Thursday, January 3, 2013

Culturo-sclerosis Is Progressing Rapidly - Best Cure is an Openly Sourced Electorate

commentary by Roger Erickson

Warren Mosler's latest post pretty much sums up current economic operations: SNAFU. The vast majority of our national options are being ignored.

We're just sitting around doing nothing, while the 1% twiddle their thumbs on a proportional # of yachts declining so slowly that they don't notice.

We don't NEED more yachts. The vast majority of static assets are already sitting unused most of the time!

Yes, the absolute # of static assets are inching up, but dynamic utilization ratios are plummeting!  Our systemic management goals are tracking the wrong metrics!

That means that our real-outcomes and real-options-curves are both turning over, AND WE AS A PEOPLE ARE NOT NOTICING (at least not soon enough).  It's not good when the rate of context-change is inside our distributed, cultural OODA Loop. That means we're falling further behind the rate of change of a changing reality.

In cultural adaptation, as in business, as in war ... TEMPO (Adaptive RATE) is everything. And we're throwing it away! Culturo-sclerosis is not just setting in, it's advanced to the point where multiple-Luddite cultural bypass surgery may soon be the only option. Why not reduce the diet of pathological ideology now, before our cultural operations get so sluggish that a national-heart attack occurs? Even the distributed momentum of distributed bad habits can easily be overcome by smart but simple choices ... but ONLY if those options are actually explored and the choices made.

Only an Openly Sourced electorate is capable of operating a CICU (cultural intensive care unit). Someone has to start notifying all 315 million components of this sick patient, before it's too late to pay their last respects (to themselves!).  If we slow down any further, no one will even come to our nation's funeral.


3 comments:

Tom Hickey said...

Russia and China ROFL.

Unknown said...

so how do we do it, Roger?

any concrete proposals?

Roger Erickson said...

Y,
Biggest problem I see is that we have people convinced that there is something simple to be "done."

Instead of looking for simple solutions ahead of time, it's best to first at least convince yourself & the public that situations are to be parsed and shaped, not pre-ordained?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq9FPHBB2C8&list=PL6A415A89F23C0AF2

The reason we're in such a mess is precisely because so many diverse people arrogantly thinking that they know what to do. All evidence suggests none do.

Ergo, first step is to orient to the endless options at hand, and admit that they constitute a wave to be surfed and shaped, never "known" ?

http://ma.tt/2013/01/marshmallow-challenge/
letting rapid failures define success)

So, to answer your question:
1st step is to pull back from all the ideological arrogance, and let the feedback from rapid, tentative failures start defining unpredictable success?