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Government in Content Economy
The transformation from an economy of growth into a content economy also claims an entirely new role for government. Current governments are generally “in charge” of the wellness of a country by determining what has to be done and what not in just about everything that concerns a country. In a democratic government the governance is determined by the public that chooses for its favorite representative. The other political powers, the opposition, are then confined to a political debate and by rule “against” any statement of government. This has its logic, challenging government’s moves and propositions with counter arguments even when these seem far fetched and highly artificial when one watches the debates. The problem we face with any government in an economic growth scenario is that all the discussions tend to go about money, growth and money again, since everything has been translated into financial parameters. That is no democracy anymore and we see that any political party, no matter what color or signature, when in charge does exactly the same as the others simply because there is no other choice than the standard middle way around money. In other times when there was indeed a difference, eg. the left wing parties defending the interests of the working class and the right wing parties the interests of the industrials that provided the jobs, there was still a fanatic debate to be observed and hot emotional encounters in the streets. Now that the jobs have been exported to low wage countries and all the individuals also only care about the amount of money one can spend every month, no matter where it comes from (salary, debt, credit card, heritage), the democratic debate has just one senseless signature everywhere.
The entire political organization has evolved into a machinery to try to create economic efficiency in their own territory and negotiate or even demand forcefully from the weaker around the world, the support to keep that machinery going and growing. This is not something of the last few decades, it is an evolution that is reaching its highest point now but started thousands of years ago. Back then the planet Earth was huge, people has no real awareness of any potential scarcity of resources unless it affected them in the small scale of their own territory and got them to set out to get it from elsewhere, often with violent encounters. In the early 17th century the Dutch started the very first multinational to travel and deal with the East Indies. For over 200 years it traveled the world and is still admired by many. In reality the monopolistic nature, the aggressive speculation, power struggles, self enrichment of the leaders and corruption are equally interesting to see as they can now still be found in the boardrooms of banks, industries and also governments when they obsessively deal with money, power and growth. When one takes on the job of a ruler over such enterprise, political or business, dealing just with money, one automatically becomes a representative of this mentality. Back then it affected over a few 100 years the Portuguese (15th century), the Dutch (16th and 17th century), the Spanish and finally the English (18th century) when they started to “rule the waves”. Now it affects the entire human world with 7 billion individuals in the hands of a few 100 speculative families and political groups that keep up the culture of humanity, producing disaster over humanity for the sake of personal wealth. But then again, it was all possible, they had the opportunity and took it. It is all part of the mentality of an aggressive species that has the morality similar to a cockroach.
The fact that we now talk about footprints, CO2, dirty air, plastic in the oceans, etc only started about 40 years ago. But this awareness does not change the inherited, historical culture of greed and growth that we translated into economies and that drives the political discussion and also the public interest. So why should this suddenly come to end, transforming the selfish cockroach into a (spiritual) butterfly?
Combination of unique factors
We can relate to the results of the Dutch VOC that went down under in corruption, scandals and greed. That was just a minority of people compared to the amount of people that try to outsmart each other today on the world market of speculation, tricks and misbehavior. In the end they will go down the drain, just like the ones that preceded in history and for exactly the same reasons. Especially in time of global crisis in just about every hierarchy that we can think of the secrete codes of conduct that bind the people who pretend to pull the global strings will be broken by themselves. Evil tends to punish itself.
The big difference today is that the speed of backfiring of evil tricks is very fast because of the global interconnected nature of all we do. We see that the bank’s greed exploded into our face after only a few decades of speculative actions. Dictators in Northern Africa and Middle East suddenly face the rise of their populations and within a year disappear from the scenery. Those who feel safe and in power today can be confronted with their own evil tomorrow. That is the effect of the growing educational basis of vast amounts of people that form self-conscious communities willing to claim freedom and auto-determination. Internet, twitter, gsm, fast travel, etc make the human world transparent to everyone including the mismanagement of those who believe in their own power. The borders are opening in a firm step to globalization and even now that politicians start seeing that this undermines their old positions of power it is too late. We are becoming rapidly global citizens that have a growing solidarity between all people. Many people have tasted the wealth of wellness through capitalism and become aware that the same wealth is also possible without the centralized power structures of the few. No one wants to be controlled by the banks, tax offices or dictating commodity speculators, which are the same few that make us vulnerable through their speculation and debt systems. When people cannot pay their debt because of the immorality of the debt system the reaction will be against the system to maintain their wealth but without the impositions. The same goes with food, energy, etc. To avoid (civil) war against banks, governments, business or personal power positions, all these organizations become aware of their own growing vulnerability and need to change attitude. There is no basis anymore to keep up the power positions and the most logical and even wise decision is to use their wealth to invest in their own transformation rather than trying to stop it.
New role of government
In a content economy the full attention of government goes to the wellness of its population within the context of a globalized world. This new focus is a very simple statement which will result in an in depth transformation of government. The very first question one can ask is what role a central government would play in all this? Centralized country governments are the structures around speculation and self interests of a territory but have hardly a role in a situation of bottom up self-sufficient wellness creation. On the contrary, even while they would have the natural tendency to try to avoid interference of their own public.
In a globalized human world around content economies the emphasis is on the small, local communities where social cohesion and self-sufficiency produces purpose driven human interaction. The smallest community with government attention is hence the village or city quarter. What kind of government would be needed above that? To control or govern what? Nothing really, except maybe a cooperative structure among the self sufficient communities for trade among the communities, infrastructures or the strategic interaction to exchange goods, experiences or help each other in aspects related to safety, calamities, migrations, etc. The multi-dimensionality of regional sustainable progress involves the local based interaction of different responsibilities as already introduced in the previous blogs. There is no hierarchy anymore just focus on key responsibilities s.a. applied technology, applied scientific research, local health & vitality and local self sufficient dynamics, all people interacting together on the basis of sustainable progress.
Regional government hence will be small, concentrated on local regional development based on sustainable progress but connected to the global network of communities (local 4 local 4 global or glocalization). Government takes territorial, facilitating responsibility in co-creation with the other pillars for progress. The structure of government will be defined by the community itself without politics but from the individual proven drive and insight of the holistic picture.
The transition has already been happening for some decades as cities started to resemble small countries within the countries, with their own positioning in the world economies and an image of their own. In Europe we see more and more central, general decision making being dealt with in the European Union while provinces or local autonomic regions take more and more responsibility through auto-determination and self-sufficiency. Most government combine now social responsibilities with their speculative origins, creating tremendous bureaucracies over time that are now collapsing because one cannot speculate with human health and prosperity anymore. Global humankind is too well informed to allow new pyramids of power to develop so the financial collapse of the bureaucrats will place the responsibilities back with the public. These will organize their own governance using the know-how, techniques and adaptive flexibility that modern tooling provides us today. The steering that is necessary to manage the freedom effectively is already being experimented with in various scenarios. Sustainable progress is the perfect leading trigger to keep everyone focused. It is only a matter of time for the transformation to show its effects, eliminating the old power structures and hierarchies without excessive violence and with determination. The new government already exists, it is only not yet fully effective or visible because of the old dominance of the hierarchies that still exist and try to keep themselves in place. The more the financial and other crises expand and take their toll the more renewal we will see around us, and many who are now sitting home watching all this on their TV sets may suddenly find themselves standing up and taking the initiatives for self-sufficient sustainable progress in their own street. It can happen just like that.
Technology in Content Economy
There are at least two issues that I want to deal with when referring to technology in the content economy. For the meaning and definition of both a content economy and sustainable progress I refer to my previous blogs linked by clicking on the words. The two points that I want to make are: the role of technology in sustainable progress and the complicated transition for technology driven organization to value driven partners.
Technology in sustainable progress
Key in sustainable progress is not technology itself but the innovation applied to our lifestyle or surrounding introducing an improvement with respect to sustainable progress (human wellness and environment). This gives technology a much larger responsibility that the mere invention, production and sales of goods. The innovative industry take its part in the responsibility of human progress. In the second part of this blog I will explain why this is going to happen across the globe. Right now we should ask ourselves what we would expect from the traditionally competence driven introvert technological organizations when the become active in a value driven environmeny. These points are what we find:
- Partnership in sustainable progress. Key for the organization is to participate directly in the process of progress in society, not as an isolated, self centered distant actor but as a partner in purpose driven processes. Progress can then be introduced by the company itself through the introduction of new inventions, or by the human world because of changes produced by other circumstances (vision, need, nature, etc). Important becomes the direct participation in the processes understanding that every change introduces the need for new changes, participating not just reactively but proactively using competences to drive progress as much as others use theirs. That is the innovative drive of progress and human dynamics. What historic impact have wheels had on our lives, the structure of society and interaction between human beings or our environment? Or train, airplanes, computers, the internet, mobile telephony, whatever? Every novelty that has been introduced in our lives should have introduced also compensation processes to maintain a balance in our health, vitality or human dynamics. But it did not. We concentrated on providing more of the same in large quantities without even caring of sustainable progress. With the current size of the human population and amount of volume driven excesses we ran into severe trouble. Economic growth was the motor of keeping business alive, not change or a drive to produce value. An content economy is not one of monetary scales but scales of human values and wellness. Successful business organization hence have to extremely entrepreneurial, produce a lot of change and can even have a growth perspective, not by speculating on the volume of their productivity but by the scale of adaptability that they present on the markets and the results they produce by doing so. A technological innovator has to feed its own progress through direct interaction with the market in which it takes co-responsibility for value, through the expertise it has in its specialized field and the level of creativity it displays to create something new, meaningfully, and implements it in a result driven manner.
- Competent. The organization has to be extremely competent (a top sporter in its technological field) but not at all arrogant. The competence is needed to feel confident in presenting itself flexibly, trusting its organization as master in translating purpose into technology ready for adequate implementation. The success of the company is not driven by its technology but the application of its knowledge and abilities in sustainable progress. That is totally different that before. Key is not what the product does but how it performs in the context of human progress. The bridge between truly perceived value and techniques is called competence, not just the ability to produce any product.
- Adaptability is probably one of the most complex issues in technology because quality development takes time while value drive expectation never have time to wait. Anticipation is good as long as it does not block adaptability. That is why the ongoing connection between the true value that one wishes to obtain and the translation into technological innovation becomes the distinguishing factor of the organization. One has to be present at the discussion, not just when sales opportunities arise but all the time. We come from a hit and run culture and transform into a culture of shared responsibilities. The technological partner becomes equally accountable for the way it complies with progress. Technological professionalism is its means, not a goal on its own.
- The new role of technological partners in local coalitions for sustainable progress changes entirely the way the sector is organized. Big centralized corporate structures are far too bureaucratic to perform and smaller units need to be accountable for what the they produce and implement. We see hence a tendency of many small and medium sized technologically focused competence centers take a seat at the table through multidisplinary self employed representatives that pick up the signs and interact with the enormous variety of options that technology displays in a global market of science and innovative creativity. The expert technological organizations do not look anymore for standardization of their competences for massive sales but the modular adaptability of their inventions to be easily integrated in a large diversity of complex structures. The component of increasing local content is organized in the same community where the innovation has to be implemented creating commitment and involvement of all those people involved in the end result.
In the STIR Foundation we create purpose driven environments (s.a. AiREAS) where technology is one of the key players but not the only one. We also have scientific institutions, human health authorities and the regional governments playing an equal role in progress. In the old fragmented world of economies of growth each of these participants is used to think of their own interests, often even with local government in the driver’s seat to determine what is good for the region and with what priorities. Technological enterprises would queue up to see if they could sell as many goods while the local decision makers would draw up public tenders to see what technology and prices there are to choose from. But also the local governments are fragmented when dealing with their responsibilities since they have grown problem oriented and not purpose driven. Such a fragmented society shows clearly in this example, a picture of the garbage bins in a train station:
There a six different types of garbage bins on the platform each falling within the responsibility of another organization but coinciding on a space of 50 m2. They were contracted by totally different organizations that all had something to do with rail, the platform, human transportation or retail. Each had garbage collection in their responsibilities and were separately accountable for the contract. But they apparently felt no need at all to interact or even think of the need to the total picture. The space ended up with 23 garbage bins of 6 different responsibilities on the areas size of a single living room. Ridiculous? It happens all the time. And it is not the pieces installed. Each also needs to be maintained, emptied, cleaned, etc producing traffic on the small platform of workers, bags, garbage loaders, logistic, etc. All of this may be good for the economy (lots of bins sold, workforce to deal with infrastructure) but totally ridiculous from a sustainable progress point of view. And if you look closely at the picture the only piece of litter visible is not even in one of the multiple bins, it is on the ground! The purpose was to contractually install bins, not to do something about the litter on the platform. When the purpose is wrong the solutions will be equally wrong even if they are contractually within logic.
Complicated transition
When we look at the example it is not hard to imagine that it is in the self-interest of every institution to maintain this situation, despite its lack of functional logic. For the providers of garbage bins the situation is ideal to produce volume sales and even have multiple opportunities on a single platform. It is not their responsibility to question the fact that five other suppliers already equipped the location with equivalent material. They just want to sell.
The same goes for those who take their part of responsibility for the infrastructure that most certainly has some contractual element related to the usage of the platform for particular purposes, each including a contractual obligation to take care of their own litter by facilitating an infrastructure. Instead of making a deal with each other it is much simpler to comply oneself, preferably with an infrastructure with different looks than the others, not for the litter but for the sake of identification of contractual compliance. Do all these fragmented players comply functionally? No! Despite the abundance of services available the litter is still on the ground and without identification to “who it belongs”. So who is accountable for that piece of litter on the ground? No-one.
Train stations are a very interesting example to see how fragmented responsibilities end up into a bureaucratic mess and a total lack of sustainable progress simply because of the immense amount of self interested institutions involved in the management of infrastructures, urban and interurban human mobility, energy, platform services, city design, etc. If one can solve the complexity of a train station and its functionality in the overall human interest then one can probably deal with most of the complexities in the region.
So when we (STIR Foundation) look at integral human sustainable progress we create value driven communities in which all the stakeholders take a seat and interact with each other based on a definition of progress, not their own interest. And this produces a very intense learning and adaptation process for all involved. In the past they interacted as customers and providers, now they have to learn to behave as partners.
It is the end result that matters in which every one plays a role by positioning competences in the team. In the STIR Foundation we created such purpose driven regional communities that include the four largest pillars involved in the design of society: civil representatives (eg. health authorities), government, technological innovators and scientific experts. The sole responsibility of the STIR Foundation is to define the purpose and sit in the middle of all players to maintain a level playing field based on equality. We invite everyone to participate without exclusions. The union of multidisciplinary participants suffers its own shake out when people cannot deal with the responsibility of trust in this setting by not complying with the competences that brought there in the first place. We have seen large multinationals fail horribly due to the internal, acquisition driven, bureaucratic culture while smaller players started to out perform themselves. Technology is not owned anymore by any of the large labels as it is becoming available through globalization to anyone. The flexibility to interact professionally in a multidisciplinary, extremely local environment is key, not just at the promising front end but also at the compliance back end of performing according the required speed and adaptability.
The fact that science is available at the same creative table gives the technological participants plenty of inspirational feeds to come up with innovations that are truly out of the box and make progress that rapidly spreads throughout the entire world. This can happen anywhere so one needs to be extremely alert, not protective in self interested attitude but intelligently creative and responsive. As mentioned before, every change induces new changes and in this challenge technological expertise finds chances for continuous renewal providing humanity with progress at all times but within reason, meaningful and contribution to our environment and human wellness as we proceed in sustainable progress.
Finally, when we look at where humankind stands right now the entire civilization has been built around material efficiency for many centuries of fragmented institutional interaction. When we start looking at our own environment through the eyes of sustainable progress, using also our ecological and human wellness inefficiencies in the process, we rapidly come to the conclusion that just about everything that we have today is due for modification. We find that the shovel can go through society at all levels. When we see this we also find the tremendous, never ending opportunity that lies ahead redesigning our presence, behavior and interaction in this world. It truly is a new beginning.
Content Economy explained
In my previous blog post I made a spontaneous call for the content economy to replace the economy of growth. I realize that the call had a high level of abstraction and needs to be made a little more concrete in its comparison with the current paradigm of economies of growth. This is what I do now.
The easiest way to picture the content economy is by looking at a family (your own?) with up-growing children. The family is continuously influenced by the phases of development of the children, the aging of the parents, the facilities needed or desired in the house or by the people, the physical health, self-sufficiency in providing life support, the interior, size and quality of the space, the warmth of the family interaction, decoration of the dwelling, as well as the things that happen in the neighborhood around the house (in terms of safety, parking, social interaction with neighbors, etc). The family uses those influences to continuously renovate, adapt and modify the interior, the facilities and human interaction as the situation changes continuously for them over time. One of the key bonding factors of a family is the love that unites them in a common family mission of human wellness and evolution.
When the children are babies the house and social interaction is totally different then when the children are teenagers or when the parents have become pensioners and the children started a family life on their own, with maybe the external support of the parents. The stability and progress of the family is determined by its willingness to modify its functional structure, decoration, interaction, etc as the situations change. This is conducted by all members of the family who express their desires and contribute to the adaptability through progressive reflection, interaction, experimentation with innovations and decision making. Changes from outside are absorbed in this adaptability while the family itself is also continuously evaluating change and progress with their views, desires and means. The family wealth is determined by its warmth, love, respect, equality, proactive interaction and capacity to progress using human values as guiding principles. When someone is ill family members change their agenda to assist the person in need. When a celebration is appropriate all join in to acknowledge the pleasure. Gratitude for each other and for the wellness all enjoy is celebrated together and all act to maintain it through labor, creative contributions and sharing the fruits of all actions for the better and worst. People support each other. When accidents happen that may affect the safety or health of the family members the causes are found and dealt with. So when the open fire place is dirty and fills the house with smoke, the pipes are cleaned or the fire place is not used anymore for a while. When the child gets hurt because of a hazard in the house, the hazard is taken away or the child is taught how to deal with the danger. Interaction between the practical wisdom of the elderly and the youthful adventurousness of the children is protective but also progressive.
All this and more is content economy, based on the reflective, continuous develop of what “we are”, not on what “we have”. None of the family discussions for progress turn around money but the way they invest time, talent and energy in the progress of the family. Money is a means, the goal is something totally different and related to investments required to achieve them. Technology is also a means, as an instrument to support activities in the home, for recreation of educational purposes, maybe to cover the transportation needs of the family, whatever. Technology is not a goal either, it’s what one can do with it that matters. A family is rich when it is warm, caring, loving and supportive towards progress through mutual adaptiveness at all times.
When we step out into the world outside the family we see that the national economies have grown to become based on totally different principles since the introduction of growth based economies. Money has become the ultimate goal for politics and business enterprises for different reasons, yet in both cases the means became the goal. In our city and country environment we do allow pollution, criminality and things that hurt our fellow people. One out of three people have cancer now, many have lung and heart deceases, others have psychological or behavioral disorder, not caused by the lifestyle at home but by the way we organised society through economies of growth. Why do we allow things to happen in our society that we would not allow at home? Why do people who work in politics or business institutions accept participating in destruction while at home we work on health, safety and vitality? It has to do with choice, with paradigms that justify our actions, no questions asked. But maybe we should now ask ourselves those question and start looking at society and entrepreneurship from a different perspective, not an intellectual or scientific novelty but simply the way we would want it and organize things at home. The solution to all current crisis is not far away, it can be found very nearby…….at home.
If a content economy is possible at home within a family, it is also possible in our society. A family is the basic and most ancient format of human organisation and can be extended integrally to our surroundings. This does not allow for any growth criteria but addresses the content and meaning of our existence through social interaction and a culture around true sustainable progress. Let us place the differences next to each other to clarify our choices when we need to deal with it:
Growth Economy: speculation, based on “having”, external, material, shortages, competition, growth, conservatism, culture around greed, individualism, money is a goal, social and environmental issues secondary to financial growth, has no other “meaning” than statistical progress through growth, destructive, short term, etc.
Content Economy: care, based on “being”, internal, wellness, abundance, supportive, change, applied innovation, progression, culture around well-being, collective, interactive, social and environmental issues primary to progress, money is a means, meaningful, higher levels of awareness, constructive, evolutionary, etc.
The transformation from an economy of growth into one based on contents starts by elimination the word “growth” from the vocabulary and replace it for “meaningful change”. This has a tremendous effect on the way government addresses its responsibilities and how business transform too. We tend to blame our lifestyle for all the social and ecological mishaps around the world but most families in the world know perfectly well how to behave and live a decent and responsible life. If you care for your offspring at home you learn to appreciate health, safety, vitality and the need to keep them in place for the well-being of your loved ones. It are the systems that are being forced upon us through the cultural mentality of economic growth that lead to the problems. It is high time that the media, political parties, business and the individual citizens become aware and start the transformation themselves, closing off the speculative world from destroying further any of our wellness. And interestingly we have no need to wait for anyone to do this for us, no need for a politician to tell us to or any scientific research to figure out the truth. No, we can find the solution very nearby, looking at our own selves and the warmth of what most of us call home.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 