At 02:26 PM 5/31/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:
I posted that as reminder that things used to be a lot worse then
they are now. We have made social progress. There is no reason to
think we will not continue to make more progress.
When I read about all the awful things in the past it is sobering,
naturally, but it tends to make me more optimistic, not less.
I feel the same way. Sometimes, in isolation, things today look
really bad, but with this long view, they are better than they were.
When we knee-jerk want to change what we don't like now, and are
unaware of how the present status quo was an improvement over what
came before, we sometimes, if we are successful, make things worse, not better.
By the way, the use of "peer review" in this title is not meant as a
joke. The weaving guild was a peer-review association similar to
modern academic peer-review groups, in good ways and bad ones.
Guilds did help assure good quality work and education across
generations. Buildings constructed in 1800 would not still be
standing today if it were not for guilds. They preserved and
transmitted knowledge in ways that we could use today even in fields
such as computer software today, where I sometimes get the
impression that the lessons of how to do things right are forgotten
every 10 years. As economic and technical change accelerated, and
capitalism developed, the benefits of the guild system faded.
Heilbroner says the guilds and feudal privileges were abolished in
France in 1790 (during the revolution) and in England in 1813.
The last thing that the industrial capitalists wanted was skilled
workers organized in the guilds, which were quite equivalent to
unions as far as relationships with the capitalists were concerned.
The problem with the guilds was when they forced domination of a
field by a single organization, which then is easily controlled by a
few people or even one, and the interests of those who come into
power often ultimately diverge from the general membership.
This centralization where expertise gets mixed with control is the
toxic process. Judgment and expertise should, in fact, be separated
fron the executive faculty, where social norms are enforced. That's a
very old discovery, otherwise counter-inuitive. After all, shouldn't
we have the best judges as executives. It might seem that way, but
power corrupts. Rather, let power be power -- there will always be
some centralization of power -- but restrain power through devices
that guarantee the continued and informed consent of the governed,
and then set up structures to collect and inform the governed, and
these structures will only be voluntarily centralized, to the extent
that actually improves efficiency, but not to the extent that a
faction can take over and exclude from the overall set of structures.
Call that "independence of the media."
Probably the readers should mostly own media, and then either operate
their own media (i.e., wikis, etc.) or contract with for-profit media
to run under the reader's ultimate authority. So if you want pap and
propaganda, you can pay for it, and if you want real information and
the best collected judgment, you can pay for that. Which would you
prefer? And do we imagine that someone is going to *give* it to us,
free of charge?
The only agencies or organizations that would do that would be,
effectively, nonprofits that have a high motivation to create neutral
media. And where will they get their support? Basically, from us, not
fron special interests, or they would be corrupted. So we might as
well just own either the media or a supervisory organization that
recommends, say, what stock to buy. It's more direct, and less
corruptible. And the way in which we communicate to oversee our own
media must be independent from it, or else the normal laws of
oligarchical structure will take over.
You have a great nonprofit that, say, protects the environment. It's
successful and becomes reputable. Originally operated by volunteers,
it hires staff and develops a hefty budget, creating a group of
people intimately connected with the organization and often highly
respected within it, who now have a vested interest in how it
operates. Suppose it hits a flat spot and needs to cut back on staff?
I've been on a nonprofit board and have seen what happens. Even
though theoretically, the ogranization could back up and use
volunteers for what it previously used volunteers for.
But that's unthinkable, the staff who would lose their jobs are the
friends of the board members. So, instead, the organization starts
using various devices to stave off the day ... like kiting checks.
They pay the paychecks of the staff, but hold them (obviously, the
staff has to cooporate with this.) Then they can claim reimbursements
from matching funds, giving the money to pay the staff. Fraud? Maybe.
Certainly dangerous! I left the board because I called attention to
the problem and the board was unwilling to face it, and I, then,
didn't want to be responsible. I didn't blow the whistle. These were
friends! They were not nasty people. They were just doing what
happens rather naturally in social structures.
So the "judgment" faculties that oversee must be very-low-overhead
organizations, with only enough staff, if any, as is absolutely
necessary for operations and with the necessary budget *easy* to
cover through voluntary contributions. If the organization is
designed to be easily replicable through structural devices that
allow reconsitution by any substantial fraction of the members, i.e.,
it can fission at low cost --- and merge with low difficulty! -- then
the central organization cannot run away from the members. It
collects no "endowment" and owns no significant property to fight over.
That's FA/DP theory, my long-term pet project. It doesn't destroy
anything, it doesn't attack existing institutions, but it aims to
supplement them by organizing communication among those interested....
Some guild practices such as apprenticeship survive today in Germany
and elsewhere.
Medicine is effectively controlled by guilds, at least in the U.S.
For better and for worse.
