Monstrous Hybrids Alive

What's the most important book you could read that's not about science or technology to gain a better understanding of CRN's work?

One strong candidate would be Systems of Survival by the late great social scientist Jane Jacobs. Although the book itself is not especially readable (our "Three Systems" paper includes the most important stuff), her ideas are profound.

Another book we've frequently recommended is Jim Garrison's America as Empire: Global Leader or Rogue Power? It offers a compelling review of previous historical empires, their rise and fall, and compares them with the U.S. today. Most relevant to CRN's work is Garrison's prescription for something he calls network democracy.

Now, we may have a third title to add to this short list: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein. I don't have the book yet, but from what I've heard it looks like a must-read, with a lot to say about the unstable global future into which molecular manufacturing may emerge in the next decade or two.

What I want to point out here is the correlation between these books, especially the first and third. In Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs makes explicit the dangers of what she calls "monstrous moral hybrids" -- in The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein describes some real-world examples (although without the Jacobs terminology).

Here is what CRN says about these hybrids:

One of the most important concepts in Jacobs' theory is that of “monstrous moral hybrids”, which are created when an organization tries to adopt inappropriate principles, or systems of action. A government that took bribes would certainly qualify, as would a government that tried to regulate all commerce by force and central planning. Both problems arise from a Guardian entity involving itself too much with money.

Even a subtle mixture can have distinctly bad effects. Jacobs gives the example of a police department that tried to make itself more efficient by giving bonuses to police officers for making arrests. Note that “Be efficient” is a Commercial and not a Guardian principle, and Guardians are supposed to “Shun trading.” The result was predictable in hindsight: many false arrests were made in order to get the bonuses. The Mafia engages in trade and force both, using loyalty, greed, and coercion as motivators. Most people outside of the Mafia would agree that it is monstrous.

Applying a consistent system of action to the wrong situation can be as bad as mixing and matching principles for convenience. Commerce stagnates if it is centrally regulated; conversely, mercenaries do not make trustworthy or effective soldiers. Information principles, when applied to other people's private property, result in actions that are indistinguishable from theft. Organizations should not try to extend their influence to situations that fall outside their ability to address appropriately.

In an interview for Salon.com, Klein answered a question about the recent subprime mortgage meltdown and a possible government bailout:

This is yet another example of corporatism. It isn't a free market. The contractor economy in Iraq is not a free market: It is a political alliance of corporate elite through tax cuts, contracts and bailouts. The irony of this ideological campaign is that everywhere that extreme free marketeers who like freedom go, what emerges is not a free market but an alliance of the small government elite and a corporate elite marked by these transfers and the accumulation of huge debt.

Note the reference to an alliance between government and corporate elites; a hybrid between practitioners of the Guardian and Commercial systems.

In that same interview, Klein says:

One of the things that really struck me is how the stock market responds to hurricanes and terrorist attacks. The most significant change in recent years is that the stock market now responds favorably to terrorist attacks or narrowly averted attacks. A whole class of stocks jump -- disaster stocks, like surveillance companies. Homeland security is now a $200 billion industry.

There is a new level of integration between homeland security companies and media companies. General Electric, which owns NBC, has been in the weapons industry for some time but has become very active in the homeland security business. They recently purchased InVision, which provides bomb detection for airports. Since 9/11 InVision has received $15 billion in contracts from the Department of Homeland Security -- more such contracts than any other company. A company like that gains from the atmosphere of crisis and fear that is spread through media outlets.

It's war against evil everywhere with no end. That's a war that can't be won, and you couldn't ask for a more profitable business plan. The only thing that threatens it is peace.

Finally, she responds to a question about how, supposedly, "the middle classes are thriving with a free-market system" in India, China, and Chile:

It's interesting that these are the cases that are consistently held up as success stories, because there are clear and dramatic examples of state repression used to impose free-market policies in all three countries: the terror of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China, Pinochet's torture regime in Chile, violent crackdowns on resistance movements in India. Not one of these three countries is actually an example of the kind of unfettered capitalism advocated by Chicago School economists.

In terms of the long-term benefits of shock therapy, I never argue that no one benefits. The mark of the neoliberal state is a society of clear winners and losers, and an increasingly wide gap between the two. According to the United Nations, which tracks inequality in 116 countries, Chile is the eighth-most-unequal society on the list. In China and India the chasm between the country and the city, the slum and the call center, is so vast that it threatens national stability. We hear little about it in the Western press, but in China, India and Chile, fierce battles are fought every day over the legacy of shock therapy.

CRN has said:

Guardian and Commercial systems have learned to coexist, and even to benefit each other. A healthy flow of commerce needs Guardian organizations to minimize the problems of theft, fraud, and piracy. Guardian organizations don't actually need Commercial organizations, but without commerce the system reverts to something like feudalism: warlords fighting to maintain and extend their land, and peasants engaged in heavily-taxed zero-sum farming when they're not being drafted for cannon fodder. Without organized force, trade and wealth are impossible; without commerce, society stagnates. However, it is very important that the two systems of action be embodied in different organizations.

In any deliberations about future models for world governance, as Garrison describes in his book, we think it's essential to keep in mind the important distinctions between three equally important and valuable systems.

What we're seeing today is the real-world emergence of monstrous moral hybrids, and we're witnessing the consequences, as Klein observes. Will those hybrids continue to grow, or will the dangers of mixing systems of action be recognized and stopped?

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Comments

[Isaac]

Mark this was such a great post that I just wanted to let you know that I started a blog over at www.ConspiracyFactualists.com that delves into a lot of the Conspiracy facts that surround us. It seems to me that there is a global elite that already know about this technology and do not want the population to be able to have access to it so they create this distraction known as 9/11 which is designed to get everyone forcused on the war on terror instead of on the world changing nanotechnology. 9/11 was indeed an inside job.

[Tom Craver]

The author of Shock Doctrine is upset that traumatic events are being used to advance "capitalism" - but this is hardly a new trend, and hardly limited to "capitalists".

Shock has long been used as the means to social transformations of the sort which the author heartily approves.

Violent revolution was explicitly a part of the playbook for instituting communism / socialism. Nazis used an economic crisis to gain power, then created fear and chaos to gain total control. Protests and riots were used to create the crisis needed to push through racial integration - followed by wealth transfer programs that created a permanently dependent under-class. Academic intellectuals encouraged student protests and riots against the Vietnam war, because it opposed to communism.

Note that I'm not saying the other side in those cases were saints - but it really seems like the author has suddenly realized that exploiting shock to gain leverage over big government can work just as well for "the other side" - so she finally starts crying "Foul!".

Further, she shows her own bias by falsely conflating two groups she dislikes - the big business "capitalists" (fascists) who seek profits and privileges from government in the wake of a shock; and the Friedman-ites, who are mostly interested in pushing back toward government as Guardian, separated from the social and commercial realms.

She wants to have her big government intervention cake, but keep the "capitalists" from eating it too. It won't work - once you've corrupted the Guardian, it will sell its power to all buyers.