We decline

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 13:03:47 +0100

Business firms have been the principal forces behind the promotion of governmental regulation of the economic life of the country. Through competitive and trade practice standards; licensing and other limitations on entry into the marketplace; tariffs and taxation policies; government research subsidies and defense contracting; and various other uses of the coercive powers of the state to advance private interests, the business community has fostered rigidities that help to insulate firms from the need to remain creatively resilient and adaptive to change. My book, In Restraint of Trade, documents the development of such behavior between 19181938.
As I have previously observed, a number of historians have shown how such institutionalizing practices contribute to the decline of civilizations. If a society is to remain creative and viable, it must encourage not simply tolerate the processes of change. At this point, the creative interests of society (as people) come into conflict with the structuring interests of institutions (as organizational systems). Whether the autonomous and spontaneous processes of change will prevail over the preservation of established institutional interests, may well determine the fate of the American civilization!
The forces of institutional dominance with their centralized, vertically-structured, coercive systems of control have encountered the decentralized, horizontally-connected, voluntary methods of cooperation. Mankind is in a life-and-death struggle not simply for its physical survival, but for its very soul. The contest centers on the question of whether human beings shall continue to be servo-mechanistic resources for the use and consumption of institutional interests, or whether they shall be their own reasons for being. Will institutional or individual interests be regarded as the organizing principal of society? [Saving a Dying Corpse - Butler Shafer]

Devolving power can only bring good?

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 15:06:41 +0000

According to an ICM poll 40% of British muslims would like to see Sharia law implemented in predominantly muslim areas of the UK.

Okay some comments first: 40% are in favour, 41% were against. So we could just say "opinion is fairly divided." Additionally, as a commenter at reddit points out:

As a complete non-expert, I'm curious whether "Sharia law" means the same thing to all UK Muslims. The (currently disputed) Wikipedia article makes it seem Sharia can legitimately mean many things.

In fact, if I asked a typical citizen in my own country (US) what the advantages of Anglo-American common law vs. European civil law were... well I wouldn't even know if I were asking a meaningful question. ;)

So opinion is fairly divided on the matter and we're not even sure what either side thinks they are being asked about. I take comfort from the fact that only 1% felt that the July 7th bombers were "right".

But let's assume for a moment that there is a muslim community in the UK who are predominantly in favour of Sharia law and there is some formulation of Sharia law that they can agree upon. Is there some particularly good reason why, if it only applies to their community, they shouldn't have it?

It seems to me that many of todays problems are about arbitrary boundaries and the restriction of choice. I was born in the UK, it didn't take much effort for me to be here. If you are born in Iran and want to come to the UK you probably have a boundary problem. We don't want to let you in. By what right do we make this decision? I'm not sure.

Also our boundaries lead us to form groups. We form emotional attachments to places. We become "of" a place when, in reality, it's just a label we associate with ourselves. However this grouping leads to divisive in-group/out-group thought patterns and to irrational and unnecessary hostility between groups of people who really shouldn't have anything to fight about.

If we could make boundaries more about choice than chance then a lot of the tensions in our societies might be reduced. If a strong majority of people in one place want to live by a set of common principles then they should be free to do so and those who disagree are free to leave and have somewhere to go. I guess it's this last bit that's hardest. Where do you go?

Still quite a lot of thinking to be done here...

Curiouser and Curiouser! on society

We decline

Devolving power can only bring good?