How to best help shape aggregate success? NEVER tell an aggregate HOW to do things? Instead, help RECRUIT its members both to an enticing aggregate CHALLENGE, and then also to grant itself distributed PERMISSION to surprise all members with its distributed ingenuity?

There always seem to be endless discussions going on, about countless proposed ideas and suggestions, for all policies, not just fiscal and tax policies.

Perhaps there's no problem with that, except that there is not enough discussion? Also, there are not yet enough methods for convincing our aggregate to quickly test and assess enough of our present ideas?

So let's take another approach. Let's connect all such policy discussion to more ancient lessons, by trying to stand back and look at our situation from the outside in, as if some alien visitor were observing planet Earth & the USA.

"When you see a planet full of humans, digging themselves into a hole, and you offer to help ..... they'll invariably ask you to jump in and help them dig."

So of course it's no wonder that our SETI isn't succeeding yet. :)  Maybe ETI is waiting for us to grow up and express a "Saii" - the Search for Additional, Intra-Aggregate Intelligence?

Why would alien visitors abstain from any of our ongoing arguments? Maybe because they'd quickly recognize - or already be universally familiar with - a universal reference for evaluating our efforts?

What is that reference? The members of all aggregates VOLUNTARILY swap SOME local degrees of freedom, for SOME uniquely aggregate degrees of freedom, exactly because of the net BENEFIT of that exchange. That's what we call a SOCIAL species.

Recognizing, staging, linking & sequencing the (distributed) behavior of an aggregate, in order to take ADVANTAGE of that exchange is obviously quite complicated. It has to evolve by trial and error. We have tangible records of that occurring in seemingly countless species, and certainly also in the history of our own human, cultural aggregates.

Hence, at this time, maybe we need to something parallel to all of our discussion details, just to make our next decision. Why? When viewing any social species anywhere, or any aggregate anywhere ..... an overriding ratio always stands out, separating adaptive aggregate-signal from ongoing aggregate-noise. Maybe we're simply not allowing ourselves to see it?

If there is not a net, distributed gradient of detectable success vs failure, the components of all aggregates cannot and do not make that voluntary exchange in enough proportions to continue tuning the aggregation process. 

If a growing aggregate is not actively tuning itself to organize & aggregate on a greater scale - i.e., "TO MAKE A MORE PERFECT UNION" .... then it is, by definition, turning to inter-component competition instead, and wavering on the cusp of dissociation and dis-aggregation, instead of further aggregation.

Without a steady sequence of adequately enticing, aggregate challenges, it is mathematically improbable to even maintain, let alone improve aggregation, i.e., teamwork, aka "union".

The political process of all human cultures has always revolved around this fact.

Further, those humans involved in the politics of human culture have always HAD to employ an endless series of invented, often diversionary, challenges, in a desperate attempt to keep enough team members motivated. We've known this very clearly, ever since Themistocles tricked the citizens of Athens into investing public wealth on a bigger/better state navy - around ~483BC!

Today, however, it seems rather clear that the art of politics may have reached it's limit?

Adaptive politics is classically defined as the art of having supposedly gifted individuals attempt to trick an aggregate into adaptive, aggregate action sooner than it would have otherwise acted - or in other words, the pursuit of successful, Central Planning.

Yet we already know that Central Planning cannot scale as fast as aggregate demands. Hence, politics as is DOES NOT SCALE! Well Duh!

I only bother stating all this so indirectly so as to drive home the point that WE, as a growing aggregate, will ALWAYS face this task. How do we keep our changing team motivated, no matter how big, successful & complacent we get? That organizational task COMPOUNDS, as a function of both population numbers and citizen capabilities.

It always comes back to the mathematics of distributed motivation among the aggregate of citizens?

If there isn't a palpable distinction between more/less enticement (or survival/failure), then there is no net maintenance & growth of democracy - which we can call further aggregation of the binding ties of a social species? So far, we just connecting already well-known dots.

So it is always necessary to invent new methods for recruiting citizens to keep organizing, to continue making an even more perfect union, and to continue exploring novel opportunities to voluntarily swap less enticing local options, for more enticing aggregate options?

Isn't that why straw men arguments and false flag operations are so common in history? An adequate enemy always helps? Yet we're simply running out of them - in a tragecomedic sense - to the point that a melting pot is trying to convince itself that all contributors to the pot now harbor enemies. That process is degenerating to worldwide fratricide. Surely that pond is nearly all fished out, and we have to look elsewhere, just to keep feeding ourselves?

What will become of this growing population of humans? All prior examples of other social species either die out, stall or invade yet untapped niches. Sci-fi writers have explored this domain for decades - although a bit haphazardly.

Those social species that DO manage to aggregate on a larger scale, all seem to do so by an analogous process, regardless of the specific details. 

They permanently capture a new state of aggregation ONLY when they add something subtle to their aggregate-regeneration process. 

That "subtle something" is always some completely unpredictable pattern of distributed influences that somehow BIASES the entire aggregate to further aggregation, i.e., organization on a greater scale.

Absolutely nothing that an existing aggregate does guarantees this or makes it inevitable!

It only occurs as the result of increasingly distributed trial and error. However, the process actually seems to accelerate, since a growing aggregate always spawns it's own selection machinery as a function of the very diversity that it spawns. To select it's own next step, it needs only to stumble into also listening to the added parts of it's growing self. Simply hearing and using all of the constantly expanding feedback always seems to allow self selection.

Humans are already remarkably, FANTASTICALLY biased by physiological nature to aggregate and pursue return-on-coordination. 

Worldwide, we've resorted to actively trying to beat that innovative spirit out of kids, through "education," to the point that active tensions between our existing physiological and cultural biases are rising, worldwide. Our obvious options are piling up faster than our willingness to explore them!

It is NOT AT ALL CLEAR how to further grow our historic bias to further return-on-coordination!!!

a) endless warfare?
b) endless random political diversions, tricking us into lemming-like mass manias?
c) instilling a cultural bias, through subtle tweaks to our education system?

Perhaps we do NOT need to over-argue the details, other than to use them to orient to the big picture, and recognize our aggregate context.

We DO need new methods for adequately biasing our millions and billions of citizens to pursue return-on-coordination as a Desired Outcome that is more enticing than competitive dis-aggregation.

As always, methods drive results, but ONLY after net motivation or enticement is established.

In our case, that ALWAYS comes back to methods for increasing the distributed motivation of our existing aggregate.

We already have mathematical proof that our survival path requires methods for increasing our cultural bias to further return-on-coordination. You can look that proven premise up in the established literature of multiple disciplines.

UNFORTUNATELY, NOT ENOUGH CITIZENS KNOW THAT, and certainly haven't learned it early enough in life to help their aggregates fully leverage the potential impact. [Sadly, 40% or more are currently actively opposed to that conclusion, and are indoctrinating their children to do so as well. Hence, our union isn't as perfect as it once was.]

In summary, we are facing an aggregate tuning task, one that is conceptually rather simple in theory, and even in practice. 

Perhaps the greatest hurdle is our existing bias to RESIST being tuned by others.

Rather than trying to beat our aggregate self into submission ..... it might be easier to join our growing, aggregate self?

Hence, one - very old - suggestion is to task all teammates with equal responsibility for aggregate self tuning. No surprise there.

Historically, we've called that either tribal membership, or democracy. Whatever it's called, we now need to do it - EVEN MORE EFFICIENTLY - on an even bigger scale.

When will that happen? Perhaps exactly WHEN an adequate majority agree on it as a consensus goal? When we do have agreement, then all individuals can sit back and let their aggregate impress themselves with IT'S distributed ingenuity.

To paraphrase General Patton, 

"To help shape aggregate success, NEVER tell an aggregate HOW to do things? Instead, help RECRUIT it's members both TO a consensus Desired Outcome, and then also to ALLOW itself distributed permission to surprise all members with it's distributed ingenuity?"

Patton had the beginnings of a generalized idea, but he didn't extend it to a 2-stage optimization process for an entire national culture.

Methods for recruiting citizens to continuously select their own enticing, new, Desired Outcomes, worthy of their aggregate capabilities. 

Methods for recruiting citizens to allow themselves to succeed more through aggregate hoarding (of coordination skills as dynamic assets) vs individual hoarding (of crude static assets).

And, ultimately, to a 3-stage optimization process, adding one more step.

Methods for adding a developmental bias, so that all three steps become an ingrained habit.

These 3 steps conform pretty well to the steps in both Shewhart's PDSA cycle, and Boyd's altered, extrapolated version, the OODA loop, and also to the general tenets of OBT&E - or "Outcomes Based Training & Education."

The Pattern Of Process Flow

Consider, just as one of many examples, Aviation Disasters Due to Mechanical Failures.

Now please consider this question. Do the following statements NOT sound vaguely familiar, for anyone who's observed multiple screw-ups in any discipline whatsoever?

"visual inspection by crew not required"

[one passenger's visual inspection noticed crack]

[possibility of cracks joining, to exceed limit, "not considered"]

Surely that makes one ponder the PATTERN OF PROCESS FLOW, across any and all examples of adaptive systems making context-specific adjustments.

Yes, for adaptive rate to stay the same across multiple, transient contexts, EVERYTHING must continue to change (at different rates).

Nevertheless, there is a timeless PATTERN always evident in those few systemic changes which are adaptive, vs the many optional changes which are NOT adaptive. If we have to select how to survive, surely there are some basic patterns that define our selection process? Sounds obvious & easy, once stated.

Just let easy happen? The solution to every declared challenge is eventually quite easy, but because we no longer provide ourselves ADEQUATELY DISTRIBUTED PRACTICE at letting easy happen, we quite literally have raised billions of PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT LEARNED TO ACCEPT DISTRIBUTED EASY, and insist on individually working themselves to death doing what's systemically wrong.

In fact, we've come to the insane condition of despising those who resist industriously over-working at doing random wrong. (It usually involves personally, stupidly stockpiling static assets, while ignoring the far more valuable dynamic assets. Take our rampant individual capitalism ... PLEASE!)

Isn't it curious how the causes of disasters ..... are usually obvious in hindsight?

And how the generic solution is usually so insanely simple? They're always a reminder to simply seek, or actually re_sample - AND ACTUALLY LISTEN TO - all emerging feedback?

Is this not a basic part of the 150-year old theory of adaptive evolution?
Shouldn't the default biz-card logo for all humans read:

"HAVE SENSORY INSTRUMENTATION. WILL LEVERAGE IT." ?

The behavior of all adaptive systems always comes down to sampling theory?

(Expressed by all the nested layers of the analog-computing systems that make "us"? Aka, multi-atom molecules, multi-molecule cells, multi-cellular bodies, multi-body cultures and multi-cultural federations?*)

Whichever changing, total sum is appearing ...

... out of all the changing sensory/analytical/testing/ processes that we possess at a given time .... 

... then success simply means arriving at the obvious after we just adequately sample all permutations of "options space" that can be sampled?

What part of routine don't growing populations teach themselves, sooner rather than later?

i.e., TEST ALL BOUNDARIES ... to see which ones have moved?

How simple can this PATTERN OF ADAPTIVE PROCESS FLOW get, in operational practice?**

Isn't that what all humans do naturally as kids - until our various "education" processes beat it out of them?

Somehow, we are trying to make our current bureaucracies enforce Ludditism.

And damned if "WE" are not succeeding!!! (at current failure)

###

* Say, even a multi-cultural federation? :) Even a European 'Union' might work - if it is federated as an agile union of differing parts, rather than a naively rigid union of presumed clones.

Businesses, corporations & institutions are cultural subunits, rather like organs in your body? They don't HAVE to be the same. In fact, they must NOT be. Rather, to create net agility - our required diversity absolutely must be allowed to operate within policy tolerance limits broad enough to allow return on agile coordination.

###

** Several patterns of fully inter-dependent and fully interleaved, adaptive process flows are continuously proceeding in real-time, across all the multiple, nested layers in our national system. Our usual net description of the net process is called net auto-catalysis, and our standard view of the layered, repetitive applications are:

a) Context instrumentation and sampling (that covers constructing and using all means of adequately sampling distributed data, external as well as internal feedback, SOON ENOUGH TO MATTER). 

b) Context modeling (all means of adequately sampling recognizable patterns, "correlatable" to context-options, across all data flows, SOON ENOUGH TO MATTER) 

c) Context exploration (all means of adequately sampling distributed tests of our context-models, i.e., adequately re-exploring the changing range of emerging options, SOON ENOUGH TO MATTER)

d) Context updates (all means of re-assessing a-c, and starting again, WHILE making all suggested, distributed, adjustments, SOON ENOUGH TO MATTER).

Which adjustments? How soon? How?

Which adjustments:

Those dictated as most important, by the sum of distributed feedback. Presuming that there IS enough feedback to identify and construct a clear hierarchy .... in net, systemic benefit .... defined as increasing systemic options. The actual pattern of adjustments will be entirely context dependent, but the METHOD for selecting them will always be net auto-catalysis.

How soon?

As soon as available feedback PLUS available adjustment methods allow. The tempo of distributed adjustments will always vary in different populations, but the METHOD for achieving that speed will always be the sub-methods that support net auto-catalysis.

How?

By ALL emerging means possible? The sustainable glory really does go to those aggregates who find a systemically better way to steer systemic autocatalysis - and KEEP using it. All newly nested layers of auto-catalysis which occur, will always depend on the same a-d cycle, just expressed in the resilient diversity of nested "instrumentation" built into prior, nested, system layers:

- systemic self-instrumentation,
- systemic self-modeling,
- systemic option-exploration, and
- systemic self-assessment. 

Yes, there really is no exact answer, only a call for an adequate, distributed, probability function - of achieving "barely adequate" solutions to each context, while also maintaining adequate reserves - by scavenging & re-purposing all supposed "failures" - to face the next context. 

Do we have too many unemployed? Or ARE WE EXPLORING TOO FEW AGGREGATE, EMERGING OPTIONS? Glass half full, or half empty? It's the same situation, regardless of which perspective you choose to view it from. 

Practice making distributed, systemic adjustments to teamwork, often enough & soon enough that it remains the fall-back habit when surprises occur? And, then also always juggle enough time and resources and practiced staff in reserve, so that novel openings can be quickly & effectively pursued when they are finally recognized? That concept, of keeping adequate reserves, is ancient and uniform, from ant-nests to archaic armies. It's not just uninformed populations which fail. Overly-exhausted individuals or populations can also miss opportunities, and then must endure the agony of helplessly watching them go by (if they even recognize them at all).

We can’t predict what adjustments we'll have to make, to survive future challenges, but we can determine what adaptive kinetics we can generate - AND VIGOROUSLY PURSUE - when unpredictably distributed solutions to novel group challenges are recognized. [paraphrasing Joshua Chamberlain]

So, all cultural evolution boils down to just adequately re-mapping minimal patterns of net, adjustable cultural options .... to continuously changing contexts?

Re-sample context, re-sample optional (& increasingly distributed) adjustments. That's the endless race we're in. 

May the most agile populations stay in the race.

More Evidence That The Entirety Of Orthodox Economics Is Simply An Extension Of Class Hegemony - Maintained As A Cultural Habit

Consider the latest missive from the Congressional Budget Office.

The Long-Run Effects of Federal Budget Deficits on National Saving and Private Domestic Investment

After reading this several times over, a simple question has to be posed.

If [someone] starts with a big enough myth, can they get whole populations and disciplines to go along with nonsense? The answer throughout history is .... "sure!"

Yet where does that leave us? Before even considering the CBO's data, please consider the following questions, to establish and orient to context. After all, without context, data is meaningless.

Questions:

1) Is the entirety of orthodox economics simply an extension of class hegemony - maintained as a cultural habit?

2) Is it actually a generally agreed upon cultural taboo to question the nonsensical axioms of orthodox economics?

3) Is orthodox economics inseparable from "court" management theory, used by aristocrats to manage "their" assets?

While pondering that context, consider the reality that there is a gulf between fiat currency operations (e.g., MMT) and orthodox economics, simply because any aggregate, operational approach, by definition, is tuned to SOME stated purpose - aka, group policy.

Orthodox economics, on the other hand, steadfastly refuses to accept national policy as a reference axiom - maintaining that it is merely a set of tools, or methods. Yet no tool users set down their tools at the end of the day without considering what they were using them for, and why.

That claim of being a method divorced from purpose ought to set off warning bells. "Danger Will Robinson. Danger Will Robinson. Control Frauds are running loose in our Policy Staff!"

Orthodox economics is Machiavelli's Economics, by any other name?

All functional diversions of patterns of tool-use from consensus purpose, constitute - by default - various shades of Control Fraud. Simply because special interests will always fill a policy void left dangling, lacking aggregate purpose.

The result? Innocent Frauds may practice only Innocent Control Fraud (ICF) by default, but it is control fraud nonetheless. The concept holds, even if you prefer to call it incompetence.

Is there any resistance to this widespread lack of aggregate purpose for economic theory? Perhaps. See the following article.

CBO’s scoring system holds U.S. government back on long-term programs

However, this text is so long-winded that it's difficult to fully discern whether the author's Context Awareness is consistently rooted in allegiance to public purpose, fraud or incompetence. Maybe a bewildering mix of all three? :(

Back to the CBO article. Let's now get to their treatment of data.

They soon get right to their beginning myth, then base all economic modeling around this assumption.

'Deficits thus “crowd out” private domestic investment in the long run.'

And how do they get their conclusions to support their premise? With the rudderless tool of "orthodox economic theory" of course! Starting with a definition connected to no context whatsoever:

"The sum S + (T – G) equals national saving"

They're referring to a common, presumed notation. I = S + (T – G) – NFI

Rearranging, we get:  S + (T – G) = I + NFI

So for the CBO, "national saving" = (priv+biz saving) + (taxes - total spending). In other words, "national saving" = (Public Investment) + NetForeignInvestment.

Just as an aside, how does a growing nation "save" Public Initiative? Beats me. For the sake of the CBO's lunatic ramblings, however, let's ignore that functonal sanity test, and go back to considering the form of their policy delusion.

Next, note that I + NFI = trade balance (pos or neg), in econ jargon.

So far, so close.

Yet one implicit point becomes clear, though unstated! Managing the trade deficit is their implied control variable? Their "objective?"

(For Pete's sake! That is gold-std thinking. It's like the CBO office is staffed by blondes listening to a variant of the "breathe-in, breathe-out" tapes.)

First off, they're treating the sum of pub+priv savings as a static asset. There's no presence nor discussion of sinks and sources in their model?

What is the reality? 

* return-on-coordination = a net source of real + nominal dynamic assets;

(which counts more than the possession of any static assets)
(and don't forget compounding; 
some teamwork really is more useful than other teamwork)

* conversely, net stupidity or net ignorance easily produce a net sink of both dynamic and static assets;

We have a key problem in using macro-economic theory to shape national policy. Regardless of all the definitions & rhetoric, there is no formal acknowledgement of Public Purpose in orthodox macro economics!

What is our national objective? Our Public Purpose?

..Which economic model variable TRACKS that objective? 

..Which methods drive variables to push economic models in the direction of that objective?

Orthodox macro economists can't answer those questions because asking them is NOT allowed in the framework of orthodox macro economic modeling! It's a theoretical accounting method that refuses to acknowledge any purpose OTHER than ex post, static asset accounting.

At the same time, economic theory studiously ignores the evolution of banking operations!

You couldn't make this up. A management theory that refuses to consider aggregate purpose and also ignores evolving operations. What could go wrong?

Again, merely for the sake of tempo in this comedy routine, let's continue anyway.

Does anyone see a National Assessment System at work in any of this?

I'm getting the feeling that it's all implicitly biased to make & keep key political constituents rich, no matter what happens to our country. Smells like teenage aristocratic philosophy? The CBO really is advising us to manage currency_issuer finances just like currency_user finances? We need an electorate which knows the difference, so we can maintain a policy staff which knows it.

Let's reconsider something that is implicit in our National Policy Guide: "Assume some myth or propaganda, then see what our macro economic models mean ... relative to that myth." [Alrighty then! Werks fur mi!]

That's no way to run a family, a company, an army, or a nation - all of which set AGGREGATE objectives first, and then explore all options for achieving them.

Our curreny National Policy Guide is, however, how royalty look at the serfs in their various "possessions." If citizens and aggregate don't matter, then of course orthodox macro economics works. Just treat humanity as another variable to manipulate [without their will]. The simple question is "who does it work FOR?"

To me, the CBO's logic is NOT a model for managing national development.

It IS, however, a model for managing who privately owns any and all declared static assets (or thinks they own them).

We need an electorate, Congress & CBO that puts out a yearly report entitled:

"The Long-Run Effects of
Federal Thinking Deficits
on Adaptive Rate Of The USA"