RatcliffeBlog - Mitch Thinking Out Loud

The Organization is the Polity

Network-Centric Advocacy has a very solid, very pragmatic assessment of the realities of, strangely, network-centric advocacy. "...we are all very excited about the possibilites and not building the 'nuts and bolt' strategiges and support structures groups need to influence policy." Much more, read the piece.

Yes -- and the challenge is how to make a social effort self-sustaining, not in a holistic new-agey way, but in terms of providing rewards for participating that ultimately contribute to the livelihood of people who give over their lives to the community. Public services have been delivered by professionals, and many of those people should continue to work in government, but what about creating organizations that deliver healthcare or roads or daycare to a community? That is political work as much as advocating a particular position on a bill before Congress. The structure of organizations for tax purposes are stuck in a past that is very easy to sustain simply because the tax code is millions of words that are hard to change.

This is the very idea I've been drawing out, albeit slowly and not entirely successfully, in the idea of the emergent polity.

The social hack I am suggesting is a simple inversion of contract law to empower the individual to join many different polities while preserving their ability to write off the cost of investing in social services. These corporations, which I describe as emergent polities, are narrowly focused entities that address a specific social need, such as healthcare or even military defense. A group of people with genetic markers for a particular form of cancer would contract with one another to cure that cancer. A hundred thousand people identified by making an open call for contributions would put $1,000 into the polity, and the organizers would provide that to a company wishing to commercialize a cure in exchange for free treatment of members of the polity. The cure, once developed would be available in one of two ways, by joining the polity—an investment of more than $1,000 would be required because the risk of the project would be eliminated, but because one would join prior to developing the disease and could, therefore, never get the disease, not pay a huge premium on the cost of the drug—or by purchasing the drug from the company that develops it, part of the profits of which would go back to the polity to offset the cost of future treatment. In the military arena, which has been presumed to be the domain of government, more than 3,000 companies provide some kind of military service to the U.S. Department of Defense and the global private military industry is a $100 billion business. A polity for mutual defense could span geographies, because other relationships, such as a major customer relationship, could require a contribution to defense if it were needed. Because the “insurance” provided by the mutual defense polity lowers the chance of war (in most tribal and failing state wars a few hundred or so military security professionals on the ground have stopped most violence, since thugs operate effectively only when unchallenged), the cost of the insurance would be subject to actuarial and market pricing that reduced the upfront cost of gaining future protection. A global agreement to sanction offensive action, presumably through the United Nations and enforced by nation-states intent on continuing their role as global military powers, would create a disincentive for most wars of aggression. Nothing in this essay suggests that the nation-state should or must be eliminated. The point is to distribute most governance as close to the "edge" of society as possible to engage the political energy, knowledge and skill of individual citizens.

These market-connected polities are just one example of the way that the cost of providing the services typically delivered through fixed channels of political power or bureaucracy can be distributed across populations that transcend the geography of the nation-state. Food provision, elder care, education, and general healthcare are open to these kinds of polities founded on a mutual recognition of need. Moreover, when a polity is established, it will have negotiating leverage with other polities and organizations to use in purchasing other benefits or providing its services to other polities. Over time, polities would become enmeshed and the monopoly of the nation-state as provider of last resort within a region will be overcome. This may not happen in our lifetimes, but it is my contention that this is an elegant solution to the question of how to catalyze a transition from today’s alienating political hierarchy to something different.