Comments on: Homebrew Industrial Revolution Serialization: Chapter Seven, last installment https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/homebrew-industrial-revolution-serialization-chapter-seven-last-installment/2011/09/19 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Tue, 14 Oct 2014 10:45:59 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: Poor Richard https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/homebrew-industrial-revolution-serialization-chapter-seven-last-installment/2011/09/19/comment-page-1#comment-486257 Tue, 20 Sep 2011 23:57:57 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=19326#comment-486257 Even in natural systems like ant and bee colonies we see a combination of stigmergy and hierarchy. Limited hierarchy per se can have utility–I wouldn’t eliminate it from the toolbox. The limits of organization (see Kenneth Arrow’s book of that name) are more related to the lack or failure of appropriate feedback loops. That is why, for example, small systems are often easier to sustain than large ones.

I agree that complexity is a key issue, but by its very nature complexity is not amenable to over-simplified approaches. Of course, the very nature of the brain and its limited cognitive resources inclines us to over-simplify.

The discussion in this article is broad and thought-provoking, but certain conclusions or inferences may be not be as generalizable as we’d hope.

One generalization that may be warranted is that, to paraphrase Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s observation that “all politics is local”– all socio-economic behavior is local. A closely related generalization is “Think global, act local” (“…attributed to Scots town planner and social activist Patrick Geddes.[1] Although the exact phrase does not appear in Geddes’ 1915 book “Cities in Evolution,” [2] the idea (as applied to city planning) is clearly evident: ” ‘Local character’ is thus no mere accidental old-world quaintness, as its mimics think and say. It is attained only in course of adequate grasp and treatment of the whole environment, and in active sympathy with the essential and characteristic life of the place concerned.” ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Globally,_Act_Locally)

“[A]dequate grasp and treatment of the whole environment…in active sympathy with the essential and characteristic life of the place [and people] concerned” is a good rule of thumb.

All the other social and economic ideas of the past, present, and future belong in the socio-economic hackers’ toolbox, for use when and where appropriate. There is no ideological, or one-hack-fits-all, solution.

PR

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