This is the first draft of an answer to Obama's call for economic suggestions. It has turned into a monstrosity and I obviously have a good deal of editing to do before I submit it to the change.gov site. Any suggestion are welcomed.
A couple of weeks ago I happened to catch President-elect Obama’s speech on the economy and was struck by his rather novel appeal to all Americans, of all political and ideological persuasions, to submit ideas on how a government assisted economic recovery might best be effected.
I thought to myself, "I ought to send in my thoughts on the subject, just for the hell of it."
Then, of course, I went on with my common little working class life, and scarcely gave it more than another passing thought.
But last Friday, my employer called and informed me that, due to a lack of work, my services would not be required for the next couple of weeks. So alas, I do now have the time.
Still, I probably never would have mustered the motivation had I not spent a couple of hours in my local unemployment office. There, in the worried look on the face of a young Hispanic mother, in the angry voice of a young black man, and in the barely-suppressed rage and frustration in the eyes of a middle aged white man, I found my motivation. I knew then, that as unlikely as it was that my ideas would have any meaningful impact, that it was nonetheless my duty to put them forth.
So here I am, submitting my own insignificant opinions and proposing one, perhaps splendidly absurd, solution.
Make no mistake that these ideas do come from the Left, perhaps further to the Left than even my own Democratic Party has ever fairly represented, even if the inherent limitations of our 2-party system do almost always compel me to vote that way. This ideological bias is important only because it influences how I see the problem to be solved and this alone is why I declare it before trying to suggest any solution, so that others may evaluate its value from their own ideological perspectives. Still, being firmly grounded in the widely shared American values of a strong belief in the laws of Smithsonian capitalism and in an unwavering faith in the productive and innovative capacity of the American People, it is hoped that proposed solution could draw substantial support from the Right.
So here is the problem as I see it:
Nearly all of our current economic problems, from the devaluation of the stock market, to the failure of the International Banking system, to the lack of internal corporate transparency and accountability, stem from a much greater failure of our current form of International, corporate dominated, capitalism to adapt to, and meaningfully meet, the overwhelming eco-economic challenges confronting humanity in the 21st century. In lay terms, the time for paying the piper for our overly exploitive industrial lifestyles draws painfully near, and unless we change, our current economic distress may only be the initial installment on the unbearable price that we, as a nation, and as a species, are eventually going to have to pay.
In particular, I find it utterly unforgivable that the corporations have failed to fully utilize the systems of Qualitative management that have been at their disposal for more than 30 years. Oh yes, there have been innumerable steering committees, problem solving teams, story boards, congratulatory dinners and not a few Baldridge-type Awards. Many complex, statistically-based, management and improvement systems, such as Total Quality and Six Sigma, have been developed as have many useful statistical utilization software programs. Many Quality consulting firms have done very well, providing their lucrative educational and advisement services to thousands of major corporate clients.
Still, the promise of Quality to, in the words of Edwards Deming, "provide jobs, jobs and more jobs" remains unfulfilled. Even worse than this, the absolutely imperative human journey to continuously improve all of our economic systems and productive endeavors, to the point they are radically transformed into the ecologically sustainable ones that we so desperately need, has scarcely even begun.
There is but one very simple reason for this critical failure of corporate capitalism. Quite simply the fundamental truth underlying any lasting application of Quality principles has been consistently rejected. This truth, that consensus decision-making teams make superior long term economic decisions, adapt more quickly and manage more holistically than individual executives and managers, has simply proven too bitter of a pill to swallow.
They easily understand the full social implications of the transformation to Quality systems, a thing that only a few quality consultants and researchers have ever publicly admitted out of fear of alienating their corporate clients. Two of these rare exceptions, Charles Manz and Henry Sims, wrote a book whose title succinctly sums up exactly what management fears most about Total Quality: Business without Bosses: How Self-managing Teams are Building High-Performing Companies (1993).
So the corporations are in a bind over the Quality issue. They certainly do utilize limited applications of such systems to problem solve on a few critical business issues. They frequently stage Quality "turnarounds", most often to hoodwink investors for a few years so that corporate executives can horde the stock that is the main element of their compensation packages before they ride off into the sunset with their golden parachutes waving the breeze.
But the corporations cannot allow Quality to evolve to the point that it becomes a holistic and self-perpetuating cultural system. To do so would be to allow Humanity to return home, back to the basic socio-economic organization of the vast hunting and gathering epoch, an cultural organization founded on three great, self-reinforcing pillars; Consensus, Cooperation, and Individual Liberty.
If modern companies began to take on such characteristics, executive authority would soon evaporate, and with it the social justification for all the vast differences in wealth, prestige, social status and economic power that current exist between the average worker and the average CEO. Only a few of the most courageous and honorable executive and managers are able to live up to the ancient ideals of Leadership, and put the good of their People before their own perceived self interests. This too is human nature, part of the survival instinct, but it is also a large part of why the corporations are failing modern humanity so tragically, in spite of all the wonderful gadgets and disposal conveniences they put on the market.
Clearly new forms of companies have to be rapidly developed, in order to provide the competition to force the corporations, who own most of the worlds capital resources, to live up to their social and moral responsibilities to humanity and to the Earth itself.
And this, at long last, leads me to my proposed solution. Here it is:
It is May 2009 and yet another corporately owned manufacturing plant has gone under in the ongoing recession. Now, 58 days after the WARN notices went out, its displaced employees, both hourly and salaried, gather in a large conference room, together with employees from a few selected smaller businesses that have also recently failed in the local economy.
At a table at the front of the room, sit seven men and women, local, state and federal employees drawn from several domestic agencies, whose staffs have been expanded to make up for such "on loan" assignments. Only the middle aged woman who stands before the table waiting for everyone to file in and get seated is from a newly created federal Agency (call it whatever you like). This Agency is composed mostly of market researchers, Quality systems and statistical experts and business educators and consultants in diverse fields.
Nearly everyone one in the room has been interviewed at least once by one or more members of the team over the last couple of months, as they gathered information for their work. Some have been interviewed several times. Thus, nearly all know that this meeting is not just about signing up for unemployment benefits and browsing through the few underpaid jobs listed in governmental catalogs and websites. They fully understand that this meeting is about the possibility of creating an entirely new company, managed by them, and, if successful, to be eventually wholly owned by them.
As the "Agency" woman begins her introductory presentation, there is a good deal of concern, skepticism, doubt and even fear on many faces. But there is also a good deal of guarded hope. As she tells them that the team, based on the information they have provided, and information, research and expertise gathered from the personnel and databases of many difference governmental departments and agencies, the team has determined that there is a commercial market for a modified line of products that could be produced at plant, hope begins to grow. As she explains how these products (or services) could contribute to the fulfillment of specific national or regional strategic needs (the mass production of solar and wind energy systems, for example) hope glows even brighter.
She continues, telling them how the inclusion of the former staffs and capabilities of other businesses might contribute to the business model of the new company: How with government backing two registered nurses from a low income medical clinic, abandoned by its doctors, would go back to school get their nurse practitioner’s license and would practice under the legal supervision of local health department doctors. By this means, a primary tier of local minor treatment and wellness care could be used to help reduce the employee healthcare costs that had been so crippling to previous employer. Moreover, the continued delivery of desperately needed medical services would provide alternative sources of cash flow to the company. The woman goes on to describe a similar economic arrangement for a failed construction company, whose internal projects within the company might increase efficiency, reduce the plant’s carbon footprint, or otherwise improve the plant’s ecology, while, again, providing alternate sources of cash flow and alternate paths of expansion or business adaptation. She goes on to describe how other recently failed business could act as internal suppliers of component parts, services or raw materials at considerable cost savings.
Then she turns to the subject of how the new company would be managed. With a Powerpoint presentation she shows diagrams of how the company would be sub-divided in several dozen intra-departmental lines or other natural work groups, each of anywhere from 4 to 10 members. She describes how each of these teams would be self managing according to traditional Quality principles, as consensus decision-making bodies, with span of control boundaries, and with a fierce focus on customers, both internal and external. She goes on to describe how each team will select its own leaders and facilitors by consensus and how they will be replaced, whenever required, by the same means. Similarly she describes how each of these teams would select one or more representatives to departmental or inter-departmental assembly line management teams and how from these departmental teams members would be selected, again by consensus, to serve on three company Lead Teams and a Local Steering Committee. She describes the roles of each team, A Business Lead team to concentrate on the financial success of the company, a Labor Lead Team, to handle all those thorny problems associated with personnel issues, A Human Ecology Team, focused on continuing efforts to make the company as "Green" as cost-effectively possible. Finally she explains the role of the Local Steering Committee, to commission and support short term inter-departmental teams to work on specific problems or areas of economic opportunity.
At this point the woman turns the presentation over to other members of the team. Together, over the course of the next couple of hours, they touch all the bases. They cover market conditions, sales strategies, potential customers, possible compensation and benefit packages and methods for eventually converting shares of participant "ownership" into retirement plans. They describe the challenges of Qualitative Leadership and of cooperative management. They summarize the capital expenditures in training, facilities and equipment that will be required, where the capital will come from, and how it will be repaid.
When they are done, the "Agency" woman again takes the floor.
"I know that this is a lot to absorb at one time, and I know that many of you must be a little nervous. No one has to make a decision today. Take the time to talk to your families and consider everything. We will meet next week to see if enough of you are willing to commit yourselves to this enterprise to proceed. Anyone who is already certain they want to be part of the project is welcome to start working with us on the preliminary planning starting Monday. But know before hand that if we don’t get the participation we can’t go forward. When we meet next Friday we will find that out, and if enough people are willing, we will then go to work."
So there we are. That is how I would propose the "economic stimulus" money be spent.
That is not to say that the government should directly finance such companies. Like any other economic venture in our economic system these companies will require investment capital from mostly private sources. But considering that the financial core of corporate capitalism has essentially failed as of late, and "We the People" now have billions of dollars invested in nearly every major bank, I no longer consider capital a great barrier to the creation of the employee owned and managed companies. "We, the People" simply need to assert "our" financial leverage. Indeed, financial start up loans for these companies might be granted as long-term loans very similar to traditional housing loans, only considerably larger. Assuming that some idiot does not bundle these "capital mortgages" together, attach a set of mystical "derivatives" to them, and engage in an International game of investor hot potato with them, returns on investment might be stabilized, giving these companies the capacity to do what the corporations have proven themselves unable or unwilling to do; To look beyond the next fiscal quarter and get down to the business of solving 21st century human survival problems through innovative capitalist means.
I am only an amateur, "armchair" anthropologist, with half the necessary education in the discipline to rightfully claim any such title. Still, over the past 15 years or so, since I was first exposed to Total Quality, I have developed these ideas almost as a hobby. Anyone who is interested, and who, like myself apparently, has way too much time on their hands can feel free to visit my Daily Kos diary page.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Most of the dozen or so blog entries there touch on aspects of this same general theme. In addition there is a link there to a thesis length paper I wrote a few years ago entitled A BETTER WAY: The Cultural Adaptations of a Modern, Rural Tribe (©2004). This paper describes a theoretical, diversified services company organized along the lines described above. Although, clearly too idealistic and "hippyish" to be of much practical value, perhaps it can be used to give a better idea of the gains that could be made through the use of a fully developed Qualitative cultural system. I would encourage anyone who reads it to think about how places they work or have worked might be organized similarly.
In conclusion I would like to give an anthropological example of why I believe that through consensus decision-making we still have the ability to prevent our civilizations from turning the earth into a smoldering, post-industrial cesspool. Bear with me for just a moment more.
A bout 74,000 years ago, our species had been reduced by a super-volcanic eruption and the climatic changes caused by it, to a breeding population of about 2,000 individuals, living in a relatively compact area in north central Africa and utilizing relatively uniform cultural and technological traditions. Over the course of the next 60,000 years or so, a variable blink in evolutionary time, the descendants of these humans would develop the astonishingly diverse technologies, economic strategies and social customs that would allow them to successfully colonize almost every major terrestrial niche on the planet. No other mammalian species has ever expanded its range so quickly or successfully. These forgotten ancestors laid the very foundations for all of our modern cultures and civilizations.
We know none of the names of these people. They left us little record of the events of their lives. We get only hints of their greatness and perseverance. We can not even definitively prove that every single socio-economic decision made during the prehistoric era was in fact made by small group consensus, but since the phenomena was universally observed in all historic hunting and gathering groups we must assume that was the case, or very nearly so, at least.
So we know that this means of socio-economic organization and these methods of decision-making allow humans to rapidly adapt to diverse environmental conditions. Is this not exactly what humanity’s current eco-economic dilemma requires?
Now it is true that we do not have 60,000 years in which to prevent an ecological calamity of similar magnitude to the one our ancestors had to recover from. According to a rough but reasonably general consensus of scientists we have but about 50 years. But when one considers the fact that there are roughly the same number of people on the face of the planet now as lived throughout that whole 60.000 year period, our challenges become a little less daunting. We do have the productive, intellectual and technological capacity for the great task at hand. We can give our descendants a vibrant, modern civilization in balance with the Earth.....if we remember the intrinsic human qualities that have made us great throughout the whole grand human experience and if we act NOW!
Remember, Consensus, Cooperation, Individual Liberty......add Capitalism if it makes you feel better.