Keith, I tend to agree with you. Even in the most hierarchical organizations
I've been part of, government departments and large oil companies, workers were
divided into small five to ten person groups headed by a leader who interacted
with other groups. But I do wonder if the marauding armies of Attila the Hun
were organized like that. And even modern armies seem to have a lot of people
at the bottom and then fewer and fewer people as you go up -- i.e. rapidly
narrowing pyramids.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Hudson
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2009 3:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Some questions
Ed,
OK, here goes.
I am totally persuaded from a mass of anthropological evidence that humans
live, work and make decisions best in groups of no more than about ten or adult
individuals. For various ergonomic and environmental reasons this is how we had
to spend at least 100,000 years of our existence on fairly open savannahs and
our genes have shaped our behaviours accordingly. This is the size of football
teams, terrorist cells, army platoons and special squads. Boards of directors,
inner cabinets, royal commissions, special committees (as in our House of
Commons), are rarely larger. And it is this size of opinion-making,
decision-taking body that I am pretty sure takes place at the top of
governments when important decisions have to be taken on this or that.
However, there can be several groups of this size at any one time, depending
on the number of particular problems and issues that happen to have landed on
the government plate. Undoubtedly a smaller number of individuals immediately
around the leader -- one or two key civil servants, one or two influential
public individuals, one or two personal friends perhaps -- form a pivotal
group that, in turn, creates the other more specialized groups and remains key
decision-making members of them.
Whatever the constitutional complexion of the government -- whether a
dictatorship, a bureaucracy or a so-called democracy -- I'm sure that a similar
pattern exists in all of them. It's a moving feast with only a passing
resemblance to what might be expected if you were to draw an organizational
chart of the government or describe it formally in a text book.
If you like, it's hunter-gathering all over again -- but then I don't think
we've ever left them. They're always there -- sycophants or independants -- at
the very top in all organisations immediately around the leader.
Keith
At 10:18 29/10/2009 -0400, you wrote:
I posted the following a few days ago and got no response. I'm posting
again because I think the question I raise at the end of the original posting
is an important one.
Ed
We tend to see societies like Canada and the US as liberal and democratic
and responsive to the general public. But is that how they really
operate?
Are political parties really open and responsive to the public at large
or
are they corporate entities doing what they have to in order to promote
themselves in seeking and maintaining power? Do they really hold the
interests of the public as primary or do they largely behave in their
self-interest? When they show themselves to the public, are they showing
their true and honest selves, or are they behaving like soap adds on TV?
Hey, look, there's Harper playing piano and singing a Beatles' song at
the
NAC. Gee, he's a nice open guy after all, not someone who's closeted
away
from scrutiny at the PMO. IMHO, it's no better than selling soap.
And one also has to think about the complex linkages that exist between
the
political and corporate sectors. Lobbying, getting the political sector
to
do what the corporate sector wants, has become a major industry --
invisible
to the public but enormously powerful. Consider health care reform in
the
US, beneficial to the general public but potentially very harmful to the
health insurance industry. So send in the lobbyists to make sure it
doesn't
emerge as something that threatens corporate power and profitability and
doesn't do much for the public either.
Who really governs us? And what really is ethical behaviour when it
comes
to government and the corporate sector?
I think the question is particularly relevant in light of the recent
invasion of the House of Commons by young people who were very concerned about
the lack of a firm government stance on what to do about climate change. Given
that the December conference on this issue and the government doing little more
than politely trading insults with the opposition during question period, were
the kids right in invading the sacred space of the politicians? I tend to
think they were. How else could they get their point across? While the
politicians regard the House of Commons as sacredly theirs, who really does it
belong to? Might not arrangements be made to let members of the public in to
make their case directly instead of making them have to shout from the gallery
and be dragged out?
And I know the committee system exists, but it too tends to slow,
cumbersome and exclusive, used most often to shed darkness instead of light.
Ed encore
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>,
<www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020/>, <www.handlo.com>
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