Addenda to “Governance Redefined”

 THE FOOLISHNESS OF LEGISLATORS:

 The Greek financial crisis has made me realize that, rather than bothering to criticize representative governments, I could have saved myself a good deal of effort and my readers a good deal of time by simply calling attention to the manner in which these nations have condemned themselves.  Greece is but the standard bearer for a long list of representative democracies-among them, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Iceland, Ireland, Hungary, Great Britain, Latvia and, of course, the United States-that are marching briskly down Fredrich von Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom.”  Although national idiosyncrasies have, of course, introduced variations in their headlong plunge into debt, they have all succumbed in one way or another to the cycle of ever rising expenditures to an ever more demanding public-a cycle that has inevitably led to the exhaustion of their national treasuries and their consequent need to borrow from outside sources.

As all debtors come to know, indebtedness has a price.  Now that their sovereign debt is approaching one-hundred per cent of their gross national product-exceeded it in some cases-these countries face the very real dilemma that their interest costs will absorb whatever growth their economies might have generated.  Forget improvements in infrastructure, education, social services and the like.  It will be all they can do to stay afloat.  And some may not be able to manage that.  Whatever the future holds for these countries, their present course is clearly unsustainable and is bound to lead to a messy resolution.

Mind you, this is not to suggest that autocracies have a better track record in this regard.  Dubai, Egypt, Argentina, and Venezuela, to cite three notable examples, are in as much or more trouble than the democracies I’ve mentioned.  Nor has every representative democracy automatically fallen irretrievably into debt.  Canada, Australia, and Norway have kept their head well above water with the help, it must be noted, of their extensive natural resources.

THE WISDOM OF CROWDS AND TERMITES:

Part Four of “Governance Redefined” describes a “wiki” political procedure that aggregates a continuous series of laws arising from nothing more substantial than individual penchants.  No doubt many readers will regard such a system skeptically.  How can such a chaotic, directionless, more-or-less random process produce anything but an unstable, ineffectual, if not outright dangerous state of affairs?  But I would ask such doubters to think again, for rather than being some untried, blue-sky notion, the basic methodology is well established as documented by James Surowiecki in his book, “The Wisdom of Crowds.”  Surowiecki points out that a solution arrived at by an amalgamation of the opinions of independent contributors most often is better than that posed by experts.  Indeed, some of the largest, most innovative corporations purposely rely on this approach in their policy making.  And let us not forget Wikipedia, that impressive, encyclopedic collection of entries by individuals.  Along similar lines, mathematical algorithms, collectively known as “swarm intelligence,” have been incorporated in such advanced applications as robotics, planetary mapping, and nanobots that, someday, may be injected into the bloodstream to kill cancer cells.

Furthermore, the hypothetical governmental system described in the essay submits each individual contribution to a feedback test to verify its validity.  Thanks to this added precaution, even a set of laws dominated by the most badly-advised, ill-informed, stupidist contributors would produce, in time, a workable government.  Doubters of this proposition are directed to the giant termite mounds in Africa that can reach thirty feet in height.  Gazing at one of these impressive structures, one might well imagine it to be the inspiration of some master termite architect.  But despite that perfectly reasonable assumption, the fact is that the only architect on the job is Captain Feedback.  It seems that whenever the termite colony becomes infected with the building urge, its members fan out over a site, form into groups each of which sets about industriously building a mound of its own.  After a period of time, the Captain signals the end of a cycle; the workers compare the size and quality of their particular mound to others in the vicinity.  If that comparison locates a mound superior to their own, the workers readily desert the structure they had labored on and join ranks with their more successful brethren.  Thus, after this first iteration, fewer than half of the original trial mounds remain active and the remainder left unattended.  After a series of such iterations, the entire colony focuses on a single project and the mound rises into the air-a monument to the efficacy of feedback even in the hands of a species dumber than we are.

DH, April 28, 2010