17. Culture: Patterned to Cooperate and Compete

Culture: Patterned to Cooperate and Compete
Bob Komives
::

Energy begat matter.
Matter begat life.
Life begat knowledge.
Knowledge begat culture.
Then culture begat.

Begat

Life is a nearly inevitable pattern that emerges from changing interactions among inanimate forms of energy. Adaptive evolution is a nearly inevitable pattern that emerges from life interacting with itself and a changing inanimate environment under an imperfect system of reproduction. Culture is a nearly inevitable layer of patterns that emerges from adaptive evolution interacting with itself. Complex patterns of life emerge and get tested by adversity and diversity. The more durable patterns survive and retain knowledge as to how groups of species and groups of individuals can organize to exploit the inanimate and animate forms of energy in the environment. This group knowledge is still stored inside individual chromosomal genes, but it may be used in patterns across the genes of several individuals and even multiple species. It may be used in patterns alive in places that range from virus to atmosphere.

Richard Dawkins calls the patterned and mutually beneficial relationship among individuals of one or more species, the "Extended Phenotype" I think of it as the larger body. Congress is a lawmaking body. The actions of its members are hard enough to explain when we know the role of Congress. Certainly, we would have no idea what single acts of individual congressmen mean if we did not see the larger body.

Dawkins argues that the selfish genes that drive evolution do not just affect the creatures in which they reside. Behavior will tend to maximize survival of genes that foster the behavior, whether the genes are in the animal behaving or in some other creature that affects its behavior. Whenever cooperation or competition increases the survivability of genes (in separate species, separate individuals in the same species, or separate organs within the individual) such behavior is reinforced.

Evolution creates not only diverse species that fit diverse habitats, but also creates diverse extended phenotypes, relationships and cultures that fit diverse circumstances. Humankind competes with the cold virus, yet Dawkins asks whether it is we or the virus who has manipulated the evolution of our sneeze in response to a cold. The sneeze provides us some relief, but clearly the virus is given a free ride toward other victims. We and the cold virus have a special relationship.

Thus, the distinction between cooperation and competition becomes fuzzy. While individuals act out serious competition to improve their well-being, they may play compatible roles in a cooperative effort, a cultural effort, to survive. Economics should be one of the sciences that try to understand culture --to understand how we use patterns of cooperation and competition to improve well-being for individuals and increase likelihood of survival for our species.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 17. Culture: Patterned to Cooperate and Compete ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
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18. Exploitation's Deceitful Attraction

Exploitation's Deceitful Attraction
Bob Komives
::

We know from experience that, despite all the good it does for us, at times Adam Smith's "invisible hand" needs to be slapped. We rise again and again in fits of moral outrage to knock down those who sacrifice common good to disparity—promote our loss for their gain. Do we do so often enough? We discuss that question frequently. Here is another question that we should discuss: do such struggles and knock downs pit morality against economics? To this second question I answer, no. Morality need not fight economics unless you equate economics with pursuit of personal gain. You should not. I do see these struggles as contests between good and bad; but between (good) morality and bad economics, between common good and bad science. Great disparity is a great clot in the arteries of development.

Great disparity between us,
great impediment among us.
Moral justice asserts
that our wealthy must distribute wealth
onward to our poor.
Economic development just begs
that wealthy just act
knowing their dependence upon the poor
—and upon more.
More wealth distributed
brings back more wealth recirculated;
today distributed,
tomorrow shared.
In abstract we speak
of wealthy and poor.
In concrete we speak
of butcher, baker, banker,
slave, master,
pitcher, raker, candlestick maker.
We distribute,
recirculate,
compete,
cooperate,
evolve,
to survive
to prosper
together.

||

Consider the economics of exploitation. Take an extreme example; consider the economics of
slavery. As species, as group, our wealth grows biologically with each birth; it decreases with each death—usually. Simply having more people may decrease our group wealth. Our increased population may overwhelm brain knowledge and artifactual knowledge that we use to harness resources. While this negative outcome may not be as likely as doomsayers often say, more people do not by their presence alone make the individuals in their group more wealthy. Yet, mistaken actions by fellow humans seem to stem from a belief that greater population brings wealth—if it is more of the right kind of population, the kind that makes us rich. When powerful individuals and groups enslave other people they increase the population that works at their service. A slaveholder feels wealthier holding more slaves.

We can exploit others in ways more subtle than slavery, but in all ways exploiters believe (if they are honest with themselves) that they become wealthier if they subjugate more people. Usually they do not try to increase overall population, just their controlled population. Unfortunately, history shows that from their narrow and short-sighted viewpoints they are usually right. Since we see our world having static resources, we find it selfishly attractive to exploit the minds and bodies of our brothers and sisters. These harnessed minds and bodies know how to gather wealth for us.
 
From the broad viewpoint of humankind exploitation is not attractive. It reduces opportunities for the exploited. That reduction inhibits the growth of brain knowledge and artifactual knowledge for our species, reducing species wealth and average per-person wealth. To the exploited it is painfully obvious that they suffer the burden of their exploiters. 

Unfortunately, exploiters are painfully ignorant that they suffer under the burden of their exploitation. This becomes tragically obvious when a lethal microbe flourishes in the impoverished ecology of the exploited and surges forth to kill exploited and exploiter alike. Yet the lesson is not learned. Here, economics has, first, much to learn and, second, much to teach.

Exploiter dreads that exploited would self-organize.
Old culture that slave might keep,
and new culture that slave might create,
destroyed, discouraged, undone.
Exploiter simplifies—
in
simple
organization
finds
control.
Biosphere complicates—
for in our complexity, it finds resilience;
for in its resilience, we find wealth.

||

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 18. Exploitation's Deceitful Attraction ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
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19. We are Cursed And Blessed.

We are Cursed and Blessed.
Bob Komives
::

Life reproduces itself, but imperfectly. This imperfection creates an intricate, diverse biosphere.

Humankind has two traits that distinguish us from other species. I believe these traits contribute to our unique role in the biosphere.

We have a brain that has somewhat independent hemispheres in which we process information in at least two different ways at the same time. We have social systems that tend toward stability, but in which we often and inevitably undergo instability.

We seem cursed by the anguish of war between the conscious and subconscious and between the logical and intuitive factions in our brain. We seem cursed by bloody and bloodless wars between factions in our society.

Other species evolved with greater social order. Compared to our own, their brain parts seem to work in harmony. Our unstable society may well be a curse brought on by our unstable brain. Yet, our creative ability to explore the workings of the universe through art, science, engineering and fantasy is a blessing that we also owe to that curse. If there is to be a utopia, we must find it in how we manage our continuing instability.

All species can perceive scarcity in resources, and they see an apparent need to manage scarcity by preventing any change that instability will bring. We, alone, have the blind management power, at this tick in the evolutionary clock, to destroy life and its biosphere of change.

It is also only we who can hope to notice, midst war and destruction, the wealth that instability and change have wrought within our biosphere. Only we can hope to see that beneath the apparent rules of scarcity and competition lie more general rules for us to follow-
rules for abundance, and rules for cooperation.

Blessed Curses

Humankind seems cursed by its heritage of imperfection in ways that other species are not. Yet, we are blessed with a preeminent role in the biosphere. Richard Restak described well how our semi-independent brain hemispheres process two ways of thinking that are generally coordinated but often conflicting. This duality is mirrored in our culture. We experiment with: democracy, dictatorship, republic; polygamy, polyandry, monogamy; matriarchy, patriarchy; monarchy, anarchy. Only the human species has a restless urge to understand and perfect.

Competition seeks instability.
One individual,
one group
tries to gain advantage over another.
When too successful,
competition fails.
It can produce a stable dictatorship,
monopoly,
slavery.
Cooperation seeks stability.
It too can fail
if it is perfectly successful.
Stable wealth stops evolving.
Rebels appear.
Feeling stifled,
they promote instability.
We play hopscotch
through patterns of opposites:
cooperation or competition,
with
stability or instability.
War -unstable competition.
The marketplace -stable competition.
Tradition and rules -stable cooperation.
Invention and information,
though often spawned by cooperation,
bring change -instability.
Each pattern brings the other.
The market creates incentive for invention:
a better mouse trap,
a five-cent cigar.
Invention produces new traditions:
stay home
to watch a ball game at the park,
go to the park
to get away from my computer-cottage office.
A stifling tradition brings revolution and war.
We are special
because we can notice these patterns,
seek to understand them,
and decide to participate.

What Makes Us Special

If an objective visitor from outer space had arrived on Earth a few hundred thousand years ago she would have had to stay around to notice that we naked apes were in any way special. Today, she would quickly pick us out of the crowd. We have made ourselves quite noticeable. Electric hair dryers, tennis shoes, oil spills, and political conventions make us stand out clearly in the crowd of earthly creatures.

We see correctly that we are special, but we have tended to think incorrectly that we are special because we are better. "Better" is a subjective evaluation, but if we equate it with "more perfect" we are wrong. We are special because we are less perfect. We are cursed with imperfections that bless us with flourishing culture. Individually and in groups we play dynamic roles that never allow our species to settle into a comfortable niche.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 19. We are Cursed and Blessed ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
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23. We Tax Ourselves When We Play Our Roles.

We Tax Ourselves When We Play Our Roles
Bob Komives
::

We cooperate; we compete. In both modes we exhibit freedom. At least, that is a view we can choose. In another view, we just play our inherited roles. "Role playing," "role differentiation," these are terms frequently heard among social scientists. They are also better and more general terms for what we and our economists call "taxation."

Role playing (1) distributes wealth among individuals, and (2) creates wealth when the roles are mutually beneficial. Number one is well understood by both charitable and exploitive people, by our tax collectors, and by other species--the more I get from you, the better off I am. Attribute number two is at the frontier of our understanding of macroeconomics.

During the dawn of life separate organisms that were accidentally different accidentally contributed to each other's chances for survival. Some produced offspring that had a tendency to organize themselves to reënact the ritual. As they did, role playing became part of the biosphere; taxation became part of the biosphere.

Each particle of DNA, each species, each individual, each group depends upon and is depended upon by other elements of the biosphere. Each taxes others and is taxed in turn within an intricately organized web of roles. On occasion, the quantity of life traumatically decreased. Despite such setbacks, life incorporated an increasing portion of universal energy into itself and into its complex support systems. As life grew, so did the complexity of the roles played by the organs and organisms that sustained it. Had we been there, at some point the complexity would have become too much for our great brains to comprehend. We would have to develop concepts of freedom, intention, randomness, in our attempt to understand cause-and-effect in what we saw. We would find words for cooperation and competition. In some order (perhaps simultaneously) science, pseudoscience, religion, and philosophy would follow.

As life flourished, new roles emerged, old roles changed. Through its organized role playing the biosphere learned not only how to prevent a net loss of biological energy (absent great trauma), but also how to capture more energy. In terms of biosphere economics, wealth steadily increased. While some species lost all wealth and became extinct, humankind prospered. Human economic history, when read from a distance, records changing patterns of roles that were adequate to keep us around and increase our wealth.

Role playing works because it distributes resources among individuals to the benefit of the group. An infant needs nurture, so it taxes its family to supply energy and skills to survive. Given survival, the infant can go on to contribute to the welfare of the family and to help produce another generation. Our tendency to nurture others lets us help individuals become scholars, artists, scientists and administrators. It causes us to make an effort to preserve life and opportunities for less fortunate people even when we seem to loose wealth in the process. We harvest and create food, education and security. Then we tax ourselves. We cooperate and compete so that we distribute these products and services among us. History is too full of examples of exploitation and persecution. We live with the guilt that comes with our unfortunately large margin for error. Nevertheless, so far, we tend to tax ourselves well enough to survive and occasionally flourish.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 23. We Tax Ourselves When We Play Our Roles ::
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28. Center and Edge

Center and Edge
Bob Komives
::

Socialism is the part of our economy in which our group distributes wealth according to values set communally. The process need not resemble consensus. The group may be active, passive, enthusiastic or bitter about delegating the distribution authority. Marketplace is the part of our economy in which we trade wealth according to values set by many people responding to supply and demand. Marketplace and socialism are distinct, but they help each other. Neither can replace the other. Neither can manage all of our capital. Socialism flourishes at our centers. Marketplace flourishes at our edges.

I hold these truths to be self-evident:
Lake without shore is no lake;
Lake-shore without lake is no shore.

||

In the zealots for socialism and the zealots for marketplace we have among us those whose views of economics are akin to saying: "My sacred lake shall have no shore;" and " my sacred shore shall have no lake."

Socialism and marketplace differ because of the societal space each occupies. We organize ourselves into overlapping groups. Each group has edges. At the edge it must interact with other groups and with its natural environment. Among other options at the edge, it may trade wealth according to rules of marketplace. Each group has a center. There it distributes wealth through a communal system that may include tradition and rules.

A typical family administers its resources communally. Children do not buy food from parents. Tradition says that children have a right to food, clothing and shelter. They have a right to be wealth consumers. Wealth producers in the family pool their resources to support the family. Authority figures establish and enforce codes of conduct. The family typically divides tasks among members according to tradition, authority and volunteerism. There may be great competition among family members, but ultimately the traditional communal authority structure decides who wins and who loses.

At its edges, a family competes and cooperates in a larger society with other families, individuals, and institutions. As a producer in modern marketplace economies, the family may compete against the rest of the community for jobs and sales. As consumer, the family probably enters the marketplace to bargain for the goods and services that it does not produce internally. The marketplace, not a communal system of decision and authority, decides the prices the family will pay and receive.

Family members find themselves at the center of other institutions -a club, a church, a government, a corporation, a school, a clan, a tribe. At these higher-level centers interactions are communal, because larger institutions also practice socialism. Many participate in marketplace at their edges as well.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 28. Center and Edge ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
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29. From Amoeba to Market

From Amoeba to Market
Bob Komives
::

We can, I suppose,

think of a chemical reaction
at the nucleus of a tiny amoeba
as but one reaction
in
.... a
........chain
..................that
..........................extends
from this amoebic nucleus
to the farthest reach of the biosphere.

We should rather, I propose,

notice this amoeba has a surface,
its working edge,
where universe divides in two;
where biosphere divides into
what-is-this-amoeba
---and-----------
what-this-amoeba-is-not.

Where Universe Divides In Two

Early creatures had centers and edges. Evolution gave them ways to move energy around the center, from edge to center and from center to edge. Communal biological wealth in the amoeba keeps its primitive power and control systems functioning. At its edges, the amoeba uses genetically coded knowledge to capture food. However, one amoeba has no control over the likelihood that food will be there to capture.

There is friction. One amoeba may find itself in competition for food with other amoeba, other creatures. Lacking the sophistication to sign treaties or to create a marketplace the amoeba relies on programmed gathering techniques to bring fuel into itself. At its edge the amoeba competes and cooperates with its surroundings to overcome friction, to transfer wealth from the larger biosphere into its one-cell body.

As life forms become more complex, so do the options for wealth transfer at edges, and for wealth distribution and recirculation at centers. Humankind has experimented with a variety of methods to organize its centers. At some scale we call these experiments family. At other scales we call them government. We have a propensity to form governments and never seem satisfied with our results.

As family met family, group met group, and nation met nation, we experimented with government-type solutions at our edges also. As alternative to war, raids, walls, and moats, the marketplace was such an experiment. Participants agreed upon marketplace rules in order to minimize risk to themselves and their goods. These rules and their enforcement were the government of the moment, the communal base for marketplace.

Fringe trading deals with new goods and services more readily than does communal tradition. We need only a willing buyer, a willing seller, a place to bargain, and security for the individuals, their goods and services. Traditional distribution may create successful investment, but that same tradition may be inadequate to guide the distribution of new types and quantities of wealth produced by the investment. With or without the sanction of traditional leaders, individuals might resort to edge-type trading to distribute these new goods and services.

Some governments came to approve of this internal trading, but also took control -setting and enforcing the rules. Thus, government became communal sponsor of free enterprise. Internal edge-economies became important. Marketplace society was born.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 29. From Amoeba to Market ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
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30. Corporation: Delegated Socialism

Corporation: Delegated Socialism
Bob Komives
::

I ask you to think back to when the Soviet Union had the archetypal large communist government and good-old Ford Motor Company was the archetypal large corporation. Though they symbolized competing ideologies, these large organizations were in many ways similar.

When it dealt with countries in a peaceful interchange of wealth, the Soviet Union competed and cooperated in many of the same ways that Ford Motor Company competed and cooperated with other businesses. At their edges they both competed with corporations, individuals, partnerships, and governments that sold similar goods and services, that wanted the same resources, and that recruited similar personnel. The marketplace determined the price they would pay or receive. At their edges, then, looking outward, capitalist corporation and communist country practice marketplace.

When Ford Motor Company looked inward to its own resources, it acted--and still acts--very much like the old Soviet Union. Executives allocated resources under policy set by a central committee or board of directors. Executives and board lead in the directions that they believe will most benefit their constituents--whether shareholder or proletariat. At their centers, looking inward, both capitalist corporation and communist country practice socialism.

The United States of America operates the same way. When we look inward, we set communal rules for wealth distribution, be they liberal or conservative. Our country allows more internal marketplaces than either the good-old Soviet Union or good-old Ford Motor Company. However, "allows" is the important word. Communally we create, enforce, and administer rules that foster and allow private marketplaces. Without communal enterprise private enterprise could not work.
Ford Motor Company would not allow the level of internal property and private enterprise allowed in U.S. America, or even the old Soviet Union. The very purpose for incorporation is to socialize risk among investors. Corporations require public charters. They seek such charters because a charter will protect their investors. Individual liability is allowed by charter to be socialized into corporate liability. Individuals can profit and recover their investment severalfold, but their liability for loss cannot exceed onefold -their investment.

Corporate employees experience socialism. Until hired, a job candidate at Ford Motor Company is an independent competitor-cooperator for the corporation to bargain with at its edge. Corporate resources and individual talents get weighed and bargained. Ford Motor Company can reject the applicant or make an offer. The applicant can accept, reject, or haggle over the offer. Once hired, however, she becomes an employee. Ford Motor Company tells her what to do and limits her discretion in making decisions. She is expected to work for the common good, which she hopes coincides with her own. Ford Motor Company pays her the same for Tuesday as for Wednesday, no matter her production on each day. Even if the company offers pay incentives or lavish bonuses based on her performance, higher officers of the corporation set the incentives. Ford Motor Company also supplies her work space and the tools of her trade. This would not be the case if somehow her employment were marketplace based rather than communally based. Her promotions would come from her own success at marketing her talents or products to several buyers. Her status today would not ensure tomorrow's employment.

In the corporation the employee is likely to strive to maintain her secure employment and climb the corporate ladder. Among those who wish to climb that ladder, competition is fierce, but promotions and salary increases come from corporate decision makers above. There are rules that govern job security and procedures which define the role of each worker. The corporate authority structure distributes corporate wealth among workers and share holders. Authority figures also decide whose ideas will carry the greatest weight. Corporations tend to prefer employees who accept this system rather than collective bargaining or individualism. This top-down decision and wealth distribution structure mimics family tradition, socialist tradition.

None of this is bad. We should expect a private corporation, like any organization, to be socialist at its core. What is bad and misleading is to champion corporations as the epitome of free enterprise. They are not. They epitomize delegated socialism -a societal attempt to organize centers of socialism where free enterprise or national enterprise might do poorly. If we have reason to look for the epitome of free enterprise, we do better to look among industrious individuals, sole proprietors and partnerships that owe less of their existence to delegated socialism.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 30. Corporation: Delegated Socialism ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
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31. Marketplace or Socialism: a Dynamic Choice

Marketplace or Socialism: a Dynamic Choice
Bob Komives
::

If a good or service is to be traded in a marketplace, its supply must be limited. The good or service must be identifiable. It must be unique or divisible so that buyer and seller believe they know exactly what they are transferring. We cannot trade most wealth in a marketplace because we cannot easily identify or divide it, or because it is too abundant. Neither the oxygen produced by the world's flora nor the bile working in our livers is apt wealth for trading under most circumstances.

Some wealth that we can identify and divide does not make it into our marketplaces simply because our communal tradition says it does not belong there. We do find wood-burning heating stoves and firewood in the marketplace. A well-designed stove is a storehouse of functional and aesthetic knowledge. We can buy it and its fuel. Yet, we tend to give away the heat they produce.

My stove knows how to burn its firewood,
how to respond
to me who knows so little of what it knows,
to me who does not know how to make a stove.
My stove knows how to send smoke up its chimney
and warmth into my room.
Its warmth can please,
or it can save a half-frozen life.
Such is its success and popularity
that I could sell tickets to my stove's proximity.
But, I do not.
I share its warm knowledge freely
according to communal tradition
among family, neighbors, and kindred strangers.
Those whom my stove knows to please,
those whom my stove knows to save
give back nothing in trade
-except,
to carry forward in common tradition
what we and a stove
must in-common know.

My Common Stove

No scientific standard tells us which identifiable goods and services should be owned and traded in the marketplace. During the Civil War in the United States of America many young men bought up their obligation to serve in the army. Government had made this military obligation a commodity, making such purchases perfectly legal. During later wars many people found legal ways to avoid military service and combat, but it became illegal and immoral to try to buy one's way out. Military service had become a duty; it was no longer a commodity.

Voting is a right in some countries, a duty in others. Individuals possess this right or duty. They could sell it, but law and tradition say we can neither sell nor buy a vote. Law and tradition try to keep votes out of the marketplace.

Law and tradition make businessmen criminals and criminals businessmen. Traders in alcohol went through these metamorphoses when U.S. America entered and later left Prohibition -when alcohol sales were made illegal and then again legal.

Necessity and changing styles can move goods and services into and out of the marketplace. A corporation chooses a new combination of socialism and marketplace when it discontinues the internal manufacturing of certain components in favor of buying them in the marketplace from independent suppliers. At one time, perhaps, there was a real advantage to socializing the production within the corporation. Back in the late-twentieth century, when automobile makers Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford recognized some of the hints that they had become uncompetitive because of their aging technology and stodgy managers, they transferred some design and production from their center economies to their edge economies. There they hope to take advantage of the technological and price competitiveness of independent suppliers in a dynamic marketplace.

A family faces similar dynamic choices. After rearing children under loving socialism many parents request economic support from adult children who work for outside income but stay at home. While this is not a pure marketplace transaction, food and shelter, once distributed to the child under central traditions, now get distributed under a family-socialized form of edge economics. The change recognizes new conditions which call for a new economic mix. The added income helps the parents care for the younger children or enjoy a little luxury. The working child learns the pride and responsibility of adulthood, gaining some independence from his parents. It is as if the edges of a new household (like a new cell) begin to form before it separates from the old. If the adult child becomes sick and unable to work, however, his family will reverse itself without hesitation. "Don't pay room and board now. We are your family; we want to help you recover." They return to pure socialism.

The marketplace always has and always will be adjusted by communal decisions, especially when the public finds a market to be distorted from what is just or sensible. If modified law and tradition do not correct such distortions, correction may come from war, or revolution, or massive government spending. During the depression of the 1930s the marketplace behaved as if there were little wealth to invest. Nevertheless, under the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt the Congress of the United States of America made massive communal investments to fight poverty, and then even greater expenditures to fight World War II.

While choices are dynamic, our leaders often choose to be dogmatic. From a great war and a great depression much of the world (winners and losers) emerged wealthier than before. Perhaps, if our politicians were less dogmatic and our economists more instructive about government's communal intervention in the marketplace, we could avoid great depression and great war.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 31. Marketplace or Socialism: a Dynamic Choice ::
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32. The Difference: How Outcome Is Determined

The Difference: How Outcome Is Determined
Bob Komives
::

Ideas, people, and products compete intensively-both within a corporation and within the markets where the corporation buys and sells. Competition is often mistakenly equated with marketplace and free enterprise. Socialism fosters and tolerates every bit as much competition as does marketplace. Where they differ is in how results of competition get determined. In a marketplace, price (or value-per-price) is the arbiter. In a socialist system, the group or its authority figures decide based on merit, not price. Merit is judged according to criteria socialized into the system.

We uncovered certain socialist acts
perpetrated to settle competitive dispute.

Our Central Committee named a general secretary in
..... the old Soviet Union.
Our board of directors promoted a manager
..... at good-old General Motors.
Our boss sent one among us
..... to the workshop in Hawaii.
Our parents chose one among us
..... to finish the three-layer cake.

We Uncovered Certain Socialist Acts

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 32. The Difference: How Outcome is Determined ::
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33. Ignorance and Confession

 
Ignorance and Confession
Bob Komives
::

A society that emphasizes marketplace will tend not to see the socialism that makes marketplace possible. A socialist society will tend not to see the adaptive potential of marketplace. I believe what I see: we can have neither a socialist nor a capitalist world.

We cannot survive without socialism; it evolved with our species. It is at the center of everything living. Theoretically, we could have a world without marketplace; it is a relatively new product of evolution.

There are alternatives to marketplace in edge economics. To organize the exchange of wealth at their edges, groups can compete through war, thievery, conquest, or isolation; they can cooperate through peace, contracts, treaties, compatible but independent traditions, or through intergroup (international) law. Contracts, treaties, traditions, and intergroup law can control interchange. Thievery can also bring in wealth (such as when an immigrant smuggled the secrets of England's looms to the American continent, or when a Native American stole from another group the first horses for his own group). Conquest can bring in all the wealth of another group. Isolation can put up real or de facto walls that prohibit interchange. However, humankind's accelerating introduction of new forms of wealth makes marketplaces almost inevitable, even if illegal in an avowed communal state. We can foster the marketplace, as we do in avowed capitalist nations, but let us remember that fostering is a communal activity.

We can neither totally delegate to individuals nor totally socialize to a group the means to produce and maintain humankind's wealth. If the Soviet Union had believed that the state should own the means of production, it should not have gone into the international marketplace to buy computers and wheat. It should have bought Nebraska and IBM -people included. If U.S. America believes that people should individually own the means of production, it should eliminate the state of Nebraska and the IBM corporation because these are strictly communal structures.

I make these absurd proposals only to point out the absurdity of labeling political and economic rivalries as a dichotomy of capitalism versus socialism. The wealth production potential of the USA suffers when it ignores the fundamental dependence of marketplace on communal control over the policies of wealth distribution. Because in the last twenty years of the twentieth century marketplace was in political ascendance, so was our ignorance of our communal center. Socialism was descendent. During these twenty years, socialist leaders tended to confess that their nations suffer when they ignore the vitality, flexibility, and healthy complexity that marketplace can bring to an economy. As times change so will the loci of ignorance and confession.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 33. Ignorance and Confession ::
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https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781733884150

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34. Sell Fish on a Cherry Table.

Sell Fish on a Cherry Table.
Bob Komives
::

Robert Reich argued that, in order to arrive at a consensus for progress, we must acknowledge that the social and economic components of our national well-being are linked powerfully together. We must search for the right mixture of socialism and marketplace. This search is basic to resolving problems of food production and distribution. Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins of the Institute for Food and Development Policy have done an excellent job of pointing this out. While small, individually owned and operated farms tend to be the most productive, nations increasingly look to large, corporate farms (or in the case of some communist countries, communal farms). In poor countries with little industry, governments promote agricultural exports in exchange for foreign goods and services. In the process, self-sufficient farmers become undernourished wards of the state. In U.S. America the family farm seems endangered as more farmers go bankrupt and corporate farming expands. These are complex issues from which I will draw only a couple of points.

The socialized ethic that says everyone should have enough to eat comes in a heritage older than our own species. In our enthusiasm for marketplace, we should never forget that only more recently in the biosphere's evolution did we socialize the market into our culture. It is no more inconsistent for a nation that values the dynamics of its marketplaces to make sure that every citizen has enough to eat, than it is for a family to feed all of its members -even if some produce nothing for the marketplace.

Similarly, a nation should never forget that if it fosters either corporation or commune it fosters delegated socialism. There is nothing especially natural or inevitable about either. They exist through communal law and policy.

Where individual families produce enough food
..... (for themselves and nation)
..... and have not wrought havoc with the landscape, why substitute larger,
..... less efficient,
..... private corporations and state communes?
Since corporations are socialized creations of government,
..... there would be nothing un-American
..... in keeping them out of farming in the USA.
Since families are communes,
..... there was nothing uncommunistic
..... in reverting to family farms
..... in countries leaving the Soviet.
Of course,
..... the complement too is true.
..... Corporate,
..... communal,
..... and cooperative farms may be useful
..... where family farms cannot achieve
..... marketplace, social, and environmental goals.
There is irony in U.S. America
..... (and nations that follow its example)
..... where, in the name of free enterprise,
..... the most free of enterprises
..... (the productive family)
..... gets displaced by less efficient groups
..... that socialize risk and profit.
Communist countries displayed similar irony
..... imposing communal structure
..... that more mimics impersonal corporation
..... than traditional communism of family.

||

We can see human culture as an arena of continuously overlapping organizations, ranging from small families up to associations among nations. Each organization is itself an organ of others. Each has a communal core where it determines how to distribute its wealth internally. Our arena can also be seen as an intricate web of edges through which organizations exchange wealth. At these edges, a marketplace can facilitate interchange. Core socialism and edge marketplace complement one another. The world and its nations need not choose between them. The world and its nations cannot choose between them. Rather, they can organize themselves so that both socialism and marketplace help to capture wealth nondestructively, distribute it fairly, and recirculate it repeatedly.

I sell fish.
You sell fish.
He sell fish.

We sell fish.
She sell fish.
They sell fish.

Upon a Cherry Table

Upon a Cherry Table

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 34. Sell Fish on a Cherry Table. ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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35. To Suggest a Framework

To Suggest a Framework
Bob Komives
::

What I have worked
is just forgotten.
What I have wrought
is but forgot.

Ought To The Participle

I end Part I suggesting that we might re-subdivide the science of economics. In the first Plum Local, I saw a need for a new name to cover an expanded economics -perhaps, "biosphere economics" or "world economics." Change in name, however, is less important than change in substance. The substantial changes I describe rely on distinctions between abundance and scarcity, between centers and edges. Here, I propose a framework to accommodate these distinctions. I propose to unite similar areas of study within economics and to help economics connect itself with the rest of science through a redefined macroeconomics.

Macroeconomics covers the broad scope of economics, its important connections with the rest of science, and the interrelationships among the centers and edges of microeconomics. It describes the work by nature and humankind that creates wealth. It describes the general rules of abundance and economic development. Some traditional macro and microeconomics belongs here, as does economic history. For the most part it is a new economic umbrella synthesized from other parts of science.

Microeconomics describes the work of wealth distribution and maintenance. It describes the special rules of scarcity. Microeconomics can be divided into two parts:

• Central Economics covers socialism, law, tradition, treaty, peaceful cooperation, money, stock issues, internal borrowing, corruption, and like subjects. Most of traditional macroeconomics belongs here, together with studies that have not traditionally fallen under economics.

• Edge Economics covers marketplace, trade, war, peaceful isolation, external borrowing, thievery, and like subjects. Most of traditional microeconomics belongs here, together with work from other social sciences.

War and marketplace are moral near-opposites. However, both belong under edge economics because they try to bring wealth across the friction of the edge between groups. A treaty does the same, however a treaty usually belongs under central economics because it can form the core of a new group. It is the center of a higher level communal system.

Corruption and thievery are moral kin. But corruption is central while thievery is edge. In corruption, a small group at the center of a larger group finds its communal way to subvert the larger communal wealth ethic. In thievery, an individual or group imports wealth snatched from others.

Socialism and marketplace fall in different divisions of microeconomics, not because they are rivals, but because they solve different problems in the way hub and rim of a bicycle wheel solve different problems.

I prefer this framework, but I believe that names and frameworks can be both problem and solution. I seek a framework that works better, but we should avoid excess concentration on the classification of fields of study. After all, subdivisions are artificial; there is only one science. We need only make sure that economics be an integral part.

I trim my beard;
you notice my hair.
You cut your hair;
I ask, "since when the beard?"
On sight of a dirty bath,
together we throw out the baby.
My,
what able eyes for change
and lame brains for attribution
have you and I, sir,
and Little Red Ridinghood.

You and I, Sir

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 35. To Suggest a Framework ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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38. There Are New People In Upper Forest.

There Are New People In Upper Forest.
Bob Komives
::

I return to a diagram I used earlier to portray wealth development in the biosphere. Our biosphere is the largest organization of life, sitting astride part of the inanimate universe, isolated from any other biospheres that might exist. Energy flows into the biosphere; or, better, the biosphere invades the inanimate universe and captures energy. Organisms within the biosphere distribute and recirculate the energy among themselves, thus sustaining and expanding the biosphere. Energy eventually flows or is cast back into the energy streams of the inanimate universe as biospheric waste products.



The biosphere is an organism. It's components are sub-organisms. However unruly we seem, we components organize by rules known to the biosphere. We may participate actively or passively in our organization; we may participate in ignorance or with knowledge; but we participate. Fate is uncertain. Biosphere may expand its share of universal energy or it may collapse into poverty or death --so too, our species. The process is essentially imperfect, allowing disorganization, reorganization, flawed reproduction, new forms and levels of organization. Such is the biosphere and its economic development as portrayed in the diagram.



Now instead of seeing the diagram as the biosphere at work in an inanimate universe, I will change scales and describe it as a developing culture in a place called Upper Forest. A pioneer family enters a well developed forest ecosystem whose energy (- - -) flows from plant to animal and back, ever mixed with new inanimate energy from the sun. Used energy flows either into the inanimate atmosphere or into a neighboring ecosystem.

Upper Forest is a complex organism, containing millions of sub-organisms operating at hundreds of levels. Yet from the viewpoint of the pioneer family, Uppermost G, none of the wealth of the forest is human wealth until the family enters the forest to harvest its resources. The Uppermost G's remove trees, feed piglets, extract food and materials, build structures, and leave waste to rot or otherwise reënter the forest ecosystem.

The Uppermost G's are reasonably successful. Children are born. They increase consumption but eventually increase the family's capacity to capture and use the wealth of the forest. However, the G population expands even faster, because the Uppermost G's welcome another family of relatives, the Nextmost G's, who quickly take up the same lifestyle. An ever-more organized community forms as, over time, the Thirdmost, Fourthmost, and Bottommost G's move into farm the Upper Forest.

Some of the older children of these families see an opportunity to deepen this simple community and change from farming generalists to horse-and-buggy transportation specialists. Ever dependent on the farming output to pay them, they are proud to be the C'people who take goods and passengers to and from market and around the community. Eventually, others see the opportunity for leather working. The O'ers begin to craft useful goods from the hides of farm and wild animals harvested by the G's and C's and trade the products back to the G's and C's for food and transportation. Two O'ers and two C'people developed such a close working relationship that they formed the C-O Transport and Leather company.

The Upper Forest human community has expanded its farming activity five-fold from the time that the first G'family established itself in the forest. However, community wealth has expanded more than five-fold. Due to the specializations of the C'people, O'ers, and C-O Co, much of what had gone directly to outside markets or had rotted quickly back into the forest stays in the community to enrich the lives of everyone from the Uppermost G's to the Bottommost O's. The Upper Forest Community sees that it has achieved significant economic development. These people might say their success comes from hard work. If Upper Forest Ecosystem had a voice it would likely protest. It did most of the work while the human residents just played around. As the impartial critic, I would try to calm the argument with, "So far so good. Whatever you all have done here together seems, for now, to have worked." Then, with a little diagrammatic cut-and-paste, I would point out that they are not alone.

Lower in the forest lies another community much like Upper Forest. Lower Forest inhabitants depend on Upper Forest because their river starts up there. Directly and indirectly the human community and ecosystem of Lower Forest depend on resources provided by Upper Forest. Even much of their valley soil has come over millennia from gradual erosion in the hills above. Waste products of Upper Forest community become energy inflow, wanted or unwanted, to Lower Forest.



Upper Forest community may for a while see the clearing of trees for agriculture on steep hills as economic development. Lower Forest community sees dramatic changes in the flows of water and sediment into their valley. Floods become more frequent. Siltation makes their irrigation structures and their potable water system unusable.

Lower Forest community may retaliate: close roads, take political action, resort to violence, or end the intercommunity trading that has been profitable to Upper Forest community. Perhaps both communities will find the wisdom to see that they interdepend. They are parts of a larger watershed community, a higher level organism. Each part sees economic development at the local community level and inward but should also see it from the local community outward to the watershed community.

:: Bob Komives, Fort Collins © 2006 :: Plum Local IV :: 38. There Are New People In Upper Forest. ::
With attribution these words may be freely shared, but permission
is required if quoted in an item for sale or rent

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