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"

The Entire Field Of Economics Is Nothing More Than The Projection Of Power Politics?

What Makes a Bank Stable?

by Thomas Eisenbach and Tanju Yorulmazer - Liberty Street Economics, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

"One of the major roles of banks and other financial intermediaries is to channel funds from savings into valuable projects. In doing so, banks engage in 'liquidity and maturity transformation,' since they finance long-term, illiquid projects while funding themselves with short-term, liquid liabilities. By performing this important role, banks expose themselves to the risk of runs: If depositors or other short-term creditors worry about their claims, they may withdraw funds en masse and cause the bank to fail."

Really? When was the last time worry about FDIC-insured bank deposits caused panicked depositors to withdraw the majority of fiat currency deposits from a plain old US commercial bank?

Meanwhile, diverse, heterodox economists (and operational bankers) routinely say that banks in a fiat currency system loan neither reserves nor deposits nor even their own financial capital.

Rather, banks, for a [supposedly] regulated fee, agree to act as middlemen to underwrite and [supposedly] manage to completion, credits & debits, which are denominated and backed by the electorate, through their agent, the Treasury, and it's checking account, the Fed.

The electorate is the real middleman in a fiat currency regime. Our Treasury, Fed and publicly-licensed banks are simply their agents.

Banks MAY have to put SOME of their own capital at risk if a creditor defaults, but my understanding is that they typically do NOT initially loan out their own or depositors capital, or banking reserves.

Rather, they RECORD matching credits/debits, and notify the Fed to adjust recorded banking reserves accordingly, for whichever banks hold the newly denominated credits and debits. (They might not be the same bank.)

Given all that, here's what I've really come to think about orthodox "economics."

It's far more sensible to describe orthodox "economics" as political economics, and admit that POWER negotiators define success as asserting control over most variables (including incomes & employment levels) by force - so that they can "manage" the performance of their preferred asset variable.

By fixing most variables within arbitrary bounds, managers try to force unruly systems to follow the projections of a simplistic model - theirs. That's standard practice in the experimental practice of the scientific method, but that's no reason to treat national politics as an experiment run of, for and by naive power-brokers with myopic aims.

The entire field of economics is nothing more than the projection of power politics? regardless of the outcome, it is still distorted by the brain-dead oversimplification of aristocracy & class, which is just one variant of Central Planning failure?

This will never work adequately for anything except the personal pleasure of dictators. Every discipline applying any sort of statistics immediately arrives at "infinite agility" as the variable driving success, sustainability and evolution. (Cue Thermodynamics, chemistry, biology, Darwin, Shewhart, Deming, Construction, and DoD force-readiness.)

The only economic concept that even comes close to an agility reference? A a "pass-through economy," where the ascendancy of Dynamic Assets - distributed and aggregate - is inherent, as an axiom.

What we call "orthodox economics" is merely the simplistic, negotiated gang-rules of a growing, squabbling mob, still trying to re-organize into a sustainable aggregate?

Such gang-rules are always rife with organizational hacks known as arbitrary taboos, covered over by DoubleSpeak.

The price of imposing crudely hacked gang-rules is a certain level of social violence, to keep people from talking about all the, taboo, Pink Elephant conundrums in the room .... such as existing fiat currency operations.

The core issue was pretty much nailed by the early Greek city states. They quite vividly discussed the organizational hurdles in transitioning from tribal to organized, supra-tribal population levels, and zeroed in on both the emerging frictions and available social methods for circumventing them.
It all comes down to speed & breadth of public discourse? If that is maintained, then any pattern of INDIVIDUAL-BASED decision-making can be countered with TIMELY, distributed feedback, to keep isolated decision-making from breaking too many existing & emerging inter-dependencies.

The aggregate or summed quality of distributed decision-making is a function of the distribution, focus and tempo of distributed feedback? That is the first corollary of all "system" theories! By definition, "systems" are those things which include internal methods allowing them to actively respond - autocatalytically - to their own interdependencies.

Yet we've gotten away from the obvious when discussing our own Democracy!

Economics discusses most local decision-making in terms of static, individual TEMPTATIONS. Yet that is a mistake. Social species are defined as those which benefit by selectively pre-programming themselves - to varying degrees - so that a large variety of dynamic inter-dependency signals can and do override the presumed static-resource-temptations which economics simplistically focuses on.

Humans simply do not behave as reliable calculators of dynamic outcomes from simple, reliable static-value inputs.

Rather, they behave as an analog computing device, where an incredibly large number of different inter-dependencies may or may not be triggered, by a wide variety of cues, themselves gated by a wide variety of variable conditioning factors. 

Legions of studies have shown that people and groups who reliably act certain ways in given contexts, may be easily triggered to act differently, by introduction of the seemingly most unpredictable cues. That is certainly not even unique to humans. There is no known formula that can provide real-time advice useful for managing the incredible - and increasing - numbers of inter-dependencies and degrees of freedom which all aggregates display.

It is always, by definition, a mistake to apply any rules-based approach to contingency management for a dynamic aggregate. Rules, by definition, presume static degrees of freedom, where no stasis exists.

Human cultures will little note nor long care who receives another Nobel Prize in Economics for pointing out that things long known in thousands of other disciplines can be added to the naive field of Political-Power-Economics? Surprise, surprise!

No wonder system-scientists & statisticians are so against the very concept of distracting prizes. Any feedback structure that strays from aggregate success being it's own reward ..... ends up, by statistical definition, giving isolated people individual prizes for shitting in their own aggregate's nest!

And humans think they are so smart? In reality, you can always detect brain-dead credentialism by the combined crowing and trailing odor.

Building Aggregate Agility ... By Continuously Tuning Increasing Numbers of Inter-Dependency Functions ... With Increasing Numbers of Automatic Stabilizers

Finance and Economics Discussion SeriesDivisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary AffairsFederal Reserve Board, Washington, D.C.
Inequality and Poverty in the United States: the Aftermath of the Great Recession - July, 2013 

          ###

Washington U faculty papers
Inequality, the Great Recession, and Slow Recovery - Jan, 2014

What do these data mean to you?

To me, they're simply interesting data, produced too slowly to be of functional use in a still missing RESPONSE to changing context.

What are we doing here? How are we doing it? And why are we waiting so long?

Instead of documenting the bad outcomes, why aren't we just focussing on improving policy in real-time?

Something is completely out of whack in our policy apparatus, and our civics.

We would NOT use economics to train jugglers! Why try to use them to advise policy development - which must, by definition, be either agile, or irrelevant?

No offense to economists ..... but the entire field of economics could - eventually - precisely document how every war was lost, but couldn't EVER actually win one, since that requires practice at a different skill set?

How does economics help us succeed at juggling, or even in real-time operation of a business venture? Let alone national policy?

This situation should make all citizens realize that the economics profession can never instruct us on how to ride a bicycle. It can only precisely document (eventually) why we fall off? :)

Let's get real. The act of falling off a bike is self-documenting.

As are depressions. 

Keeping an aggregate on a bike (or any growth path) requires us to constantly train increasing numbers of automatic stabilizer functions to respond and adjust in real-time ... to real-time data sets, called feedback.

Keeping all feedback data sets within tolerance limits is how complex systems juggle internals in order to survive context. To ALWAYS ensure that ALL internal functions can be kept within local tolerance limits, we
1) generate tremendous diversity, and
2) generate large numbers of inter-dependencies, and
3) demand distributed - i.e., "fiat" - adjustments to adequately distributed feedback,

4) all in order to thereby maintain distributed, systemic resiliency.

That is what agile aggregates, and Democracies, do - when they survive.

And they do it all in either real time ... or else.

The logic of social species is to guarantee survival of all components PLUS the aggregate, by distributing all stresses experienced by the aggregate. If all components adjust a little, then no component EVER need be stressed beyond survival tolerance limits.

So why on earth are we killing our MiddleClass? Is there a plan? Some Desired Outcome? Whose?

Social organization boils down to building aggregate agility by continuously tuning increasing numbers of inter-dependency functions. That's not rocket-science, only distributed PLUS aggregate practice at tuning inter-dependencies.

Where does the field we call economics fit in this social logic? 

Seriously. The very application of orthodox economics is entirely too academic, and inadequately operational. Since our context changes unpredictably, our aggregate reality is that NO model of anything works for more than a fleeting instant. Survival is a dynamic, unpredictable art of extension by highly distributed innovation, and NEVER a static model.

Just set functional tolerance limits for all components ... including education, nutrition, liquidity, employment .... and let distributed, not concentrated, adjustments be mediated through existing and added Automatic Stabilizers. It should be easy.

Where does that leave the entire field of economics? It has clearly been a colossal, operational mistake to even attempt to use economists in policy offices, rather than just having them tally accounting reports after the fact, and spend more time on the golf course.

Accounting & economics involve fairly boring tracking of basic fundamentals, and NOT dynamic exploration of emerging options.

Our survival is a simple question of keeping boring fundamentals separate from the emerging options which we must explore?

That means setting goals, keeping boring fundamentals as fundamentals vs dynamics, and making any and all distributed adjustments IN REAL TIME, that are necessary for aggregate exploration of aggregate options.

Once seen that way, our key Desired Outcome is to maintain aggregate resiliency precisely by maintaining all of our social components - and especially our Middle Class - safely within operational tolerance limits.

If all citizens focus on avoiding application of excessive stress on other citizens, then we'll never have to worry about our aggregate resiliency. That is the logic of all aggregates.

It is the logic of social species.

It's also the logic of statistical process control (distributed control of net variance).

And the logic of diverse expressions of military science (force readiness by managing frictions generated while aligning highly distributed decision-making). Believe it or not, armies at war are much more democratic than our electorate at home.

And, by the way, it is the logic of using automatic stabilizers in fiscal and social policy.

In conclusion, to maintain National Security as national resiliency, functional policies are those that 

a) provide us with freedom to execute distributed expression of more Automatic Stabilizers, and 

b) guarantee us freedom from the stress inherent in the clash of random ideology. 

In short, make coordination of a more perfect union, not civil or class war.

Building Aggregate Agility ... By Continuously Tuning Increasing Numbers of Inter-Dependency Functions ... With Increasing Numbers of Automatic Stabilizers.

That is what evolving systems do. That's all they do. That simple logic allows evolving systems to solve seemingly any challenge ..... by throwing more nested layers of the same logic at whatever options emerge.

Any and all ideology just gets in the way, and slows down distributed adjustments.

Why can't we teach this simple paradigm, to all students, by age 10?

What we're really evolving here is a Group Brain, to support a Group Intelligence.

Rising Inequality – Recovery Occurring Almost Exclusively Among the Wealthy

This raises a very simple question. If a GOP-Pres could cut FICA 20%, why can't a DEM-Pres cut it 100%?

Obama = enough rope for the MiddleClass to hang itself?

Especially since we never needed FICA taxes in the 1st place!

It's now been four generations of the poor & MiddleClass in the USA, arbitrarily over-taxed, just to hold them down!

Them's bitter fightin' words, and a shamefully vicious inequity.

Paul Meli writes:

"Yes, it was done so that "conservatives could never take away workers retirement money…since they "saved" for it".  

Our entire monetary arrangement is one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated. 

Our well-being is being dictated by an accounting system that has unlimited input, but has a few added loops to confuse the rubes (a kind of shell game) into thinking we have to borrow from our right pocket to fill the left. 

Anymore all I say to people I know is 'spending = income. If you can figure out a way to cut spending in that relationship without cutting your own income I'll vote for it.' "

Paul hit the nail on the head. Especially the 2nd line, about a massive self-con.

At this rate, we're only going to defraud ourselves until we're weak enough to be conquered by some population less stupid. [My tongue-in-cheek, perennial favorite is Iceland. :) ]

If YOU heard a voice from some God - or just a voice of sanity - saying that something has to be done, NOW .... where would you start?

We have 400 years of history, from John Law, to Ben Franklin to Abe Lincoln to Walter Shewhart & W.E. Deming, to Marriner Eccles (& FDR) & then on to Warren Mosler ... all saying that we can't (by current methods) explain and/or teach our way to sustained success ... or at least not fast enough.

It seems that we really do need a devious plan, to save our crooks, fools and self-parasites from themselves, without the delusion that all can be taught everything. We need to address all 3 of the 3i's, simultaneously.

Impact.       (mitigate and stop the stupid)

Intercept.    (stop rewarding incoming stupid)

Instigation. (stop generating so much emerging stupid among developing students)

Where's the glory, logic, or beauty in that? It's deflating.

If you look at this as equivalent to a massive task of tuning a dumb engine, then yes, it can be somewhat enticing.

Yet to do that, we pretty much have to abandon our cherished myth of intelligent human beings, and look on any population as a Pareto-curve of (80%?) foundation stock, (18%?) mutant innovators and idiot savant, OCD capitalists, and ~2% "stem-humans" (equivalent to stem cells).

That takes all the beauty, mathematical or otherwise, out of social evolution, and relegates it to plodding social engineering.

That gets awfully lonely, real fast.

Your species is not your friend? In fact, at the present time, 98% of them are obsolete? All of the time? Simply because of the way we educate and train ourselves?

I have a feeling that humans, if they survive the next 200 years, will migrate back to more of a sense of species (not just tribal) self awareness. At present, our over-personalized self-awareness limits the very return-on-coordination that beckons to us, and instead grows our Output Gap as fast as our options expand.

This can't go on much further, as is. If we're still around, 500 yrs from now, surely it'll only be because we completely altered the way we run childhood development & training.

Just as gestation period rises as you go up the phylogenetic order, presumably to allow time to polish & tune construction of more complex brains ...

[e.g., Parker ST (1990) "Why big brains are so rare: energy costs of intelligence and brain size in anthropoid primates."
In: Language and Intelligence in Monkeys and Apes,
eds. Parker ST, Gibson KR; Cambridge University Press, pp. 129-156.]

so too might you expect cultural evolution to reflect more care & attention to the "cultural-gestation" [i.e., early education/training] of those developing humans who become able to organize on a bigger scale.

What we're really evolving here is a Group Brain, to support a Group Intelligence. So far, we're just fumbling around, not even aware of what we're doing.

We don't even discuss such things in current policy, so don't hold your breath waiting on progress. We have to tune this massive engine, not just explain to all the components that they have to evolve. That's a trivially obvious lesson bound to be ignored.

We need to either find a way to steer our own cultural evolution a bit better ... or just face facts, like Omar Khayyám, leave our thoughts for posterity, and go get drunk on wine, [significant others] & food (And/or some more modern diversions). 

It's your choice. Be irrelevant to your children's future, or do SOMETHING to help shepherd evolution of Democracy.

How Would A Biologist View White Collar Crime And "Control Fraud" ... And Suggest How To Handle Them?

Why ask this question, and many more like it?

Control Fraud and White Collar Crime, as coined by sociologists and criminologists, are useful yet neglected concepts.

What if there are diverse concepts from many other systemic disciplines that are of equal or greater value, yet even more neglected?

If all citizens periodically hear a bit more of what all other citizens know, we'd never have to worry about our democracy?

To get that benefit which history has promised, we first have to condition ourselves to want to know what more of our co-citizens know.

So in case YOU want to know, let's compare some views across disciplines, and see what pops out.

For non-criminologists, what is White Collar Crime ... especially "Control Fraud?"

It's useful to google both terms, and see the variety of illuminating examples illustrating both terms.

"The persons who control a seemingly legitimate entity (private, non-profit, or governmental) can cause unique damage [to the aggregate] if they engage in fraud because the CEO can direct the corporation and cause it to make the firm’s internal and external environment vastly more criminogenic." 

"... the CEO’s interests are frequently contrary to the interests of the corporation" 

"The elegant solution for the fraudulent CEO is not to defeat controls but rather to suborn them and pervert them into the most valuable fraud allies. This explains why sophisticated frauds almost invariably retain top tier auditors to “bless” the financial statements."

These quotes are taken from Bill Black's essay,

75th Anniversary of Edwin Sutherland Naming 'White-Collar Crime'

So, what might all this mean, systemically, to all 315million members of our democracy? Is this cross-discipline sharing of terms and concepts useful for all?

These concept of White Collar and Control Fraud crimes are not only a rehash of ancient tyrant/civil conflict, and not just a review of Marxist/aristocracy conflicts.

To biologists, these concepts are also the real-time noise of host/parasite interactions, where some of the emerging elements in a deeply nested system are always harming rather than helping the system that spawns them. Yes, in the course of spawning their own diversity, biological systems spawn internal parasites, and must constantly invent completely novel methods to regulate and/or cull the mal-adaptive processes, as part of selecting the adaptive fraction.

In short, to any system scientist, "parasitic" members of an internal characteristic-spectrum are those system components NOT YET REGULATED or tuned to adaptive system purpose.

When citizens and criminologists discuss fraud & crime in specific industries, they're talking about diverse expression of similar, not-yet-regulated behavioral excesses. Those behavioral excesses are just applied in different segments of our vast, cultural INTERACTOME, precisely because more adaptive tolerance limits are not yet hemmed in by more evolved regulatory interactions.

How are optimal tolerance limits developed sooner rather than later? By practice at sampling all available feedback and getting good at adaptive_signal/system_noise discrimination. We know that no system ever knows best/worst utilization of emerging resources beforehand, since that utilization is always entirely context-specific. So how does a growing human culture figure that out, as it simultaneously spawns new components capable of harnessing new resources?

Not just by totally naive trial and error, but by applying BEST PRACTICES to the timeless methods for parsing adaptive_signal from context_noise.

Best practices are historically shaped by the rule of system extension, i.e., species, culture or national survival. 

That history automatically pre-defines best practice as configuring ourselves to maintain the most degrees of freedom or highest adaptive potential (DOF/HAP) in the existing system or culture, while retaining all that culture's historical momentum and baggage as a foundation stock of diversity to continue using. Short of sterilizing the planet and starting from scratch, we're stuck with extending the biological infrastructure we have, until we prove it as a dead end and get replaced by something else. Basically, we need to do anything to keep triggering a state of mobilization at regular intervals, instead of staying too relaxed for too long.

In species evolution, we call name such self-motivation tricks as "play behavior" among the so-called, more advanced species. Advanced cultures need cultural-play-behavior too, not just personal play behavior.

This train of thought suggests that we can actually confirm Joshua Chamberlain's thesis, and generalize from it. Yes, we cannot predict specific challenges, but we can determine what kind of adaptive rate our culture can spawn when the challenge strikes, by maintaining a high level of play & practice at both spawning diversity and then regulating it upon demand. Chamberlain didn't say how, but we can. By being prepared, through initially playful and then serious practice.

How to be prepared? By being practiced at assessing & optimizing our net adaptive potential (DOF/HAP; degrees of freedom = highest Adaptive Potential).

How to optimize & fine-tune adaptive potential (DOF/HAP)? History mandates optimal quality of distributed decision-making as the key to system extension or survival. That, in turn, mandates optimally distributed degrees of freedom, which mandates optimal distribution of BOTH static and dynamic assets.

Optimal distribution of both static and dynamic assets is rarely discussed, but historically boils down to "force-readiness." Translation: a median living wage AND mandatory requirements for lifelong education, training and industry, including regular practice at system perspective, not just component practice? In the end, culture is a dynamic asset which, like everything else, is something we either use or lose. It cannot be physically hoarded, only maintained through practice.

There are always important portions of system performance which cannot be appreciated through participation alone. Rather, the perspective from the edge or from a distance - as observer, coordinator or coach - is required, to recognize some system patterns which are much more difficult to recognize from within.

In practical terms, this advises us to regularly practice listening to diverse viewpoints, observing our own processes from the outside, and practicing dialectic modeling of everything, to trigger emergence of new regulatory checks & balances. Functionally, dialectic modeling reduces to early practice at examining emerging interdependencies.

What is the fastest way for supra-tribal populations to re-constitute the extreme agility & adaptive rate of tribal pass-through, tribal economies? Simply mandate it. Then practice it's features, by keeping ourselves prepared, by challenging ourselves with a steady spectrum of cultural-play behaviors.  Some of those play behaviors will always transition to serious work options. Self-challenge keeps us on our toes, while waiting for unpredictable outside challenges.

Pursuit of adaptation is a selected conditioning bias, not an inescapable certainty. Every new level of system expansion must not only be spawned, it must start from scratch and thereafter develop yet another set of tools and methods which instil a bias to pursue further adaptation (optimizing DOF/HAP). Such a bias can occur ONLY from the statistics of selection bias! There is no other way to discriminate best/worst resource allocation models.

No wonder systems ONLY advance during crisis, and always decline systemically without systemic selection pressure - reverting to component competition rather than coordinated cooperation.

What does that say about how our electorate orients to our present context?

The quick answer is "horribly" or "barely at all." So let's apply a bandage to our fractured, cultural orientation process.

Making a jump, let's put it this way, and start from scratch.

Tribal systems evolved to the point of running out of room to operate independently, and are still adjusting to all the resulting inter-dependencies. The former, tribal functions, however, maintained a highly selected system of distributed decision-making, which preserved & maximized net degrees of freedom. You can say that a "social" species is one that practices "pass-through" economics to optimize system maneuverability.

Where did "capitalism" come from? One view is that it arose from the onset of supra-tribal politics, where permanent inter-tribal frictions gradually transitioned "temporary" tribal war chiefs into "permanent" aristocracy with the habit of acquiring static assets across formerly tribal boundaries, instead of optimizing tribal capabilities. 

Capitalism is inherently the distributed practice of Control Fraud? 

Because of that view, early attempts to regulate White Collar & Control Fraud crime have focused on keeping it's practice distributed within tolerance limits, rather than reconstituting ancient Public Purpose and formally co-optimizing static as well as dynamic assets simultaneously. To optimize cultural Adaptive Potential, we might want to re-explore civic practice and preparation at agile utilization of all civic resources, aka, mobilization skills or force-readiness.

(You could also argue that allowing extreme wealth and income disparity is just another way of returning to a restrictive gold standard, where excessive amounts of access to public fiat is constrained in the hands of a few. That constitutes Central Planning, by any other name. Any method whatsoever of constraining or slowing, rather than more speedily distributing use of public fiat, is a severe, mal-adaptive constraint on both Policy Space and Policy Agility.)

From that perspective, capitalism is simply an off shoot of an arbitrary approach to acquiring static assets ACROSS system boundaries, while newly supra-tribal aggregates try to figure out how to organize dynamic assets on a new scale. For an aggregate, organizing dynamic assets as fast as it acquires static assets is the key to Adaptive Rate. Only by co-organizing static/dynamic assets can aggregates better discriminate best/worst options for aggregate resource allocation.

Capitalists are routinely taught that adaptation is merely static asset allocation, or simply distributed hoarding. Optimal adaptive "use" of resources is considered separately and transiently, if at all. It is typically viewed by most avowed capitalists as too difficult to do, and is therefore considered both presumptuous and something to be neglected. Unless absolutely necessary. The frequency of war indicates how frequently absolute necessity actually occurs.

The worst application of this new practice of "capitalism?" Instilling the habit of NOT practicing optimization of dynamic assets, and instead settling for an obsessive focus on distributed hoarding of static assets. In short, business capitalism is self defeating, by neglecting the return-on-coordination from it's own INTERACTOME, while progressively seeking to uselessly hoard static assets. That constitutes a transient, unstable, net loss of Adaptive Potential (a growing Output Gap), while components reflexively hoard under-utilized static assets. Capitalism is, in short, a group failure to orient to the far higher return-on-coordination.

We're looking at 2 settings for humans, long familiar to ecologists. 

1) Overgrowth of one species, waiting for some new sub-clone to out-compete all the rest ... simply because it can.

2) Climax ecology, where a stable mix of species co-exist, until unpredictable events clear fractions of the environment & allow a cascade of marginally preserved elements to build toward a new climax "cover crop" mix.

Our only challenge is to more quickly determine how prepared we are to respond, to whatever is going to happen next, no matter when it occurs. The only way to assess our national force readiness, is to practice on invented or "cultural-play" processes. Call them Public Works if you will, but whatever you call them, please just practice?

As we ponder this task, it should occur to all that humans may not be suffering from future shock at all. Rather, compared to our ancestors, humans may be suffering only from FutureBoredom, and need to get busy doing something about it, by first playing en mass, and then turning some fraction of competitive play into real evolution. The alternative is to sit around becoming progressively un-practiced, and thereby becoming less rather than more prepared for unpredictable challenges.