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."