Wednesday, November 6, 2019

The Little Big Man




This is an important insight that needs to be shared widely.

Socially we have evolved through what i describe as Natural communities that typically number around 150 individuals.  As a corollary larger communities operate as an assemblage of Virtual Natural communities.  The Natural community remains central because our brains are designed to actually work within that physical framework.  All this is foundational to economic theory itself.

Everything we know about such communities has emphasized the emergence of what we describe as the Big Man as the accepted spokesperson for such a community.  So far so good.  It all appears to be natural and even normal and to that extent it certainly is.  Where it fails obviously is that you are suddenly restricted to one individual's talent and insights unless the individual actively promotes communication.

This is where the Little Big Man problem kicks in.  Such a person has the position but acts to preserve it by co-opting the communication of all others to the immediate detriment of failing to optimize the community's available talent. First nations succeeded in overcoming this problem by a council of elders who attached talent to the task at hand.  Thus outside observers, anticipating structure saw confusion instead which was not really present.

It is for that reason that I promote what i call the Rule of Twelve which is a natural hierarchy of decision and rule making that allows talent to be empowered and resources allocated.  A community thus has several levels of internal authority.  The first is a universal vote to determine a pool of leading electors.  The second is the selection of the six top electors who then draw from the pool to deputize a second.  The twelve then elect a spokesman to speak for the work to be addressed.

A caller, who is not an elector then calls the business to be addressed as needed.  Decisions can be made by the spokesperson, or alternately by a vote of the six or more formally by a vote of the twelve.  This way all possible decisions have a high level of consensus built in for the whole community.

What is so important is that the baleful effect of the Little Big Man is eliminated.  This has been the universal problem of all Natural communities..  

In order to directly end global poverty, i propose that creation of credit devolve directly to the rule of twelve itself which has the real capacity to optimize lending and internal investment for a natural community and to also promote larger needs to similar communities as well through having direct knowledge.  Like micro finance, losses should be negligible..  .

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