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Re: Effective government; was: Willful Ignorance

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Russ Abbott

Re: Effective government; was: Willful Ignorance

I see this as involving two fundamental issues: governing a commons and group effectiveness.

There is a lot of current work on governing a commons. The best known name is Elinor Ostrom.

The issue of groups, their effectiveness, how evolution selects on groups as well as on individuals has been studied (and publicized) most recently by David Sloan Wilson.

Both of these issues are extraordinarily important. They are both relevant to effective government. But they don't offer simple one-line solutions.

-- Russ

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:04 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thus spake Steve Smith circa 10/06/2008 10:46 AM:

> That said, I'm not offering a better plan, though I agree that big campaign
> contributions are a problem in almost every case.

But big campaigns (and big campaign contributions) are just a symptom of
non-local (big) government. As long as we have a single government that
governs 3.5 million square miles, we will have complex laws with lots of
loopholes and aggressive special interests who drive campaigns (with money).

The problem, in my view, lies with the way government accumulates upward
to a peak. Granted, we have a decent system so that government
accumulates upward to 3 (or 4, if you include the free press) peaks.
But, it's still going from 300 million humans and 3.5 million mi^2 up to
3 peaks and 68 mi^2.

I would suggest that the myriad problems with our government don't lie
in any one identifiable cause, but are instead peppered throughout the
accumulation... the way household government accumulates to neighborhood
associations, villages, cities, counties, states, feds, etc.

I'm totally ignorant of political science; but I wonder how much
coherent work is out there on various objective-satisficing methods for
accumulating government? I'm not talking about silo'ed research like
"methods of state government" or "methods of county government", but
methods for accumulating all the way up from (psychological)
self-government of the individual to President, Congress, and the
courts. Surely there exists some (by now, half-insane) systems theory
people out there who've been ranting about this sort of accumulation, eh?

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Phil Henshaw-2

Re: Effective government; was: Willful Ignorance

Russ,

There may not be simple one-line solutions, but there are simple one-line necessities, that any solution needs to include.

One is to counteract the problem that investing in the use of a commons to multiply your returns from it will invariably cause it to collapse unless you switch your returns to divestment before that occurs. The obligation to self-limit the compound amplification of resource exploitations is missing from all the widely discussed management proposals I know of.

Phil

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 2:56 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Effective government; was: Willful Ignorance

I see this as involving two fundamental issues: governing a commons and group effectiveness.

There is a lot of current work on governing a commons. The best known name is Elinor Ostrom.

The issue of groups, their effectiveness, how evolution selects on groups as well as on individuals has been studied (and publicized) most recently by David Sloan Wilson.

Both of these issues are extraordinarily important. They are both relevant to effective government. But they don't offer simple one-line solutions.

-- Russ

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:04 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thus spake Steve Smith circa 10/06/2008 10:46 AM:

> That said, I'm not offering a better plan, though I agree that big campaign
> contributions are a problem in almost every case.

But big campaigns (and big campaign contributions) are just a symptom of
non-local (big) government. As long as we have a single government that
governs 3.5 million square miles, we will have complex laws with lots of
loopholes and aggressive special interests who drive campaigns (with money).

The problem, in my view, lies with the way government accumulates upward
to a peak. Granted, we have a decent system so that government
accumulates upward to 3 (or 4, if you include the free press) peaks.
But, it's still going from 300 million humans and 3.5 million mi^2 up to
3 peaks and 68 mi^2.

I would suggest that the myriad problems with our government don't lie
in any one identifiable cause, but are instead peppered throughout the
accumulation... the way household government accumulates to neighborhood
associations, villages, cities, counties, states, feds, etc.

I'm totally ignorant of political science; but I wonder how much
coherent work is out there on various objective-satisficing methods for
accumulating government? I'm not talking about silo'ed research like
"methods of state government" or "methods of county government", but
methods for accumulating all the way up from (psychological)
self-government of the individual to President, Congress, and the
courts. Surely there exists some (by now, half-insane) systems theory
people out there who've been ranting about this sort of accumulation, eh?

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com

Russ Abbott

Re: Effective government; was: Willful Ignorance

OK. I absolutely agree that management of the commons is a central issue and one that has not received enough attention. One reason for that is that we are not comfortable thinking about commons -- and the extreme every-man-for-himself free marketers prefer it that way. But ultimately we are living in a commons. The environment is a commons; our infrastructure is a commons; the government is a commons. We have to pay more attention to managing it or (as you say) it will collapse. The first point, however, is to recognize that it's not Communistic to talk about a commons. Unfortunately we haven't even reached that point in our public discussion.

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
o Check out my blog at http://russabbott.blogspot.com/

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 1:30 PM, Phil Henshaw <[hidden email]> wrote:

Russ,

There may not be simple one-line solutions, but there are simple one-line necessities, that any solution needs to include.

One is to counteract the problem that investing in the use of a commons to multiply your returns from it will invariably cause it to collapse unless you switch your returns to divestment before that occurs. The obligation to self-limit the compound amplification of resource exploitations is missing from all the widely discussed management proposals I know of.

Phil

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2008 2:56 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Effective government; was: Willful Ignorance

I see this as involving two fundamental issues: governing a commons and group effectiveness.

There is a lot of current work on governing a commons. The best known name is Elinor Ostrom.

The issue of groups, their effectiveness, how evolution selects on groups as well as on individuals has been studied (and publicized) most recently by David Sloan Wilson.

Both of these issues are extraordinarily important. They are both relevant to effective government. But they don't offer simple one-line solutions.

-- Russ

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:04 AM, glen e. p. ropella <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thus spake Steve Smith circa 10/06/2008 10:46 AM:

> That said, I'm not offering a better plan, though I agree that big campaign
> contributions are a problem in almost every case.

But big campaigns (and big campaign contributions) are just a symptom of
non-local (big) government. As long as we have a single government that
governs 3.5 million square miles, we will have complex laws with lots of
loopholes and aggressive special interests who drive campaigns (with money).

The problem, in my view, lies with the way government accumulates upward
to a peak. Granted, we have a decent system so that government
accumulates upward to 3 (or 4, if you include the free press) peaks.
But, it's still going from 300 million humans and 3.5 million mi^2 up to
3 peaks and 68 mi^2.

I would suggest that the myriad problems with our government don't lie
in any one identifiable cause, but are instead peppered throughout the
accumulation... the way household government accumulates to neighborhood
associations, villages, cities, counties, states, feds, etc.

I'm totally ignorant of political science; but I wonder how much
coherent work is out there on various objective-satisficing methods for
accumulating government? I'm not talking about silo'ed research like
"methods of state government" or "methods of county government", but
methods for accumulating all the way up from (psychological)
self-government of the individual to President, Congress, and the
courts. Surely there exists some (by now, half-insane) systems theory
people out there who've been ranting about this sort of accumulation, eh?

--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org