Managing the Real Fiscal Balance, Between Bureaucracy and Autocatalysis

commentary by Roger Erickson

Adaptive rate tracks the ratio of autocatalysis vs bureaucratic lethargy (entropy). So what factors tip social adaptive rate forwards or backwards?

"News is what people want to keep hidden, everything else is publicity" ~ Bill Moyers

Ergo, bureaucracy ("desk power") can't change without knowledge throughput, i.e., without fundamental shift in feedback patterns, aka group discourse patterns. You wanna change a systems' output function? Perturb the input function, to get a different output. The system itself will auto-adjust to a new equilibrium, until again SUFFICIENTLY perturbed.

It's never just a question of what coulda, woulda,  shoulda been achieved. It's a bluntly honest question of "How do we get THIS system to start doing what's needed, soon enough to matter?" First priority is always enough Situational Awareness - in this case including group self-knowledge - to honestly answer that honest question.

Until our electorate knows itself, it knows squat.

How does an electorate know itself?

Interactions drive awareness.
.....Awareness exposes distributed options.
Distributed options demand distributed actions.
.....Distributed actions drive distributed interactions.

(And so we - potentially - arrive at cultural autocatalysis. To actually tip outselves into group autocatalysis and maintain that state, then becomes an issue of maintaining distributed interaction patterns and rates above a threshold that differentiates the three zones of system dissolution, system stasis/hibernation, or increased system agility. Of course, maintaining or even accelerating autocatalysis requires continuous re-distribution of energy, liquidity, freedom to act, and public initiative. We coulda, woulda, shoulda been measuring this, but so far we simply aren't preparing ENOUGH students and citizens to even be aware of this option, let alone want to constantly accelerate our rate of exploring it.)

With all respect to all our Shakes-em-up peers, living or dead:

To be or not to be, an autocatalytic nation, that is the group-question.
Whether 'tis Nobler in the group mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageously unpredictable Context,
Or to take Arms against our Internal Sea of Bureaucratic Frictions,
And by opposing, endlessly counter them: to never die, to never sleep.
To actively Dream while still awake; Aye, there's the rub,
What of that dread of something after change!
The undiscovered Country, from whose desks
No Bureaucrat returns. PDSA? Exceeds their OODA will.

And makes Bureaucrats rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of all Bureaucrats,
And thus our Nation's hue of Distributed Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with a pale fear of Thinking,
And decisions triggering great pitch and moment.
With this regard bureaucratic Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action. Hell no! you say,
The feisty Boyds, Demings & Shewharts? In thy cursings
Be our #$%&! new explorations always triggered. Hell yeah!