Project Willow » Mon Jun 27, 2016 10:37 pm wrote:Does anyone at all have some positive, long term solution they can offer? It's fairly easy to say what we need to tear down and stop, but what should we be building toward, in terms of governance and sustainable economies.
Why are most of my liberal friends defending the EU? Since when is it entirely reasonable and okay to support such removed super structures even in the abstract?
I do but no one is interested.
The reason the EU is utterly FUBAR is because of the way it is designed as an organisation.
All the tsunami of steamy debate is based around political or economic or power analysis.
BUT
The problem is not one of analysis, it is one of design, according to principles from management cybernetics.
An organisation needs to be able to respond with alacrity to a changing environment. To do that it needs to have extensive clear sensors in the environment and transfer relevant messages through itself.
The man in the crows nest of the Titanic
didn't have binoculars, so the signal "There is an iceberg ahead!!" did not get transmitted in time to turn the ship away....
The purpose of a system is what it does and the EU centralises complexity and creates abn equilibrium by 'matching it' with massive bureaucracy, when what it needs to do is *DE*-centralise and Coordinate.
The problems with the EU are generally symptoms of the collapse of organisational viability - among these are
when there is a lack of a 'Mission Control' that collates incoming streams of information in real-time and then feeds timely decisions based on them back into the system.
when there is too much complexity allowed from the environment, the system can overload and coordination functions get swamped - think of the teacher who works on the annual school timetable is so behind with her work...
that the timetabling doesn't happen -
and the school starts grinding to a halt as no one knows where to go for class...
This is no more a problem to be solved by politics than designing a building is.
Designing a Viable Organization StructureJohn Brocklesby and Stephen Cummings
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephen_Cummings3/publication/223127761_Designing_a_viable_organization_structure/links/55fa028108aeafc8ac2ee73a.pdfThis link below shows you how to do it.http://www.esrad.org.uk/resources/vsmg_3/screen.php?page=0cybeyesThe VSM GuideAn introduction to the Viable System Model as a diagnostic & design tool
for co-operatives & federationsJon Walker
Version 3.0 (2006)
Introduction
Preface
Section 0: Cybernetic Eyes
Section 1: The Quick Guide to the VSM
Section 2: Case Studies
Hebden Water Milling 1985
Triangle Wholefoods 1986
One Mondragon Co-operative 1991
Section 3: Preliminary Diagnosis
Janus interlude
Section 4: Designing Autonomy
Section 5: The Internal Balance
Section 6: Information Systems
Section 7: Balance with the Environment
Section 8: Policy Systems
Section 9: The Whole System
Section 10: Application to Federations
Bibliography
Links
Appendix 1: Levels of Recursion
Appendix 2: Variety
The EU as an organisation is centralising complexity, which can only be maintained by matching with... rule by dictat. There is no working Audit function, meaning that the whole organisation exists in a fog of poor information, with the associated corruption that accompanies it.
There is very poor coordination across individual countries (for example decrees are issued without thought for the differing impacts they may have) resulting in shortages and gluts in products and services and skilled people. The organisation lacks accountability, listens poorly, acts as a dictator not facilitator (cf the behind the scenes story of the EU 'negotiations' with Syriza).