execution of everything from government itself (compilers, >> interpreters, system libraries, OS) to economics to criminal justice >> (exception handling?) >> >> I find it interesting and maybe (or maybe not) significant that criminal > justice seems to have a less clear role in this analogy. Perhaps this > relates to how varied the number of opinions one can find regarding it's > purpose are? > >> Is there a large enough contingent of aspiring "technocrats" such as >> ourselves who might understand this parallel well enough to drive a phase >> change? Proprietary Code *still* has a huge place in our technosphere, but >> Open Source (including Open Hardware) has become incredibly powerful just >> as the *very ideas* of Democracy and then Free Markets once were themselves. >> >> I think several related projects have been discussed on this list (FOSS > Estonian voting software, Citizens Elect [right name?]), but I think none > of them get at what you are saying. I think the problem is that (like > microchips and the computers that play a major role in designing / building > them) society is a lower-level construct which produces the higher-level > construct of technology, and (unlike microchips, perhaps) we want / expect > society to work even when tech does not, rather than the other way around > (with some exceptions, I suppose. Zombie <http://www.kabar.com> > knives<http://zombietools.net/tools/>? > I can't really think of any non-trivial examples. I guess some more > realistic survival gear like water filters). > > -Arlo James Barnes > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > -- Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA [email protected] mobile: (303) 859-5609 skype: merlelefkoff
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