Monday, May 9, 2016

"The Need for Parallel Infrastructures and Shadow “Governments” of an Ad Hoc Nature"

This is from Al Finn Next Level.


Rigid, corrupt, government monoliths such as those of the U.S., the EU, Japan, China, etc. have certainly outlived most of their usefulness. But the best way to peacefully dismantle such monstrosities is do do so by stealth replacement.

Each department, bureau, ministry, and agency of these unholy conglomerates purportedly serves a nominal infrastructural purpose. By sorting out useful “infrastructure” from destructive infrastructure, intelligent and innovative private agencies should be able to devise parallel methods of meeting genuine societal infrastructure needs. Beginning slowly and on a small scale, such parallel infrastructures (and ad hoc shadow governments) can provide a proof of concept which can be widely copied where the opportunities arise.

The concept needs further development, but it should be easy for intelligent and experienced persons of competence to see how the new paradigm of private, non-governmental disruptive innovation might be applied to the slow dismantling of government itself.

Note: A proliferation of cooperating — but also competing — startup ecologies and parallel infrastructures of a robustly resilient and anti-fragile nature, suggests that even as nation states collapse and disintegrate for reasons of demography, economics, disease, war, or natural disaster, a significant residue of expertise and competence will remain largely intact.

Such a complex interactive system of internetworked networks of competence provides humans with the best opportunity for not only survival, but an abundant expansion into the inner and outer worlds of existence.

The concept is certainly threatening to established power hierarchies. But for the rest of us — which means almost everyone on the planet — it offers hope.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In computer programming, you almost never address a problem by simply throwing away an old, established system and starting again. Almost every line of weird, inexplicable code in the old system is a bug-fix of some description.

Agency B monitors agency A, and C monitors B. Simply get rid of B and C, and all you will get is a return of the problems they were meant to address. Case in point: the Glass-Steagall act. Measles hasn't been a problem for years, so we should just get rid of vaccinations (which seem to not do anything).

Governance is just really freaking difficult to do.