INSTITUTIONS GET STUPID

Summary: Institutions get stupid when they have inadequate information filters leading them to make poor decisions.  Size and structure are two things that influence the flow of information, along with external factors that may be destabilizing. Withdrawal of positive reward, social stigma, or fear of being punished can all inhibit the flow of useful information. Max Weber identified a fundamental organizational factor of the nation-state as the monopoly on use of coercive force (MCF).  This includes the power to create currency.  By extension this power belongs to any institution that can hire and fire people.  This may be an organizing force in society but without good feedback the chance of costly mistakes increase.  Small group structures created outside the MCF hierarchy can re-establish some balance and lead to smarter decisions.

Institutions Get Stupid 

Modern life is very complex.  With all the new problems that face us today we should be asking more questions and fundamental questions.  In the 1970’s the Detroit Auto makers were too stupid to keep up with changes in the auto industry but they survived their near death experience. Today it’s the White House and Center for Disease Control that acted stupid.  Their delay in taking the pandemic threat seriously will cost many thousands of lives.  The federal government will paint it as a victory but credit should go to state and local leaders who acted early.  5 years ago Bill Gates and others warned of the growing possibility of a pandemic. Why were we unable to hear and act on that warning?

What drives of this behavior?  Much of it is fear, but fear for a good reason. The ability to hand out salaries creates a hierarchy within all institutions resembles a Marionette Doll with strings.  This tension helps to create social hierarchy but it also makes people afraid to speak up when they see something wrong.  At an even more fundamental level, it is fear of being outside the protection of the social hierarchy.  Max Weber identified it as a Monopoly on the use of Coercive Force (MCF).  It is an instrument and motivator used by most institutions and all branches of government, including the treasury as the keepers of the currency. Courts can throw people in jail or confiscate property for breaking the law, breech of contract, or even ignoring a policy. This extends to all branches of government and, by extension, any institution that use money and contracts.  It is a subtle but powerful force.

If one makes a visit to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, there is a bronze statue of prehistoric man who might be 5 feet tall if he were standing upright, but he is not.  Instead he is crouched, with eyes ablaze and teeth bared, a poignant statement of the struggle it took simply to stay alive.  How far we have come from that, and not so many generations ago, to a more civilized existence.

With civilization comes an organized social hierarchy and a drive to create order – or maybe it’s the drive to create order that creates civilization.  Empires subdued many smaller and less ambitious civilizations.  Those who were conquered may not have liked it, but some of their lives improved and became more organized in some sense of the word.  The pharaohs who ruled Egypt for three thousand years must have told stories that did not push for change since there was no need to change.  But now we see limits to our existence.  We need new stories that touch reality.

The Apollo tragedy, in which 3 astronauts died before the rocket even took off, was a series of stupid mistakes. The design engineers decided to test the capsule with pure oxygen under pressure with an escape hatch that could only be opened inward. The janitor could have told you that was a stupid design.  Apparently no one asked the janitor, or if they did, it is unlikely that they would have waited for the janitor to respond.  He would not have been given the time to think or the resources to reflect on the options.  Being smart and educated only gets you part of the way for a complex task. The other part is the social structure through which the information must move.

In the more recent Challenger disaster there were warnings about the O-Ring but those warnings were buried in a stack of paper on someone’s desk.  It was a needle in the haystack for which we had no process or filters to find it.  Years after these accidents another astronaut wondered if such a horrible accident was necessary as the only way to change such a rigid organization?  No. It was not.  But it would require a change of how information and ideas flow, both within and between levels.

The 2008 financial crisis was predicted by some economists, yet the leaders seemed to only listen to people around them with no serious discussion outside or in the media.  If they knew the risks but could not convince constituents then it may have been their lack of leadership skills.  More likely it was a fear of getting too far from what they perceived as common knowledge.

Two decades earlier, the Savings and Loan Crisis caused another great financial loss. Reporters like James Fallows blamed the public, stating that leaders actually knew the risk but that the public was turned off by details of numbers.  No, the leaders were stupid.  So were the press who listened only to those leaders.  The structure of their social hierarchy helped them take in only what they wanted to hear, making them unable to see and think clearly.

Those who actually know the risks describe watching a slow-motion train wreck.  Of course we are always bombarded by shysters who say the sky is falling and then take your money to build a shelter that never appears.  Still, it’s a problem of finding and moving useful information, something that requires good estimations followed by a more rigorous and systematic search.

So now we are reaching these walls and limits.  Our atmosphere contains too much carbon that retains heat from the sun. Oceans are loosing significant amounts of marine life.  A growing population puts more pressure on resources and it seems there is nowhere else to move.   Climate change moves slower than a pandemic but over the years will be much worse.  Many of our leaders don’t really understand the risk of climate change because they surround themselves with only those from whom they want to hear.  Their system of filtering information is inadequate and it makes them stupid.

EF Schumacher pointed out that any economic system that relies on continued growth cannot go on forever.  This is true for gross size but not true for growth of complexity.  Biological systems show us that plants and animals have more complexity at the cellular and subcellular level where mitochondria function in fundamental ways to keep the whole organism alive.  It’s not symmetrical growth and it’s not directed from a central location like the brain.  The economic parallel here would be growth of complexity at the local level where many people can work to gain the basics of food, water, and shelter, even if there is no growth in overall size.

Congressional Offices serve only their own constituents.  That seems natural.  When a leader takes charge or a new congressman comes into office, they hire a chief of staff and personal assistant to create filters for visitors and incoming information.  Even the person at the front desk has power.  Of course they are right most of the time, but stupidity creeps in and leaders become unaware of the ground shifting beneath them.  Their proximity to MCF power will cause them to miss useful ideas and information from the office next door or from the people walking past their office, from those same people who could have given Detroit automakers useful feedback.

Stupid is not simply a state of mind or IQ.  It is a consequence of bad information plus the structure of the organization and maybe being too comfortable.  The sludge of bureaucracy is due to lack of good feedback, not stupid people.  Most people can solve difficult problems if they have good information.  A true learning structure has some tension, but not too much, and mostly temporary.  It not only creates spaces for people to meet and talk but allows time for creative privacy where ideas can germinate. Good leaders think about these structures and the need to capture useful information.

Feedback, Surveillance, and Whistleblowers

There would be no need for whistleblowers if institutions had better feedback.  Edward Snowden would never have made it into the news if intelligence agencies had listened to the previous whistle blowers, some of who made great sacrifices for their action.  Since Snowden, intelligence gathering by public and private agencies has doubled down.  Why would they not?  This momentum is a push toward a China model of total surveillance.  From a citizen’s point of view, surveillance capitalism may look the same as surveillance communism.

Many employees of the intelligence agencies are good and dedicated people.  From the inside however, the institution is so large that it is difficult to get the larger picture of what is going on. Those who criticize Snowden still have not answered the questions that he was addressing – because they don’t have to. It’s not their job.  They are not stupid as individuals but act stupid when put into an institutional structure where they fear making a mistake.

Is the Internet making us stupid?  Probably not.  But there is a significant amount of collateral damage.  If we are to tame the Internet and social media, it will require either a change in the revenue model, a change in the law, and/or structural changes of the end-user.  Searching for specific Useful Information to a specific Question to share with friends or team members can provide alternate ways to engage viewers.  This will help us move away from attention-for-ads revenue model, something that will not happen on its own.

A Way Forward – Group As Actor (GAA) and Group As Filter (GAF)

If the problem is a structural one, then at least part of the solution must be structural.  We can create structures that can provide better feedback.  Loss of feedback leads to corruption.  Direct opposition to the social hierarchy or mass demonstrations or voting out the current party in power may get temporary results, but the structural problems that lead to bad decisions will still exist.

There are many situations in which time to confer with a group (without formal meetings) results in better information.  Conferring with a group casts a wider net and creates a multiplier of what one individual alone might bring to the table.  This can be used both for face-to-face meetings and online.  Social media would benefit if part of the bandwidth were reserved for groups to interact as groups.  This creates a filter both for sending and receiving.  It gets us higher quality info.

Even our money has no meaning apart from our social group.  Money not only represents the value of goods and services, but is some measure of the integrity of an agreement between two people within the expectations of the larger group.  This expectation separates real money from play money and currency that is losing value. A change in the value of currency, for whatever reason, can damage the integrity of that agreement.

It is important to define “community” and it’s connection to morality (“morality” being defined as that which leads toward the survival of the group).  The function of an online community is different than that of a local geographic community (geo-com) where people can meet face-to-face. Online communities can be great resources for information and friendship, but online communities can disappear with one click.  The geo-commmunity is where one finds the Maslow basics of food, water, and shelter, not to mention the support of family.  It contains a basis of a morality that one can feel, not a morality that depends on signing a contract or giving a pledge.  It is this geo-community that must be pushed up the hill toward greater security and sustainability.

There are at least 4 interconnected structures that could help.  All of these start small at the local level and are designed to help find Useful Information and better feedback.  They also interconnect since each structure can be used to develop the others.

1. Games. Think sandlot game of baseball or soccer. Small teams compete for best information or ideas to answer a specific discussion question.  Judges come from the same pool of participants.  Teams can be re-mixed and repeated to further develop the question and answer.  Outsiders can be invited but should be mixed in with the teams.  If people are not interested in playing, then find someone else, just like baseball.

Offering a prize is a way to bootstrap some issues that need to be examined more closely. It can also engage participants in subject matter that might be tedious.  Prizes may come from outside sponsors or from the players themselves. It is easiest to simply start with a few people and see if it can grow to a dozen or more, then split into two Games to address the same or independent issues.  One can use a Game itself to further the creation of more games.

The effort to organize Games can be monetized but of course the transfer of money must be transparent, or that game will not carry any weight with the outside world and not be supported.

2. Pushups. When climbing a steep path it can help to have others point out the next foothold.  Pushing information gathered by teams in Community A towards Community B may give them the useful information and the feedback that Com B  needs to make changes.  Com B might be next door but might also be across the world.  Prize money can stay within Com A and results shared with Com B. However, mixing and re-mixing teams with players from each community will accelerate the process and create winners on both sides.

Pushups is a new method and different in important ways from other methods. It may be one of the few ways to gain control over a system based primarily on MCF.  Fortunately, challenging an outside group is often easier than making changes within one’s own community, a point made by Joseph Campbell in his study of heroes and myths.  The alternative is to wait in line for someone else, some faceless person or computer algorithm to make the decision.

There are people at all places and all levels who are smart and may have something to offer, but no one listens to them, and they remain in a small world.  Games provide a place where people must listen to each other if they are to win the competition. Those who get good at pushing others up the hill will find that they themselves have more influence and power.  This is not done simply out of altruism but as a way to establish communications with better feedback.

3. Focus on a Few. A variation of the Game can offer results of many games from outside a target community to focus on different aspects of making that one community self-sufficient, though maybe not totally off the grid. This allows that one community to be more secure and flexible. Each community that has such an inflow of ideas is a learning opportunity for other communities as well.
4. 10:2 If a group of 10 breadwinners can find a way to support 2 of their own group of 10, it will provide a buffer in times of economic downturn. This also allows flexibility for the group to decide what tasks those 2 will do and for how long.  Each group of 10 may be different.  It will require though that the group take responsibility for deciding consequences for those not doing their job or whatever is expected. The group may decide to revert to contracts that are valid in court, but in so doing will give up power to the MCF system.

Games can be very efficient and may last only half an hour.  More complex issues might require an overnight recess to search for information and ideas.  Teams can be re-mixed to do a series of Games in order to further explore a specific game question.  Multiple simultaneous Games provide a division of labor, depending on the interests of whoever starts or sponsors the game.

Games could allow leaders in Congress to engage constituents in the search for solutions, to be problem solvers, either for others in their own district or for those outside their district.  This can be done without taking extra time and resources from those leaders or their staff.

The concept of groups as actors (GAA) can be used to check voting results.  A group of 5 vote as a block for only for one candidate based on the majority within that group (either self-checked or checked by a panel of 3 judges.)  This allows a combination of public transparency and privacy.  Each result can be announced immediately but individuals within the group still have deniability.  A similar structure can function as a filter for whistleblowers.

Groups as Filters (GAF) can be used to filter fake news, both from the listener’s point of view and in re-posting group results.  There are people who cannot be convinced and won’t be convinced under any circumstance.  It is important to remove one’s self from between them and their adversaries.  Simply challenge them to join a Game that discusses that issue or some related issue.

Group structures can be applied to difficult political issues to find better solutions.  How do we make headway on the abortion issue when there is a fundamental disagreement on when human life begins?  This seems to be an impasse.  Games and group dynamics may offer insights into human behavior that can lead to better solutions.

Stories have a powerful influence on what we think about and how we interpret the world.  But sometimes stories lead to group-think based on faulty information or some good information that never arrives.  This can lead to disastrous results.  The aluminum tube story that drew the US into war in Iraq was a powerful story supported by leaders across the aisle.  But it was wrong.  How many lives did this story cost?  How much suffering?  It was a failure of the media too, even though there were voices that warned against it.  This will happen again and again if we rely only on a system with MCF to guide our decisions.

We Are So Social

Altruism alone will not be enough.  We may love our neighbors and share what we have while lawmakers use MCF to give themselves a raise.  A change in the party in power may offer temporary change, but the system based on MCF will again lead to bad decisions made on half-truths. It will take a combination of altruism and competition to push other communities up the hill toward sustainability, security, and toward low carbon energy use.

Governments are instituted, in part, because we at the local level cannot always get along. Yet we all have a vested interest in the health and security of our community. We don’t want tyranny of the crowd but we do want to use all resources and ideas from any level.  Games can work to clarify the half-truths and so work against this tyranny or any other.

Each of us only live on this earth for a short time.  Our lives become meaningful if we make a difference in the life of someone else. It can be a steep climb and difficult to push someone else up the hill. But then it’s all OK, no matter what waits for us at the top.