INTEGRAL ANTI-CAPITALISM cont'd.

[Layman Pascal]

For an introduction to this expanding meta-thread see Integral Anti-Capitalism pt I. We continue here because we have, hilariously, exceeded this website's capacity...

LAYMAN PASCAL

I agree that holacracy should be singled out for special investigation. The provocative notion that we are dramatically over-emphasizing the need for "conscious leadership" pertains very pertinently to this discussion. Robertson, like ourselves, is pointing to the fact that business (organizations) which integrally improve the interiors and cultural
spirit of their participants are still predisposed to certain outcomes as a result of their actual structural habits of communication and their specific decision-making protocols.
His notion of a constantly self-correcting dynamic organization drawing upon the capacity of individuals to act as tension-sensors relative to the "evolutionary purpose" of the organization is compelling and admirable.

More important is simply that he is making a stand and making an attempt to construct a protocol (constitution). I am not fully versed in the 4.0 version of the holacracy constitution but we should get deeper into some of these proposals.  

Given the level of your current knowledge of their protocols, what would you want to change or add in order to ethically and functionally empower this approach even more?

THEURJ

First some housekeeping in providing links in part I to comments on holacracy: their website, comment 1, comment 2, comment 3 (and 3 more on p. 7), and the first 7 comments on p. 8. 

I’m not yet familiar enough with holacracy to know it might need. So for now I’ll ask questions.  From p. 8 there was a blog post on ownership and the model might (but not necessarily) include outside capital investors. I asked:

“One question immediately pops up on outside investors. Are there limits on the amount of outside capital investment? What if their investment is such that without it the company could not financially survive? And/or depends on it for start-up? Then such investment would control the company, like it or not. If you don't do what I say I'm taking my ball and going home. No ball, no ballgame. Not the same as a mortgage or loan company.”

Granted why such investors are included on the Board there are other stake-holders to balance their input. But are there rules about which outside individuals or companies can invest? Do they have to have similar values like triple bottom lines instead of just profit for their investors? Can a Goldman Sachs provide start-up capital? Or Romeny’s ex-firm, Bain? Just wondering, so perhaps it’s time for those out there more familiar with the system to engage us?

LAYMAN PASCAL

I appreciate your inquiry about the potential influence of outside investors in holacratic systems. Perhaps they have a good protocol for that. Or perhaps not. In general, all "smart groups" need to comprehend and anticipate the distortion influence that donors and enablers wield. The psychology of human nature shows that we may believe ourselves to be quite sturdy and impartial while we are really bending in the breeze.

One of the concerns I had while perusing the holacracy constitution was about the voting procedure for filling roles. There are many parts of their approach which impress. In particular I would like to make not of the necessity to place constraints upon discussion. When the mention of a concern is met with the mention of counter-concerns then the intelligence and practical efficacy of discussions drops dramatically. A highly suspicious mind might even supposed that the human hive is encouraged to engage in the constant casual usage of dysfunctional conversation. So their use of controlled phases in both operational and hiring decisions is admirable. However, their actual voting protocol seems (to my naive glance) to be based on a model of transparent majority. A sophisticated "show of hands".

So this may be an area in which holacratic principles can be expanded to include a more thorough use of "secret ballot" and "averaged ranking".

The former often seems like a show of bad faith and an invitation to covert dangers... but these are considerably outweighed by the liberation of individual intelligence from any conscious or unconscious concerns about the social consequences of their input.

The latter evades a primitive "first past the post" approach in which our intelligence is functionally limited to a yes/no determination about each candidate relative to other candidates.

Another thing I admire about holacracy is that it represents a functional procedure and culture in which participants would appear to become better participants by participating. Their capacity and ethical commitment to the good of the organization through its evolving protocols should be an increasing trend. Any smart group needs to be arranged so that even people who try to distort the results will find their capacity and will to do this reducing over time. Replaced by the inspirational efficacy of the group.

This brings me to another issue relative to voting, both in political and economic groups. That is the relative absence of specific instructions about how to translated ones feelings into a vote-mark. This is almost completely unaddressed in terms of popular elections. To discuss it even seems insidious to some people who fear coercion (and/or wish to maintain the current material power structures).

Protocols should have at least a clear suggestion about how to locate both "gut" and "intellectual" data within ourselves and convert that into a numerical value which can be contributed to a group decision. A lack of clarification at this critical junction may act as an invisible source of drag upon an otherwise very functional group organism.

It might even be possible to define an "integral-level organizational set up" for business or politics by simply compiling a list of areas in which intelligence and capacity are distorted. We might recall that most of Wilber's philosophy has emerged in levels correlated to his discovery of "fallacies" or "basic errors". Integral proposals about business and society could be all over the map unless there is a reasonable set of constraints that make sure they fall in the most lucrative zone.

So other than the potential influence of outside "helpers" and "donors" what other sources of distortion or inhibition do you see going mostly unaddressed in otherwise progressive groups?

THEURJ

My next question of holacracy is who came up with it? It seems to be the pet project of Brian Robertson, his own brainchild. I'm wondering if that is so of if it was a community or P2P project? I mean, the structure of holacracy itself calls for distributed decision-making but was the creation of holacracy itself derived from this process or mostly dictated by Robertson? I've yet to find an answer at the site so I posed this question to them via contact info. I'll provide the response if/when received. I think the answer is pivotal in determining if this thing called holacracy arose from its own medicine.

LAYMAN PASCAL

I look forward that answer if it is forthcoming. The notion of self-arising systems is something which haunts the periphery of these discussions. My fantasy is that we can devise a group protocol which so reliably and simply exceeds the cognitive capacity of the individual participants that it would be foolish to predetermine the purpose and nature of the group. Collectively we could a better job of determining what kind of a collective we should be. "Smartgroups" of this kind could then spread through the world in a very radical social uprising. How possible that is remains uncertain...

As I understand holacracy, the different companies making use of it are assumed to engage in their own mutational modifications of the "constitution". So even if Brian wrote the whole thing out in his bathtub it still retains an open source quality. The answer to whether its current forms are or are not the result of distributed decision-making is almost certainly: sort of.

One of the reasons the holacracy approach is so amenable to business organization is that it seems to depend upon the functional axis of a specified purpose. The aim is somewhat pregiven -- our job is to sell widgets or maximize share-holder profit, etc. His use of the metaphor of the sensors on an airplane derives from a mechanism that is assumed to be designed for a well-known purpose.

My question would be whether or not this "aim" is a necessarily functional element in generating enhanced organizational capacity? Or whether it is simply an artifact of the need to make these systems serve a relatively conventional marketplace task?

THEURJ

Your suggestion of a smart group that arises creatively from a continually evolving set of parameters seems to be the intent and practice of holacracy. As to the organizational purpose of Holacracy One, it seems to have multiple bottom lines including but not limited to profit. For example, see this post in the comments where I noted that the top to bottom pay ratio is 3 to 1, and quoted some of those multiple purposes:

"With Holacracy at play, the game is entirely different: with the decentralization of authority, the separation of people and role, and the dynamic evolution of those roles, we end up with a situation that looks more like free agents going about their work with no central planning. There might not even be a single person who knows about everything you do."

This sounds much more like the sort of emerging P2P organizational structure discussed throughout this thread. And also of significance in the post following this article where The Integral Center of Boulder has "voluntarily relinquished their rights to control their company as owners. Instead, they have ceded authority to a purpose-centered governance process called Holacracy, a model that distributes authority across the organization and gives primary power to the organization itself."

These are indeed advances over the kind of conscious capitalism promoted and AQALly packaged for sale at I-I.

LAYMAN PASCAL

(comment pending)

This is an interesting moment. Apparently Amazon.com is experimenting with a version of holacracy as well. It clearly represents a theoretical advance over the typical kind of conscious capitalism which combines advanced sentiments with a potentially dangerous and uninspected ideological allegiance to more primitive routines of social organization and wealth production. Yet we cannot know the results of the experiment in advance.

I have tremendous optimism about emergent p2p organizational structures. Experimentation is utterly necessary and should be strongly encouraged. I am also very hopeful that advances can be made in terms of quantification. This is very central in my thinking lately.

It seems that experimental protocols for advances social organization systems suffer from the lack of a quantifiable evaluation of their respective degrees of "collective intelligence". Most people are drawn to such possibilities by ethical and aesthetic criteria which do no necessarily persuade the world. So I would love to see experimentation supplemented by the attempt to devise a metric for estimating the intelligence of a social organization protocol.

Along similar lines, my "tetrabucks" type notions represent the possibility/necessity to structure our currency at a level that correlates to advanced P2P organizational structures and post-pluralistic consciousness.

The potential of an evil holacracy has hardly been broached. If it works -- it works. Other than simply the tendency of less complex people not to use more complex systems, and the tendency of more complex systems to complexify their participants, there needs to be some inter-organizational structures which incline all organizations int he direction of broad human well-being. It is my assertion that as long as primary areas of value remain outside monetization the actions of groups trying to utilize official social credits will constantly become unstable.

So I am imagining a line leading from pathological capitalism to standard capitalism to conscious capitalism to trans-capitalist network organizations to such organizations bound together by a integrated set of metrics for determining the intelligence of groups and splicing together (at least) four broad domains of human value.

Along these lines -- how will we decide whether holacratic integral business is working better?

THEURJ

As to how we determine whether alternative economic paradigms are 'working,' I'd suggest that even by the standards of typical business democratic workplaces like co-ops are successful. If by that we mean the organization runs smoothly, has low employee turnover, high employee satisfaction, makes a profit or surplus over operating costs, and other such typical measures. Plus they fulfill their stated purposes as expressed in theRochdale principles, like community education, cooperation, democratic control, etc.

I'd say the same applies to holacracy. They also have to accomplish the usual business parameters like above but also meet stated principles like in their constitution. Given Robertson's business acumen I'm sure at the site he has precise and measurable indices to track such progress, though I didn't try to find them as yet.

LAYMAN PASCAL

(comment pending)

[andrew]

The feudalism then and now chart pretty well sums it up: 

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/americas-growing-income-ine...

When I was working at Larrivee' guitars back in the 80's we joked that there was such a thing as gravy sucking pigs! And lo and behold……...

[andrew]

This is a runaway freight train loaded with nukes and every toxic chemical invented by man and the lunatics in the locomotive are never going to stop. They certainly cannot be stopped within the current political system.  I know of no way to change the system itself; they will never allow it. But they will do everything in their power to pit anti-authoritarians against each other. Cunning they are…..

And revolution and violent revolt? That is what they want; I say don't give that to them. There is only one way and that is to get them in the only place they understand: stop giving them money. Don't buy from them ( I have made my last purchase) it's back to buying as little as possible for me for the rest of my life. Now if we all did that…..Just stop, stay home, don't drive, don't fly, only support monetarily what is healthy for the earth.

[andrew]

I've been quietly following Miss Swan's blog and have decided that she has some merit: 

http://blog.thespiritualcatalyst.com/to-own/

I've had a natural aversion ALL my life to home ownership. Never owned one and never wanted to. Maybe this explains it. 

[andrew]

Here is a strictly rational link to neoliberalism and laissez-faire economics.

http://lorenzo-thinkingoutaloud.blogspot.ca/2010/06/neoliberalism-a...

But the real truth imo is that these policies have led to the greatest transfer of wealth in human history and this while under representative governments! These policies have also led to the worst environmental conditions in human history. Given that-- how aren't these policies dogmatic ideology? I say its the blind leading the blind! So, although I am a fan of rational behaviour I can also see that these so called rational policies are anything but. It is at that point I may consider some non-rational explanations for what is happening on the earth over the last 30 years. Conditions being ripe for the advent of WW3.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Recall upthread how I noted capitalism is still stuck in feudalism. This graph agrees.

[andrew]

I wonder if Cameron would extend the same ethic to muslim countries? 

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/david-cameron-blasts-r...

Of course not! The western corporatocracy is having too much fun: 

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_america_made_isis_their_vid...

[Edward theurj Berge]

This sums up our work lives in the capitalist system.

[Edward theurj Berge]

The myth of trickle down economics, according to Nick Hanauer, a member of the 1%. In this video he lays out that the 1% are not the job creators; it's us, the consumers. It's a feedback loop of our demand that requires businesses to hire more people to handle that demand. Giving more tax breaks to the wealthy doesn't create jobs; it just creates more wealth for the 1%. The wealthy's effective tax rate is already one of the lowest in the world due to such tax dodges, yet where are the jobs? At the end of the talk he shows a diagram of how the rich and their ideology are deified to rationalize their privilege. It's part of the feudal system that was still stuck in the mythological-religious and hierarchical Great Chain of Being. (Recall this diagram.) TED ended up banning this talk, I guess due to the kickbacks (I mean donations...) they receive from the 1%.

[andrew]

B.P. is advertising (lying) during the BMW in Colorado. Wall St. advertisers make these guys look like saints with halos. Maybe they could put the children burning alive from the inside out from Corexit in one of these commercials. "We've destroyed the gulf and now we get to destroy the arctic!" woo-fuckin' hoo!

[Edward theurj Berge]

These legislators are truly regressive. Do we really think that this ideology is just the equal and opposite of the progressive view and needs to be 'integrated?'

[andrew]

It's hard to fathom this level of denial: 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/co...

- not one word on the largest transfer of wealth in human history to 1% of the corporate elite

- not one word about the trashing of environmental protections which allow corporations to pollute with impunity

-not one word about global warming/co2 pollution ( does he not believe it?)

- not one word about how some governments do BETTER at managing certain systems than private enterprise

-not one word about the enormous burden of student debt because of the myopia of for profit only ideologies

-certainly not one word about who is destroying Canada's forest at an unprecedented rate ( the corporations).

- not one word about the unmerited payments to CEO's ( is it 400 times that of the average worker).

- not one word about the respect that everyone of healthy mind should show the global commons.

- not one word about how the corporate elite HATE the poor ( a spiritual disease imo).

- not one word about how politicians no longer serve the electorate but are bought by corporations for corporate interests

-I won't even mention that there hasn't been a state that has even come close to actually implementing what Marx and Engles taught. 

[andrew]

try that link again:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/co...

Anyway, it's a Gwyn Morgan op-ed in the Globe and Mail about why we should all love the corporatocracy!