do we need a master game manager?

[rverzola]

>Jay Hanson wrote:
>#1. Be managed like domestic pets.
>#2. Dieoff like individual wild animals.

I presume you are proposing that we allow ourselves to be managed like
dogs and cats by a world government guided by science and religion
which will presume it knows what is good for every living being in the
world. This is the idea of a "master conductor" who makes sure that a
complex system works well.

I will add a third option (and a way out):
#3. Work it out like the intelligent human beings that we are, at the
    local level: identify the flawed rules of behavior which we've
    allowed to take over our lives in the past few centuries or so,
    and locality-by-locality, replace them with better rules of
    behavior

>In 1944, 29 reindeer were moved to St. Matthew Island. The reindeer
>thrived by "exploiting" (making the best use of) their rich "commons".
>(A commons is any resource used as though it belongs to all. In other
>words, when any animal can use a shared resource simply because it
>wants to use it, then it is using a commons. Remember that a  commons
>is destroyed by uncontrolled use -- ownership is not a factor.)

Animals, in their natural environment, use their commons all the time
without destroying it, in dynamic balance with other species. Your
reindeer example is flawed for at least two reasons:
- we are not reindeer
- the fault lay not in the reindeer, but in the game manager who took
  them away from their natural environment

>population of reindeer it may never occur. Transgressing the carrying
>capacity of St. Matthew Island reduced its carrying capacity by at
>least 97.5 percent. It is facts like these -- repeated over and over
>again in game management experience -- that justify the ecolate game
>manager in viewing carrying capacity as partaking of the sacred.

It is those engaged in so-called "game management" who transgressed
the reindeers by moving them out of their natural environment. This is
the experience that is repeated over and over: some "master conductor"
wants to play God (or is it game manager?) and globally manage the
system -- in the process working against the laws of self-organization
and complexity which, minus the "master conductor", manages very well
by itself. Please do not close your eyes to these relatively recent
developments in the systems sciences or you'll keep wasting your time
trying to work out based on an old science how a "master conductor"
can manage a complex ecological system. I'm afraid reality doesn't
work that way.

>You have simply restated your assertion.  You tell me: what do
>these studies have to do with real world animals (us) who have
>overshot the carrying capacity of their planet (Earth)?

These studies imply that we should abandon attempts at global
solutions or faith in a "master conductor", but to redirect our
efforts at the local level: local variables, local interactions.
Strengthen communities, and modular networks of self-sustainable
communities (modular: relatively independent of each other and
interacting through a well-defined set of interfaces).

This is why the Y2K crisis is such an opportune occasion for systemic
transformation: it forces communities to stop relying from the top
(the master conductor or game manager), and to become self-sustainable
once more, as human communities were a long time ago (and still
basically are among many indigenous peoples). For a year or two, the
global structures superimposed on local communities and local
interactions will be weakened if not in disarray. The Y2K crisis makes
possible this necessary condition for systemic transformation: a shift
back to a local mode, minus the "game managers". If people were
unaware of this opportunity, or wasted their time convincing some
would-be "game manager" to take over, this one and only opportunity
for a relatively painless systemic transformation will be lost.

I agree with many of the other things you posted, but this debate
between global/top-down/game manager approach and
local/bottom-up/self-sustainable communities approach is one area
where I think you should completely rethink your position, because it
is based on old science.

>Physics incorporated thermodynamics - moved from "production" to
>"circulation" - over 100 years ago. But modern economic texts such as
>McConnell & Brue, 1999, and Samuelson & Nordhouse, 1998 still do not
>discuss thermodynamics or entropy!

I am equally critical of neoliberal (ie, gain-maximizing) economics,
so this is not the issue. The issue is your ultra-pessimistic,
dead-end, dieoff, heat death, "we've lost all metals", "we've lost all
energy sources" scenarios.

These dark scenarios are based on the First Law of Thermodynamics, and
on the increasing entropy in the universe. This is precisely what I
mean by the way out that the new systems sciences give us: it is true
that entropy is increasing in the universe (ie, there is a general
movement towards greater disorganization and randomness). But it is
equally true that in the universal ocean of increasing entropy and
disorganization, there are islands of decreasing entropy and
increasing complexity. How this can come about is the topic of the new
sciences I am trying to convince you to become more familiar with: how
self-organization comes about; how complexity comes about; how life
emerges. It is your overemphasis in the increasing entropy and
disorder while missing the islands of increasing complexity that gives
you these dark ultra-pessimistic scenarios.

Once you're convinced that self-organizing complex systems can emerge
out of disorder, without need for any "game manager", and I'm sure
you'll feel somewhat more optimistic about the possibilities of
survival and reemergence of human societies and civilizations.


Roberto Verzola