Visa to Where?
Mitch writes
today of his frustration as a board member of the Chaordic
Commons. This is a foundation formed by the organizer of VISA,
Dee Hock, based on his insight that VISA came
together and grew into the world's largest financial enterprise because it combined
the energy of chaos and order. Specifically, VISA is
owned by its participating banks using a structure that balances the interests
of the larger and smaller members. It holds no significant assets of its own,
but exists to enrich its member banks.
The Chaordic Commons
seeks to help organizations to employ those principles for their own success,
and
Dee Hock's book, Birth
of the Chaordic Age, provided some grist for the Xpertweb mill.
Like VISA, Xpertweb is a transaction-processing
(well, publishing) system, not owned in the usual sense, serving its users
in an even-handed way. If Xpertweb's virulence works as designed,
its protocols could see global adoption as broad as VISA's,
which is why it has no central function to slow it down. It's a lot like rock
'n roll while
VISA is like a farmer co-op.
Mitch writes:
I have no idea whether the Chaordic Commons
can or will survive or thrive, because after seven months on the board
of trustees, I've never seen us do anything but deal with the process of
communication rather than our real differences.
This is all especially ironic since Dee Hock thought of these ideas
while building the largest economic entity on the planet, Visa. The ideas
work
elsewhere, but Dee always saw the power of greed, even if it was only the
opportunity by some participants to protect what they already had by being
more transparent and sharing resources. Every player in the Visa story
was hoping for huge gains, not just a fairer environment for transaction
processing.
Nevertheless, the harmonizing of profit motive with representativeness
and self-organizational models produced something great. All we have at
the Commons
right now is a non-profit struggling to find a meaning for itself. Since
that meaning must emerge from a group of minds, we need to let go of the
processes and wrangle a bit, because nothing in human history has come
as easily as we would like and if we back away from the conflict through
which
we must pass to find what we have in common nothing will ever be accomplished.
Conversations are Markets
We in the information business want to believe that the world springs from
ideas and that reason can sway enterprise. Actually it's the opposite, which
I
hadn't realized so strongly until I read Mitch's description. Let's riff on
the ClueGuys'
point:
1. Markets are conversations.
I'd suggest the inverse:
1. Conversations are Markets.
The market precedes the non-campfire conversations. Until the Agora is
up and running and moving the goods and shekels, we're basically a bunch of
gossips. But when there's a product or service to design and produce, based
on an inspiring
(advantage-fueled)
business plan, then we band together and do some, well, productive thinking.
Any board has trouble holding a productive dialogue
if it has no pressing economic (productive) need for it. As I read Dee Hock's
book, the member VISA banks
got something slapped together fast because they smelled money and, just as
importantly, computer technology was so new they just did what made sense
at the moment rather than
hiring experts to study the opportunity. Actually, they did hire some experts,
but Dee promptly fired them.
This sounds like a typical business is first and foremost rant, but
that's not the point. The point is that, until citizens are bound together
through direct economic links, as in the Agora and farmers' co-op, we'll not
have the clout to do for our nation what we think the managers in
companies and the White House should do—organize resources on behalf of the
nation rather
than
for
their own interests.
Well, they are citizens, and they're advancing the interests of the citizens
they know best. The mass of citizens won't have the power to enforce "fairness" until
those citizens have the power to do so, collectively. Power is economic power,
not the power of persuasion or moral rectitude or any of the other illusions
that most of us would like them to be. There are no short cuts to wielding
power. Unless there is a collective economic force which is palpable, pervasive,
broadspread and even-handed, chaordically improving the allocation of productive
resources, then there will be no counterpoise to Mitch's dire prediction in
his other post today:
This administration is out of control, is using warnings and hype to
scare people and, I think, is capable of believing suspension of democratic
mechanisms is necessary and even good for the people of the United States.
Doc is thinking about Cluetrain also today and wrestling
with the
impotence of words alone:
One of the questions I got from the floor during Q&A after my talk
was "Where do you guys think you were wrong?"
Four years after we wrote the original [Cluetrain] Web site
(and nearly as long after we wrote the book), I'm thinking that politics,
democracy
in particular
(and regulation, too) is still remarkably free of influence by clues
from citizens. Also that citizens still suck at clueing each other, blogs
withstanding.
I did think, back in '99, that "the end of business as usual" (our
subtitle) would come sooner than the end for many other _____s as Usual.
Education came to mind. Also politics and science. But politics is the
big one. Why doesn't more come out of our outrage?
Lot to think about there.
In 1999, the valley held the power of economics because even Washington thought
the Internet was a tidal wave. The power has left with the money. The folks
in Washington couldn't be happier.
Grab Your Power or Grab Your Ankles
There are two major themes today: the incompetent and wrong-headed management
of people and resources by the American management class, and the
quiet but nearly total repeal of civil rights by an administration that
sees itself as managers, not leaders. There's
no difference between the two.
It's been 530 days since 9/11 froze us into meek submission to petty
demagogues. Which way do you want the curve to arc in the next 530 days? If
we the people do not build, deploy and populate our own economic and political
web applications, then we'll be in a worse place in another 530 days. Could
we have imagined on
9/10/01 that our civil rights would now be subject to the whim of
whoever saw an advantage in violating them?
What do we want our reality to
be like
on 6/13/05? That June would be a good month to be free.
11:27:11 PM 
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