Searched for "Peak Hierarchy"

The Gordon Cook Interview (4): Peak Hierarchy and Open Agriculture

On March 4 2010, Gordon Cook was able to interview me in Bangkok. This became the basis for the August-September special issue of the Cook Report, a newsletter that is distributed to telecommunication leaders. It’s the most in-depth profile of our work to date and the first 17 pages, which feature a detailed comparison of… Continue reading

David Bollier on the financial meltdown as sign of Peak Hierarchy

David Bollier engages with our Peak Hierarchy hypothesis in his remarkable On the Commons blog. Peak Hierarchy is the hypothetical inflection point at which time at which distributed organizations become stronger and more versatile than centralized hierarchies. Bollier asks: what if the financial meltdown would be a sign of this happening? He states: “The fall… Continue reading

Hierarchy Is Not the Problem… It’s the Power Dynamics

We hosted a workshop on decentralised organising for the Civicwise network in Modena last week. At one point I said, “I don’t care about hierarchy, hierarchy is not the problem,” and immediately felt the temperature in the room drop by a few degrees. I know I can be provocative with my overly-concise use of language, so I… Continue reading

Rethinking the balance between equality and hierarchy: 1) How to maintain reverse dominance

In a system of reverse dominance, however, the many act in unison to deflate the ego of anyone who tries, even in an incipient way, to dominate them. The following article makes an important point: Egalitarian societies didn’t just happen, they had a culture and ‘techniques’ that maintained it and Peter Gray calls it “reverse… Continue reading

Abundance/Scarcity and Equality/Hierarchy: Four Basic Scenarios for the Future

A very important essay: * Frase, Peter. Four futures. Jacobin. 2012 Winter; 5:27–34. “Frase considers the endgame of our current political struggles, locating future scenarios along two axes: scarcity versus abundance, and social hierarchy versus equality. This yields four possibilities: * communism (abundance with equality), * rentism (abundance with hierarchy), * socialism (scarcity with equality),… Continue reading

The Problem of Growth as Related to Hierarchy

This text by Jeff Vail, from March 2008, is still very much worth reading and pondering. The non-excerpted part of this text deals with the positive construction of a rhizome-based world, but in this excerpt, he convincingly links hierarchical social forms to the problem of infinite growth. Thanks to Ryan Lanham for the suggestion. Jeff… Continue reading

A double review of: The Firm as Collaborative Community

the entire book is filled with really interesting insights. If you’re interested in the transformation of work and work organization, as I am, or if you’re just interested in how macro changes are affecting rhetoric and values, I highly recommend this book. Tom Haskins has been reading this important book, and took extensive notes. And… Continue reading

The unitary democracy of peer governance, vs. the adversary democracy of representation

The subversive effect of adversary procedure on unitary feeling makes it essential that the necessary dominance of adversary democracy in national politics not set the pattern of behavior for the nation as a whole. The effort to maintain unitary elements in the nation in turn depends on widespread rejection both of the cynical doctrine that… Continue reading

Civilisational competition, social change, and P2P

The evolution of civilization can be seen as dialectic between the systematic selection for power and the human striving for a humane world, between the necessities imposed upon humankind regardless of their wishes and their efforts to be able to choose the cultural environment in which they will live. Book: The Parable Of The Tribes…. Continue reading