Evolutionary theorists once made fun of Intelligent Design, that is, until they started dabbling in economics. Strange then that they would call this practice Evonomics.
You show what I term the duplicity and/or obtuseness of the self-proclaimed “Experts/Elite” who wish to farm Humanity for THEIR Greater Good.
Their self-deception and narcissistic hubris allows them to dress their would be dictatorship in the latest intellectual fads to make it seem benevolent altruism.
Inside their “New Invisible Hand” is the Old Visible Fist of Tyranny.
This article seems to miss the point that our legacy political-economic systems were historically designed by ideologues with the full intention of usurping locally-produced value and suppressing political feedback (and crushing cultural/ecological diversity to boot). There is nothing "natural" about current economics.
We are fish in a monoculture ocean of one dominant form of horrendously designed money, which is used to inflict great harm on billions of life forms on this planet. We are now at a point in time where the convergence of multiple exponential technologies is opening up space for the emergent, bottom-up experimentation of alternative economic systems that can cooperate & compete against each other for dominance - even Hayek called out the monoculture problem inherent in nation state currencies. As an advocate for stigmergic coordination, I thought this would be something you'd be excited about, but instead your blog reads like a free market libertarian apology.
If you truly believe that there are no collective coordination improvements to be gained through participatory economic systems design using complex systems science and the new tools available to us, then you need to keep digging my friend!
Hey Jeff -- "our legacy political-economic systems were historically designed by ideologues with the full intention of usurping locally-produced value and suppressing political feedback (and crushing cultural/ecological diversity to boot)." I agree in great measure. And that is rather the point of Underthrow. You say, "There is nothing 'natural' about current economics." I absolutely agree and am struggling to understand how you would interpret what I wrote any differently. Also, we must use "one dominant form of horrendously designed money," which benefits the Cantillon Club (Wall Street + Washington). Agree here, too. I am sympathetic to free markets as such, but our readers and I have graduated to something else: free markets in communities and governance systems. Paradoxically, that means governance systems might not allow free markets. In other words, as both *decentralization* and *decency* would have it, none of us knows The One True Way. If we can create a condition of self-organizing communities/systems, there will not be any institutional monolith aside from the one you join. But that means we are essentially prescribing something that is not libertarian per se, but certainly liberal--a metapolitical view with polycentricity baked into it. (Please stick around for my upcoming piece on Metapolitics.) According to this publication, pluralism is not just a fact, it is a normative goal. In short, we are ALL for "participatory economic systems design using complex systems science and the new tools available to us," even if some of these systems are not free market in the narrow sense. We just don't support philosopher kings imposing those systems on others. If that makes us "libertarian" I suppose that means we're guilty as charged. My critique of Evonomics is that it is just warmed over dirigisme--run by people who fancy themselves as philosopher kings who think they possess The One True Way. It's not "criticize by creating," it is *we will architect new systems through intelligent design and impose that politically on the plebs* I hope in the interests of decency and decentralization, you don't support that view.
Well said, and I'm happy to see we are more aligned than some of your recent writing led me to believe. 🫒
My remaining question is: if you are pro-local-alternative-economy in a 'by the people, for the people' fashion, are the people who design the economic infrastructures those communities will use to instantiate their economies not called the "designers" of those economies? Also, If they are designed to be participatory and opt-in (which our current systems completely lack, so I don't blame people for not seeing that as an option), is anything really being imposed on anybody?
Do you know any of Peter Barnes' other work? He is a very commons-minded thinker, and I have no doubt he would be in favour of the obvious polycentric and pluralistic diversity of participatory local economies, if he knew that the technological capacity to do so was just recently unlocked (and still being built). I believe it's up to liminal thinkers like you and me to connect those dots for the people in these legacy systems, rather than tear down their ideas with criticisms based on outdated and unnecessary assumptions.
His points on intelligent design using complex systems are well taken, and if you haven't already, I would recommend a deep dive into model-based systems engineering and it's ability to manage complexity in dynamic adaptive systems, while keeping them within acceptable bounds of safety and ethical consideration (even despite capitalism's insistence on cutting costs and corners). From a local-institution building point of view, I'm curious to hear your perspective on MBSE's recent application to Ostrom's work on the Institutional Analysis and Development framework:
I am for any experiments in living. My core belief is that we will trust the institutions we build and use together. What's interesting, though, is that you and I have very different influences. I gather you would be more into the tradition of folks like Michel Bauwens P2P cosmo-localism, which has roots in the syndicalist movements. My tradition is more among the liberals. That said, I'm really happy to work with people from other traditions to create the pluralistic synthesis. // In answer to your question about Peter Barnes, he does have some good ideas. Indeed, my friend Michael Strong writes favorably about his ideas in Be the Solution. Barnes' fatal flaw, though, is flashes of technocratic arrogance. I draw stark contrast between so-called 'systems thinkers' and experimental innovators because the latter understand their role as such. But I agree that we are all architecting systems. As long as people can join those systems freely and we have healthy mechanisms for adjudicating frictions between them, then the twin processes of self-organization and selection will do their work -- a la Stuart Kauffman in At Home in the Universe. // I must admit my disappointment in the Santa Fe Institute, because despite being quality thinkers, many confuse map and territory, model and reality. As we move into an era of participatory governance, platform cooperatives, and other systems, we must operate with humility. Yes, they are systems designers. But are they designing systems or protocols that give rise to systems? Even as I am skeptical of system designers' ambitions, I fully support the experimentation and the communities that form around such experiments. In any case, I resist model-based designers who are out there creating digital Skinner Boxes and fancy that they are Skinners and participants are rats. I prefer the lens of emergent law and humility in protocol design.
Well parsed and argued, Max, thank you.
You show what I term the duplicity and/or obtuseness of the self-proclaimed “Experts/Elite” who wish to farm Humanity for THEIR Greater Good.
Their self-deception and narcissistic hubris allows them to dress their would be dictatorship in the latest intellectual fads to make it seem benevolent altruism.
Inside their “New Invisible Hand” is the Old Visible Fist of Tyranny.
Get free, stay safe.
This article seems to miss the point that our legacy political-economic systems were historically designed by ideologues with the full intention of usurping locally-produced value and suppressing political feedback (and crushing cultural/ecological diversity to boot). There is nothing "natural" about current economics.
We are fish in a monoculture ocean of one dominant form of horrendously designed money, which is used to inflict great harm on billions of life forms on this planet. We are now at a point in time where the convergence of multiple exponential technologies is opening up space for the emergent, bottom-up experimentation of alternative economic systems that can cooperate & compete against each other for dominance - even Hayek called out the monoculture problem inherent in nation state currencies. As an advocate for stigmergic coordination, I thought this would be something you'd be excited about, but instead your blog reads like a free market libertarian apology.
If you truly believe that there are no collective coordination improvements to be gained through participatory economic systems design using complex systems science and the new tools available to us, then you need to keep digging my friend!
Hey Jeff -- "our legacy political-economic systems were historically designed by ideologues with the full intention of usurping locally-produced value and suppressing political feedback (and crushing cultural/ecological diversity to boot)." I agree in great measure. And that is rather the point of Underthrow. You say, "There is nothing 'natural' about current economics." I absolutely agree and am struggling to understand how you would interpret what I wrote any differently. Also, we must use "one dominant form of horrendously designed money," which benefits the Cantillon Club (Wall Street + Washington). Agree here, too. I am sympathetic to free markets as such, but our readers and I have graduated to something else: free markets in communities and governance systems. Paradoxically, that means governance systems might not allow free markets. In other words, as both *decentralization* and *decency* would have it, none of us knows The One True Way. If we can create a condition of self-organizing communities/systems, there will not be any institutional monolith aside from the one you join. But that means we are essentially prescribing something that is not libertarian per se, but certainly liberal--a metapolitical view with polycentricity baked into it. (Please stick around for my upcoming piece on Metapolitics.) According to this publication, pluralism is not just a fact, it is a normative goal. In short, we are ALL for "participatory economic systems design using complex systems science and the new tools available to us," even if some of these systems are not free market in the narrow sense. We just don't support philosopher kings imposing those systems on others. If that makes us "libertarian" I suppose that means we're guilty as charged. My critique of Evonomics is that it is just warmed over dirigisme--run by people who fancy themselves as philosopher kings who think they possess The One True Way. It's not "criticize by creating," it is *we will architect new systems through intelligent design and impose that politically on the plebs* I hope in the interests of decency and decentralization, you don't support that view.
In short, we like the idea of competing stigmergies.
Well said, and I'm happy to see we are more aligned than some of your recent writing led me to believe. 🫒
My remaining question is: if you are pro-local-alternative-economy in a 'by the people, for the people' fashion, are the people who design the economic infrastructures those communities will use to instantiate their economies not called the "designers" of those economies? Also, If they are designed to be participatory and opt-in (which our current systems completely lack, so I don't blame people for not seeing that as an option), is anything really being imposed on anybody?
Do you know any of Peter Barnes' other work? He is a very commons-minded thinker, and I have no doubt he would be in favour of the obvious polycentric and pluralistic diversity of participatory local economies, if he knew that the technological capacity to do so was just recently unlocked (and still being built). I believe it's up to liminal thinkers like you and me to connect those dots for the people in these legacy systems, rather than tear down their ideas with criticisms based on outdated and unnecessary assumptions.
His points on intelligent design using complex systems are well taken, and if you haven't already, I would recommend a deep dive into model-based systems engineering and it's ability to manage complexity in dynamic adaptive systems, while keeping them within acceptable bounds of safety and ethical consideration (even despite capitalism's insistence on cutting costs and corners). From a local-institution building point of view, I'm curious to hear your perspective on MBSE's recent application to Ostrom's work on the Institutional Analysis and Development framework:
https://medium.com/block-science/model-based-institutional-design-3939b4f0137a
I am for any experiments in living. My core belief is that we will trust the institutions we build and use together. What's interesting, though, is that you and I have very different influences. I gather you would be more into the tradition of folks like Michel Bauwens P2P cosmo-localism, which has roots in the syndicalist movements. My tradition is more among the liberals. That said, I'm really happy to work with people from other traditions to create the pluralistic synthesis. // In answer to your question about Peter Barnes, he does have some good ideas. Indeed, my friend Michael Strong writes favorably about his ideas in Be the Solution. Barnes' fatal flaw, though, is flashes of technocratic arrogance. I draw stark contrast between so-called 'systems thinkers' and experimental innovators because the latter understand their role as such. But I agree that we are all architecting systems. As long as people can join those systems freely and we have healthy mechanisms for adjudicating frictions between them, then the twin processes of self-organization and selection will do their work -- a la Stuart Kauffman in At Home in the Universe. // I must admit my disappointment in the Santa Fe Institute, because despite being quality thinkers, many confuse map and territory, model and reality. As we move into an era of participatory governance, platform cooperatives, and other systems, we must operate with humility. Yes, they are systems designers. But are they designing systems or protocols that give rise to systems? Even as I am skeptical of system designers' ambitions, I fully support the experimentation and the communities that form around such experiments. In any case, I resist model-based designers who are out there creating digital Skinner Boxes and fancy that they are Skinners and participants are rats. I prefer the lens of emergent law and humility in protocol design.
"Ockham has opened the barbershop." I'm going to have to steal that!
Does Wilson come out and say explicitly that by high-level selection he means politicians, bureaucrats, interest groups, and other pondscum?
Such a good point, Max. I'm sure he and his buddies are the philosopher kings who can be installed at the highest echelons.