The Only Variant of Capitalism That Works is Pass-Through Capitalism

commentary by Roger Erickson

The Imperfect World of George Soros

Soros' views on complex systems are passe, of course, to any 1st student in any system science whatsoever (math, physics, chem, ecology, biology, etc), but the article drives home some great points about the separation of theory and operations in the daily life of humans.

'One of Soros's intellectual hallmarks is an ability to quickly size up who wins in such a scenario. This is a useful habit of mind if you run a hedge fund. It also happens to be a very Eastern European way of thinking: Vladimir Lenin famously insisted that the key question of any political agenda was "who whom?" -- as in, who is doing what to whom?'

That question always occurs as part of a series. At one end is the question of group responsibility. What are WE doing to OURSELVES? Enough?

Track the pace of organization by tracking local "frictions?"  That way of thinking is not isolated to Eastern Europe, it's universal in dumb systems.  Going further, catalyzing ways to circumvent distributed frictions is the gateway to scalable Adaptive Rate in smarter cultures - i.e., those capable of more advanced system tuning.  It's also a reminder to view any system of complex operations as following a survival path, by tipping along, via a dynamic, subtly morphing disequilibrium between a great many conflicting forces. Dumb forces, at that, each with their own, blind local momentum that simply continues ... until it doesn't. People tend to forget that, and anthropomorphise collections of simple observations into quite silly projections. Reality is that Human Culture = Alice in Blunderland.

All parasites search for such friction points, to separate the foolish civil combatants from their shared resources. In political terms, prophets and statesmen do so in order to design appropriate tuning catalysts to bypass the frictions. Fusing the crude nomenclature, group Adaptive Rate reduces to the dynamic ratio of parasites/statesmen, which in turn reduces to the expanding perceptive range of the parasites. In bio-political jargon, what's the definition of a statesman? A parasite who finally realizes that there are orders of magnitude more profits accessible post coordination.  Systemic growth always starts with sensing potential, then continues by linking, staging & sequencing steps to access more of that potential.  Obviously, some statesmen are better than others, and some electorates don't always select their best statesmen.   Would Soros make a good President or Prime Minister?  Does talent for perceiving frictions guarantee talent for catalyzing circumventions?  Talent for alleviating distributed frictions?  Talent for system tuning?

This brings us back to a simple axiom stated in various ways in all system sciences.

There is no point of seeming stability in the natural world that is not a dynamic equilibrium between [blindly] conflicting forces.

More accurately: There is no survival path in the natural world that is not followed via dynamically shaped dis-equilibrium between [blindly] conflicting forces.

It's only a question of which group tunes itself to fall down the rabbit hole faster. By definition we never have the bandwidth to reason with situations, only opportunities to shape and survive them. That holds whether training monkeys, or slowly training a human culture. Group intelligence is the OUTCOME of shaping both our group and our situation by practice. It is not the original intent, or even the practice, but the outcome of a ruthless selection process.

Simple logic says that every Automatic Stabilizer used to shore up the base should be matched with another Automatic Destabilizer, exposing citizens to our potential to pursue even greater challenges. Anything less, after all, is boring, and just failure to explore our expanding options.

There is no accelerated Adaptive Rate in the natural world that does not follow the rate of repurposing resource-sink parasites into passthrough catalysts.

Sequestering capital is useless.  Putting it to work for the general welfare is useful.  The only variant of capitalism that works is pass-through capitalism, which is simply tribalism on a larger scale.

If we don't want the kids sitting around the unemployment office, complaining that they're bored, then it all boils down to which of the challenges they propose we carefully select to support. Our selection quality - including rate - is are potentially how we provision our future Adaptive Rate. If we don't select quickly and wisely, someone else will shape situations, and probably not as well as we could have.