Ch 7. Are There New Ways to Play the Game?
WTF: What's The Future? And Why It's Up to Us
When it comes to organizing ourselves, there are many different means to achieve it. Varying methods which govern the organization of labor, transportation, communication.
There are a lot of different ways to organize ourselves socially, economically, and politically. However, the status quo directs us down the same, inefficient paths that have never been up to the task of confronting problems such as global warming and economic inequality
Let’s look at the American Revolution for a moment. The founding fathers sought to throw off the yoke of monarchic rule, and after a bloody war we did just that. However, the new system that was put in place of the monarchy really wasn’t much less oppressive if you weren’t a white, land-owning male.
Remember, the signers of the Declaration of Independence were all unelected, most of them owned slaves, and they also suggested that their class be the only ones allowed to vote because the “common man” was too unrefined and uneducated to determine his own future. Women were relegated to being mothers and wives in the patriarchal tradition.
Look at the way our businesses are structured. Hierarchical, top-down authoritarianism is the accepted norm in the business world. It goes beyond business, however. Churches and other religious institutions are also authoritarian. After all, if you argue with them, you’re arguing with “God.”
Our government is ostensibly a democratic republic. We elect politicians to represent our interests at the capitol. However, the government has, for as long as it’s been around, functioned as a de facto plutocracy. If you think this is incendiary rhetoric, let’s look at the dictionary definitions of a plutocracy.
Plu·toc·ra·cy
noun
noun: plutocracy
1. Government by the wealthy.
"the attack on the Bank of England was a gesture against the very symbol of plutocracy"
2. a country or society governed by the wealthy.
plural noun: plutocracies
"no one can accept public policies which turn a democracy into a plutocracy"
3. an elite or ruling class of people whose power derives from their wealth.
"officials were drawn from the new plutocracy" (Oxford-English Dictionary, 2023.)
The upper one percent pay little to no taxes, and yet have an inordinate amount of sway in government. It’s not that America has some tendencies toward plutocracy. It is a de facto plutocracy by the very definition of the word.
This Plutocracy, in one school of thought, has actually been quite successful. After all, America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and has the third largest army in the world, behind China and India. However, the resources and equipment of the US Army makes them the strongest armed forces in the world. In fact, the US has three times as many military bases as the other countries, combined (Bandow, 2021.) The army allows the US to exert its influence in all four corners of the Earth.
And yet, upon closer examination, the vast majority of wealth in the US is concentrated with a tiny percentage of the owner class.
And this method of organizing and operating has caused a tremendous amount of suffering, death, and destruction. In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the former of which was conducted on false grounds of weapons of mass destruction, the death toll for American soldiers was 7,000. A horrifying number, especially when you remember that most of those 7,000 have families, extending the tragedy.
However, the death toll on civilian populations in those countries is even more heartbreaking. Over 432,000 people, almost half a million, have lost their lives in the wars (Watson Institute, 2023.) Please note, these are noncombatants, not terrorists or enemy soldiers.
Some may feel that this death and destruction is a fair trade, but in truth, there’s nothing fair about it. The destruction caused by the old ways of hierarchical patriarchy and elite rule is now threatening not just one country or another but the entire existence of the human race itself. (This may seem like hyperbole, but in a later section of this book I'll make the case that humanity is in very real danger.)
It is essential we seek out and embrace new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things.
But those “new” ways have already arrived. They are the result of new technology and operating systems that have only recently become a reality. It’s an evolutionary step that can’t be ignored.
It’s important that we stay open to new ideas. Many of the old ways are simply not going to move us forward. In fact, they tend to hold us back from combating big problems like climate change.
So what are some of these new ideas and new ways of playing the game?
Perhaps open-source collaboration works better than closed proprietary development when it comes to solving big, complex problems like global warming. Partly because any company or business entity that comes up with a solution for climate change is naturally going to want to profit off of it. This will slow down or even eliminate a full rollout of the solution, making it essentially worthless. Remember, the best invention in the world is no good if it never leaves the workbench.
Cooperative economic models can allow for greater equity and economic growth than our current model, which is economic extractionism. The owners of the means of production extract surplus value from the labor of their employees under our current system. But how many Einsteins and Hawkings and Curies have we lost because they were too busy struggling to make ends meet instead of working on solutions to benefit the world?
Sharing resources and goods is more effective at stimulating the economy and fostering sustainable growth than our current system. Remember that a strong middle class is the most important catalyst for the economy because if no one has the money to buy products and services except for the wealthy elite, the whole system begins to break down.
Gen Z could be our salvation. The “gamer” generation is often scoffed at and even ridiculed by Boomers, but all of those games and online activities are not, in fact, a waste of time. Gen Z knows more about organizing, collaborating, and building things than they are given credit for. Sometimes you have to look to the youth to find the way forward.
The further you delve into this book, the more new concepts you will find. Some of them might seem unorthodox, because they are. That’s what makes them good ideas to solve these big problems, because orthodoxy and the status quo is what got us in this mess in the first place.
In order to solve the problems presented by climate change and economic inequality, many of us will have to step out of our comfort zones.
The fact is, religions, philosophies and government systems were mostly created a long time ago, before the invention of things we take for granted, like indoor plumbing. The Founding Fathers still believed in the Four Humours, a grotesquely inaccurate theory about how the human body works, and they had no concept of a telegraph, let alone a telephone or the internet.
It might be time to admit that these old systems did not and maybe even could not have foreseen this time and the complexities of the problems we must solve. Maybe it’s time to admit that we need to be playing different kinds of games.
Infinite Games vs. Finite Games
You are familiar with finite games. They have fixed rules, set players, and a distinct outcome: Either you win or you lose (or you tie if you’re playing soccer/futbol.) Finite game examples include baseball, football, and basketball.
By contrast, an infinite game has variable players, no fixed end, and the aim of the game is to keep playing. An example of this is education. You cannot “win” education, and the players, in other words instructors and students, are always changing. There is also no end to education, as you can keep going forever.
Simon Sinek’s, Infinite Games outlines a way to develop and lead with an infinite mindset and is worth checking out. Sinek’s book helps lay out a plan to further just causes, build trusting teams, find worthy rivals, and display existential flexibility. All of these things apply directly to our efforts to build a better world.
The old systems bring about so much death and destruction because they are still operating on a finite games philosophy. The objectives are short-term, like “winning” short-term profits at any and all costs, and you can see the results of this all around you.
Gamer Culture
If you have the chance to see Jane McGonigal’s Ted Talk about gamer culture, you should take it. She explains how gamers operate, and how the gamer mindset could change the world. Here’s a quick quote from her talk about gamer philosophy’s concept of urgent optimism.
“Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success. Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible, and that it is always worth trying, and trying now. Gamers don’t sit around. Gamers are virtuosos at weaving a tight social fabric.” – (McGonigal, 2014.)
It’s that tight social fabric that we need to weave right now in order to solve big, complex problems like economic inequality and global warming. We can look to gamer culture for inspiration on how to do this. Gamers often organize and maintain entire social networks which exist outside of the game as well as within its confines. Many games have a thriving Discord community which constantly shares ideas, tips, and tricks with each other. The same method could be applied to our efforts to combat global warming and to build a better world.
Wikipedia is the largest collaborative reference resource in the world. But the second largest is the World of Warcraft Wiki, compiled entirely by gamers.
Centralized vs. Decentralized thinking
Our current system relies heavily on centralized thinking. In a centralized system, the decisions about strategic planning, goal setting, budgeting, and talent deployment are typically conducted by a single senior leader or leadership team (Alix Partners, 2016).
In contrast, in decentralized organizations, formal decision-making power is distributed across multiple individuals or teams.
Centralized systems are more expensive, less flexible, and more fragile (if your CEO dies and he’s the only one who knows the eight secret herbs and spices, your company is in trouble). Centralized systems also excel at keeping power and profit with the few at the expense of many. Feudal monarchies in the dark ages were centralized systems, for example. Centralized systems are also often rigid, inflexible in their thinking, and slow to adapt to change, if indeed they can adapt at all (Alix Partners, 2016).
Decentralized systems are less fragile by their very nature. Think of the old adage of putting all your eggs in one basket. Decentralized systems are often less expensive and lend themselves toward community wealth building. Needless to say, decentralized systems are also flexible and can evolve more easily than centralized systems.
Modular Systems
“There are many possible futures. The world as it is is not a given. We can reinvent it.” – Tim O’Reilly.
A Modular System is changeable, and customizable. In order to explain this model further, let’s look at some concepts developed by Eric S. Raymond in his 1999 book of the same name, called the Cathedral, and the Bazaar. While these concepts were developed in the software industry, they can be easily applied to other situations, such as our own.
Let’s begin with the Cathedral. The Cathedral represents the traditional method of developing a new idea. It is hierarchical, closed, and proprietary. A single or a small group of developers are cloistered in a garage or a lab somewhere developing proprietary technology that only they fully understand, for profit.
The Bazaar is an often times chaotic and noisy, open-source market of ideas where new technologies are collaboratively developed, and released early and often. Oftentimes, users are allowed to freely input suggestions for the development team. The idea is that if you get enough eyeballs on the product, you will eliminate all or most of the bugs. If two heads are better than one, then how effective will a million heads potentially be?
Our country, our planet, our very species is facing a huge, complex, and existential threat to our existence. It is not the time for capitalists to huddle inside their cathedrals trying to find solutions to these problems in order to profit off of them. Investing in the apocalypse.
Instead, we need open-source engagement for us to combine our resources and efforts in order to solve these problems as quickly and completely as possible.
If we fail to find solutions to this problem, it will have devastating consequences for generations to come.
In our next chapter, we’ll look at the parables presented by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and how they apply to our current situation.
Centralized vs decentralized is an exciting example of a tangible solution
ReplyDeleteAwesome chapter
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