domingo, septiembre 28, 2014

Avoiding delays on capitalism's transformation

"... a majority of respondents strongly agreed that the primary purpose of the corporation is to serve customers’ interests as ultimately the best means to add value for shareholders." -- Aspen Institute
As will be seen below, believe it or not, the question “Can human beings prefer EcoIsOurs capitalism to other alternatives?” is well above public or private politics. It is a question of the system architecting at the highest level of the institutions of government and markets in a world of interdependent countries that’s urgently needed. As can be also seen, this is neither necessarily pro-business nor pro-government; it is essentially pro-people.

Pro-people is well in agreement with the above quote of the Aspen Institute, as can be seen in the much broader context of the article Has Capitalism Reached A Turning Point?, by Steve Denning, a contributor to Forbes. I say yes! Capitalism has reached a turning point. However, Mr. Denning is not so sure when in his approach:
The question is whether the Drucker Forum in November will be able to reach agreement on the way forward and generate an united front for reform, or whether it will, as at the Colloquy of Marburg in 1529, splinter into different factions, as thought leaders emphasize their own particular slant on the issues, with the obvious common ground among them being lost in the din of heated debate on tiny doctrinal issues.
According to Mr. Denning, "many of the world’s thought leaders will converge on Vienna Austria on November 13-14, 2014 to discuss this very question at the Global Peter Drucker Forum 2014. The speakers include Clayton Christensen, Gary Hamel and Roger Martin, among many others." In order to avoid debate on transformation (not reform, see below) on that Forum, like it happened to Martin Luther, I suggest that after 5 centuries we know a lot better. Instead of starting with a debate, which will only benefit the status quo while delaying the process, I suggest starting with a generative dialogue under a system architecting approach, which as you will see is already well advanced and not necessarily limited to that Forum.

The argument behind the system architecting considerations (more at the end on what can make EcoIsOurs a predetermine element of several scenarios) is that people that have been induced to prefer to be on the right or on the left, need to discover if what they need is less governments elites, whether democratically elected or not. Instead, in agreement with earlier findings, what it is proposed here is a more direct democracy, under great markets to be available under EcoIsOurs humanistic capitalism.

The main reason it is best for everyone is because it will try to operate on a series of mutually reinforcing virtuous circles, where all stakeholders will have the opportunity to win. That is in contrast to EcoNoMic capitalism, communism, and socialism, where one part of the population benefit from virtuous circles, while the other generally faces services under vicious circles. Even in cases where general elections are very close in the number of votes, the winning majority rules. It’s easy to see how that has become wrong as the world changed.

A new learning of the emergent future is well in agreement with the post Synthesis of a proposed global partnership on climate and development. It comes in part from the interpretation of a broader and timely story that Neil Irwin told us with his article In Scotland and Beyond, a Crisis of Faith in the Global Elite, published on September 20, 2014, in the New York Times.

Mr. Irwin wrote in a earlier and shorter version of September 18, 2014, that “when you get past the details of the Scottish independence referendum Thursday, there is a broader story underway, one that is also playing out in other advanced nations.” After adding how this week "a right-wing anti-immigration party in Sweden claimed its largest-ever share of parliamentary votes" and "new census data released this week showed that middle-income American families made 8 percent less last year, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 2007,” he says that “what these stories have in common is this: They lay bare a crisis of faith in the global elite.” Then he goes on to add other events of the past to support the crisis.

Identifying where the crisis is in the worst shape, Mr. Irvin warns us that “… it is in Continental Europe that the consequences of bungling by mainstream elites are perhaps the most damaging, and the most dangerous.” Such a warning reinforces the identification that shows up in the suggestion of the note Why the Eurozone leaders must change their common sense first. That post was updated yesterday, for example, to clarify the big difference between the meaning of reform and transformation. In similarity to the Protestant Reformation (a transformation in today's sense) of the Catholic Church, what the Eurozone needs is transformation of the whole, not the reform of some parts.

Under the emerging common sense that drives EcoIsOurs humanistic capitalism, Mr. Irvin’s conclusion is not limited to advanced nations. It is that mess (term taken from September 18) that has also affected most other countries in the world. The problem is that with both democratic and non democratic governments, people are now able to express their discontent, as we have moved from the Fordism (after Henry Ford) of the 4th technological revolution of the industrial civilization to the Jobsism (after Steve Jobs) of the 1st technological revolution of the systemic civilization. This reflection is an update to the historical context of the above mentioned synthesis as described next.

As can be seen, Irwin identifies the discontents on both the left and the right, by saying: “… there are always people who have disagreements with the direction of policy in their nation; the whole point of a state is to have an apparatus that channels disparate preferences into one sound set of policy choices.” That kind of set of policies operated very well for business to business’ channels in the Fordism world.

As the Jobsism (not to be confused with early attempts to describe it as Post-Fordism) world is replacing the Fordism one, operating very well on direct business to customers’ channels, the restrictions to only one set of sound policy choices are no longer accepted by people that experience social networks on a day to day basis. This reminds me of the quote attributed to Justice Potter Stewart as he was stepping down from the Supreme Court in the US: “I may not be able to define obscenity, but I know it when I see it.”

In fact, this learning from the emergent future fits very well with the post Would middle-class 'indignados' prefer direct democracy?, which people are not expecting, but might love. Although those indignados were unable to define what the political elites were doing to them, they knew what they were seeing, even before Mr. Invin was able to define it as having “in common a sense that the established order isn't serving them” and the EcoIsOurs humanistic capitalism emerged.

The lesson learned is that the failure of representative democratic elections (or imposed otherwise) is now deep into the awareness of many people as it can now be replaced by a direct market democracy to stop the mess of thing we are in, where governments have invaded the market space and vice versa. That’s what the transformation of capitalism, communism and socialism into the EcoIsOurs humanistic capitalism should be all about.

It is precisely the industrial civilization supply side average of disparate preferences into only one sound choice of governments that have generated very serious perverse problems, which were identified as far back in 1972, by two professors. To learn more about it, please take a look, for example, at the paper A complete and fully functional electricity restructuring proposal.

For completeness, please take a look at why system architecting is able help us in a way that’s described in the blog post Límites que van por encima de la política (Limits that go above politics). Such help allows, for example, a shift from an independent system architecture to an interdependent one, that can provide and dissolve (not need to solve) the Yes No problem of independence referedums, which can be found in section 2, The Architecture of Civilization, in Alvin Tofflers’ book The Third Wave, which says:
We see here in outline, therefore, the common structures of all Second Wave nations—regardless of their cultural or climatic differences, regardless of their ethnic and religious heritage, regardless of whether they call themselves capitalist or communist. 
These parallel structures, as basic in the Soviet Union and Hungary as in West Germany, France, or Canada, set the limits within which political, social, and cultural differences were expressed. They emerged everywhere only after bitter political, cultural, and economic battles between those who attempted to preserve the older First Wave structures and those who recognized that only a new civilization could solve the painful problems of the old.


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