This page describes the organizational forces that limit change.
It explains how to overcome
them when necessary.
This page uses an example to illustrate how:
- A business can gain focus from targeting key customers,
- Business planning activities performed by the whole organization can build awareness, empowerment and coherence.
- A program approach can ensure strategic alignment.
This page uses the example of HP's printer organization freeing
itself from its organizational constraints to sell a printer
targeted at the IBM pc user.
The constraints are described.
The techniques to overcome them are implied.
The constraints are described.
The techniques to overcome them are implied.
Globalization from cotton
Summary
Sven Beckert describes the historic transformation of the growing, spinning, weaving, manufacture of cotton goods and their trade over time. He describes the rise of a first global commodity, its dependence on increasing: military power, returns for the control points in the value delivery system(VDS), availability of land and labor to work it including slaves.He explains how cotton offered the opportunity for industrialization further amplifying the productive capacity of the VDS and the power of the control points. This VDS was quickly copied. The increased capacity of the industrialized cotton complex adaptive system (CAS) required more labor to operate the machines. Beckert describes the innovative introduction of wages and the ways found to mobilize industrial labor.
Beckert describes the characteristics of the industrial cotton CAS which made it flexible enough to become globally interconnected. Slavery made the production system so cost effective that all prior structures collapsed as they interconnected. So when the US civil war blocked access to the major production nodes in the American Deep South the CAS began adapting.
Beckert describes the global reconstruction that occurred and the resulting destruction of the traditional ways of life in the global countryside. This colonial expansion further enriched and empowered the 'western' nation states. Beckert explains how other countries responded by copying the colonial strategies and creating the opportunities for future armed conflict among the original colonialists and the new upstarts.
Completing the adaptive in evolutionary biology is a trait that increased the number of surviving offspring in an organism's ancestral lineage. Holland argues: complex adaptive systems (CAS) adapt due to the influence of schematic strings on agents. Evolution indicates fitness when an organism survives and reproduces. For his genetic algorithm, Holland separated the adaptive process into credit assignment and rule discovery. He assigned a strength to each of the rules (alternate hypothesis) used by his artificial agents, by credit assignment - each accepted message being paid for by the recipient, increasing the sender agent's rule's strength (implicit modeling) and reducing the recipient's. When an agent achieved an explicit goal they obtained a final reward. Rule discovery used the genetic algorithm to select strong rule schemas from a pair of agents to be included in the next generation, with crossing over and mutation applied, and the resulting schematic strategies used to replace weaker schemas. The crossing over genetic operator is unlikely to break up a short schematic sequence that provides a building block retained because of its 'fitness'; In Deacon's conception of evolution, an adaptation is the realization of a set of constraints on candidate mechanisms, and so long as these constraints are maintained, other features are arbitrary.
shifts, Beckert describes the advocates for industrialization in the colonized global south and how over time they joined the global cotton CAS disrupting the early western manufacturing nodes and creating the current global CAS dominated by merchants like Wal-Mart pulling goods through a network of clothing manufacturers, spinning and weaving factories, and growers competing with each other on cost.
Following our summary of Beckert's book, RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio comments from the perspective of CAS theory. The transformation of disconnected peasant farmers, pastoral warriors and their lands into a supply chain for a highly profitable industrial CAS required the development over time: of military force, global transportation and communication networks, perception and representation control networks, capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). stores and flows, models, rules, standards and markets; along with the support at key points of: barriers, disruption, and infrastructure and evolved amplifiers. The emergent system demonstrates the powerful constraining influence of extended phenotypic alignment.
Empire of Cotton
In Sven Beckert's book 'Empire of Cotton' he describes and analyses the transformation of cotton farming and manufacture over Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
time.
This transformation is of great significance since it is a
formative step in the development of our modern industrialized
world. Since 1960 most cotton is grown in India, China and
then Soviet Uzbekistan, spun and woven in China, Turkey and
Pakistan and then turned into finished goods in Bangladesh and
Vietnam. But around 1860 slave plantations in the American
South grew cotton and then sent it for processing to British
factories which provided two thirds of the world's cotton
spindles. British workers operated the newly emergent
factories spinning and weaving fabrics that merchants sent to
the world's markets. Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational. It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations evolve together with events, not things
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field. With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions
The newly developed value delivery system (VDS) was easily adapted to other products. Beckert stresses that the 1860s VDS was imperial. It depended on huge military expenditures to support the near constant state of war. Protectionist tariffs, high taxes and large accumulation of debt were used by Great Britain, and then other colonizers, to develop the system which united the power of the state with the power of capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). .
In the 1500s entrepreneurial use of war allowed the leverage of slavery, genocide and imperial expansion to claim sovereignty over lands and people. The captured wealth is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche. and knowledge strengthened the nascent European institutions enabling industrialization.
Over
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
time slaves became wage
workers, coercion became contracts and debt based
constraints. Persistence and expropriation became property
rights. Private factors using genocide and master slave
relationships gave way to the rule of law. Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational. It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations evolve together with events, not things
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field. With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions
As nation states gave workers the vote their conditions and remuneration improved allowing the entry of lower cost labor based alternatives in the global south.
The rise of a global commodity
Aztec farmers grew maize, beans, squash, chilies and cotton in mixed cultivations. The women spun and wove the cotton with simple tools to contribute to the taxes levied by the Aztec rulers.Cotton is able to grow in a variety of niches by adjusting its bloom period including: India, Africa, South America; All lie in a band 32-35 degrees south to 37 degrees north. It requires greater than 50 degrees Fahrenheit in its growing period, 20 - 25 inches of rain and no frost for 200 days.
90% of today's plants are grown from American Upland cotton seed.
The cotton industry developed independently in three key areas:
- Indian cloth was of superior quality. From India
cotton was transplanted to China. Cotton displaced
Ramie was required for tax payments and was used to cloth
soldiers.
- Peru was the initiator of South American cotton
manufacture. A second center developed further north
in the Americas. Navajos and Hopi grew cotton as early
as 300 BC is Before Christ also reffered to as before common era (BCE).
.
- A few thousand years later Sudan initiated the development
of African cotton. From Sudan it was transplanted to
Egypt between 332 BC is Before Christ also reffered to as before common era (BCE).
and 395 AD is Anno Domini also referred to as common era (CE). . Islam spread cotton further into the Middle East and West Africa teaching spinning to girls and weaving to boys.
The stages of development of the human female, including how her brain changes and the
impacts of this on her 'reality' across a full life span:
conception, infantile
puberty, girlhood,
juvenile pause, adolescence, dating years, motherhood, post-menopause; are
described. Brizendine notes the significant difference in
how emotions are processed
by women compared to men.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the stages with the evolutionary under-pinning, psychological implications and behavioral CAS.
women
in these early civilizations: parenting and
cooking. The supporting technologies evolved slowly,
constrained by poor transport infrastructure, self sufficiency
and lack of competitive forces. Complex adaptive system (CAS) theory associates the stages with the evolutionary under-pinning, psychological implications and behavioral CAS.
Europe had very limited exposure to cotton until Marco Polo reported on fine Indian cotton, Pizarro attacked the Inca empire and Cortes attacked the Aztecs.
Cotton proved an effective store of value and a medium of exchange supporting the development of trade networks on all continents, and stimulating the introduction of workshops resulting in geographic concentration of traders. Merchants invested capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). to develop putting out networks enabling investment in new technologies: the spinning wheel saved lots of
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
time. Growers in the Levant
supplied Italian manufacturers via Venician ships. The
manufacturers leveraged their prior capital and experience
developed from working with wool. Beckert notes that this
network was a prototype of the future global system except the
Italian manufacturers had no power over the growers in the
Levant. Islam constrained and marginalized both Italian
and German activities and high taxes futher undermined the
Italian efforts. Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational. It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations evolve together with events, not things
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field. With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions
Building war capitalism
European capitalists and rulers slowly altered the global networks over 200 years from 1600 to 1800:
- Armed traders melded the flows into a Europe centric maritime network.
- Emergence of a military-fiscal uses government revenue collection and spending to influence the economy.
state enabled global projection of power.
- Invention of financial instruments and enforcement of a legal framework secured global investments and supported the transfer of goods over long distances.
- Alliances were formed with distant capitalists and rulers
to gain access to their local weavers and cotton
growers.
- Expropriation of land and deportation of Africans supported the development of low cost plantations operated by slaves.
Vasco De Gama reached India in 1497 obtaining direct trade access to Indian cottons by 1498. Portugal made Goa their trading outpost from which they enforced a monopoly is a power relation within:
- A state in which a group has enough power to enforce its will on other citizens. If this is a central authority with a cohesive military, it can overpower other warlords and stabilize the society.
- An economy in which one business has enough share in a market segment to control margins to its advantage. An economic monopoly can be broadly beneficial: AT&T monopoly, US patent monopoly rights;
As the gold and silver mines depleted European settlers focused on growing cash crops: tobacco, indigo, sugar and rice; on plantations using land taken forcibly from the native peoples.
By 1602 Dutch and British joint stock companies were chartered to gain access to global trades. British agreed to split spheres of influence with the Dutch, gaining control of Indian textile flows to Europe. British used projected naval power to control Indian trades with Asia and Africa. The East India Company's 'triangular' operation traded Indian cotton cloth for South-East Asian spices for consumption and to trade in Africa for slaves. The slaves were transported and put to work developing and operating the New World's emergent plantations.
Plantations were highly profitable with low cost land and labor but required a huge labor force. African slaves from Senegal, Ghana and Benin were paid for with cotton products. The Liverpool merchants financing the plantations captured high profits. They used the accumulating capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). to develop an English commercial trade and shifted the center of the cotton trade network from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. They initially financed the development is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete.
of English cotton manufacture developing a putting out network of home workers.
The development of West Indian cotton plantations significantly expanded the supply of raw cotton. The growth of a European market for Indian cotton also stimulated interest in European manufacturing and a desire to understand the high quality processes the Indian manufacturers were using. The British East India Company documented Indian techniques so that England's nascent domestic industry could copy them and improve its competitiveness. As the English cotton manufacturing industry developed it worked with the British government to build tariff barriers (1685) and eventually an import ban on Indian cotton goods (1701). Indian textiles were only allowed for trading for slaves.
The wages of war capitalism
Samuel Gregg was an early example of an English textile factory developer. He owned a sugar plantation in Dominica which used slave labor until 1834 when Britain removed direct involvement by abolition. Gregg was local to Manchester where he used water power, and later steam, to drive spinning machines thus increasing the productivity is the efficiency with which an agent's selected strategy converts the inputs to an action into the resulting outputs. It is a complex capability of agents. It will depend on the agent having: time, motivation, focus, appropriate skills; the coherence of the participating collaborators, and a beneficial environment including the contribution of: standardization of inputs and outputs, infrastructure and evolutionary amplifiers.
of spinning. He leveraged the global cotton trading network through relatives who were merchants in Liverpool. This provided necessary competitive advantages relative to artisans working in Frankfort, Calcutta or Rio. For example plantations developed a number of innovation is the economic realization of invention and combinatorial exaptation. It operates across all CAS, being supported by genetic and cultural means. Creativity provides the mutation and recombination genetic operators for the cultural process. While highly innovative, monopolies: AT&T, IBM; usually have limited economic reach, constraining productivity. This explains the use of regulation, or even its threat, that can check their power and drive the creations across the economy.
s including cost accounting which he could use. A particularly significant financial innovation he adopted was encouraging the powerless: children and penniless females; to work in his factory as wage laborers.
English manufacturers like Gregg were in a competitive race with the Indian manufacturers. Over
Carlo Rovelli resolves the paradox of time.
Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
time
they became more competitive with:Rovelli initially explains that low level physics does not include time:
- A present that is common throughout the universe does not exist
- Events are only partially ordered. The present is localized
- The difference between past and future is not foundational. It occurs because of state that through our blurring appears particular to us
- Time passes at different speeds dependent on where we are and how fast we travel
- Time's rhythms are due to
the gravitational field
- Our quantized physics shows neither
space nor time, just processes transforming physical
variables.
- Fundamentally there is no time. The basic equations evolve together with events, not things
- Our familiar time emerges
- Our interaction with the world is partial, blurred,
quantum indeterminate
- The ignorance determines the existence of thermal time and entropy that quantifies our uncertainty
- Directionality of time is real
but perspectival. The entropy of the world in
relation to us increases with our thermal time. The
growth of entropy distinguishes past from future: resulting in
traces and memories
- Each human is a
unified being because: we reflect the world, we
formed an image of a unified entity by
interacting with our kind, and because of the perspective
of memory
- The variable time: is one of the variables of the gravitational field. With our scale we don't register quantum fluctuations, making space-time appear determined. At our speed we don't perceive differences in time of different clocks, so we experience a single time: universal, uniform, ordered; which is helpful to our decisions
- Expanded customer base.
- Low cost growers (slaves) supplying the raw cotton.
- Low cost of capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital).
needed to build factories and setup machinery.
- State investment in naval weapons required to project
power. Institutionalized power replaced aristocratic hierarchies
with colonial bureaucracy placing Britain as the central
node in a global network.
- Machine innovations: Flying shuttle, Water frame, Spinning
Jenny, Mule; and use of water and then steam power to drive
them. The technologists typically did not benefit
much but the capitalists were finally able to apply
scale. This allowed them to invest in new
markets. In particular those influenced by British
warships!
- State regulatory alignment allowing access to low cost
factory workers from the local poor houses. Legal
changes forced artisans and peasants off the land so they
had to accept becoming wage laborers.
- Competitor information from industrial spies backed by the
British government.
value add in England) to 1800 (17%). By 1815 all rivals from non-Europe had been eliminated. In India, which as part of the British Empire was not able to erect protective barriers, the result was extensive famine is declared when:
- One in five households in a specific area face extreme food shortages
- More than 30% of the population is acutely malnourished
- Two people in 10,000 die each day
Capturing
labor, conquering land
Slavery was essential for reducing the plantation systems wage costs. Previously farmers had grown cotton and it had been processed in the family home. But for the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. manufacturing capacity to grow required more land and labor to be dedicated to producing and operating cotton plantations. Forced relocations ensured appropriate land was available. Various sources were tried out:
- Africa, India were sampled but their cotton was being traded for Chinese tea.
- Brazil - Portuguese encouraged cotton growing. There was ample land and lots of slaves were imported. But competition from sugar and coffee undermined the attempt to develop cotton.
- West Indies cotton had to compete with sugar for slave
allocation, but with the provision of a quarter of a million
slaves, purchased with East India cloth, production was
built up. This labor was able to restructure the West
Indian countryside, which had been coercively appropriated
on a continental scale - that Beckert notes, was a key
institutional innovation is the economic realization of invention and combinatorial exaptation. It operates across all CAS, being supported by genetic and cultural means. Creativity provides the mutation and recombination genetic operators for the cultural process. While highly innovative, monopolies: AT&T, IBM; usually have limited economic reach, constraining productivity. This explains the use of regulation, or even its threat, that can check their power and drive the creations across the economy.
! However after the rebellion of the slaves in Haiti the UK shifted its focus to the US is the United States of America. encouraging the deployment of the Haitian model there. The result was an expansive and elastic cotton supply network. West African economies is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.
focused on supplying slaves to the Americas.
Slavery takes command
The American South had a perfect climate for cotton growing as noted by both Washington and Madison. Development is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete.was encouraged during the revolutionary war with cotton imports from Britain limited. Experience with tobacco, which requires similar techniques also helped. And many Haitian slave owners moved to the South after the revolt in Haiti bringing an understanding of the plantation methods. Finally by 1786 the South was planting long-staple Sea Island cotton. By 1785 the US is the United States of America. started to export high quality raw cotton. It rapidly became intrinsic to the US and UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. economies is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.
.
Production was ramped by importing huge numbers of slaves (18% to 60% of the population). Since land used to grow cotton was rapidly exhausted it had to be revitalized with: Guano, which was prohibitively expensive, or switched to, legumes again impacting profits or replaced. So more land was purchased or taken from its current owners with a thrust south and west into upland South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana (purchased from France in 1803), Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas (annexed in 1845).
The expansion was enabled by:
- Access to capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). .
Barings's loans were viewed enthusiastically by the British
Prime Minister Addington. Allowed development is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete.
of large plantations which had scale economies in: slave control infrastructure, cotton gins, R&D is research and development.
, and well developed supply chains for obtaining slaves. Planters obtained access to the capital by mortgaging their slaves.
- Political power and government agreement
- Labor
(slaves) which remained a key factor until mechanization in
1940. As demand increased with the development of
mainland European manufacturers planters adopted gang
labor.
- Alignment with goals of: farmers in west wishing for
access to the sea, manufacturers selling raw materials,
Britain's economic is the study of trade between humans. Traditional Economics is based on an equilibrium model of the economic system. Traditional Economics includes: microeconomics, and macroeconomics. Marx developed an alternative static approach. Limitations of the equilibrium model have resulted in the development of: Keynes's dynamic General Theory of Employment Interest & Money, and Complexity Economics. Since trading depends on human behavior, economics has developed behavioral models including: behavioral economics.
and political goals; - Removal of Native Americans from their lands.
In the US planters used political power to constrain emancipation. Slave holding Presidents, Supreme Court Justices and Congressmen ensured political support for slavery. And the planters' power over state governments encouraged them to add railroads which expanded the efficiency of plantations increasing their competitive advantage over cotton growers in other countries: Brazil, India.
America became the World's cotton supplier making the UK manufacturers worried that they were again (as with Haiti) becoming dependent on one slave based supplier. But even as the UK tried to increase the supply of Indian cotton the US competitive advantages locked out all other suppliers resulting in the collapse of Asian producers in 1820s.
Industrial capitalism takes wing
Entrepreneurs seeking profits and rulers seeking power responded to the effects of the global cotton network. The Manchester cotton manufacturing model was deployed around the world between 1770 and 1830.British inventors were described in journals, newspapers and by learned societies. British traders carrying yarn and cloth were seen offering unbeatable prices to the World's consumers who switched from Indian to British goods. Artisans, adventurers, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs embraced the new machines and techniques.
Places that adopted the new manufacturing:
- Had a prior history of textile manufacturing
- Core of the old manufacturing base controlled the way in
which the region adopted the new industrial methods.
- US is the United States of America. blockade and tariffs
provided a protected local environment.
- US had basic spinning which developed into industrial
spinning. Weaving was added and then printing.
During the trade embargo of England Frances Cabot Lowell
went to get the blue prints of a cotton mill. The
Lowell's, Cabot's and Brown's all had expertise in some
trade.
- Belgium, Russia and Alsace started from their core
expertise in printing.
- Had merchants that previously organized the putting out networks. They now enabled access to capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). necessary to finance and deploy the new infrastructure.
- Did not need large amounts of capital so Kin networks is a strategy of selfish genes, which aims to maximize gene survival & replication across all the bodies where a copy of the gene probably exists: relatives. Altruism is beneficial to gene replication in this situation. Love supports the agent's prioritization of appropriate altruistic strategies. E. O. Wilson was originally an advocate of kin selection but subsequently concluded that there is no mechanism by which it can operate. He abandoned kin selection and now asserts neo-group selection is responsible for the effects. Sapolsky describes an array of strategies used to identify kin:
- Genetically shaped pheromonal signatures. Rodents leverage the immune systems MHC super variable gene regions to develop unique signals. The more similar the signals are the closer is the relative. Pregnancy triggers adult neurogenesis in the olfactory system of rat mothers to allow them to learn the smell of their newborn.
- Imprinting on the female whose birdsong a chick heard while still in the egg
- Degree of paternalism depending on likelihood of being the father in primates
- Humans use cognition
- Were forced to act due to British competition. The
British kept expanding and offered the highest quality
product.
- Had lawmakers sympathetic to industrialization.
- Empire
- Inability to add rule of law, capital, military and
superior weapons needed to generate wage workers.
- Napoleon's blockade of England (1806 - 14) limited the
pressure to change within France and the rest of his Empire
and added to Britain's focus on India as a market.
Brazil's leaders aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group. John Adair developed a leadership methodology based on the three-circles model.
viewed cotton as a threat to their traditional operations and discouraged cotton manufacture.
Egypt failed to convert slaves into wage workers and so could not develop internal markets.
Napoleon's invasion of Spain undermined its cotton industry and weakened its control over its New World Empire destroying its old supply advantage. The Dutch and French did leverage their colonies and added infrastructure, markets, laws and property rights. The industrialization supported development of improved methods of making warfare but were not dependent on it.
Mobilizing industrial labor
Wage labor placed workers into an emergent legal, social and infrastructural framework. It was an additional strategy benefiting industrial societies.By 1850, millions of workers streamed into factories to operate the machines producing cotton. This was a new phenomenon:
- Discipline was maintained by fines and forced forfeiture
of contracts. But often the recruits ran away, died or
left.
- There were tiny numbers of wage laborers in the 1700s;
Working had been rhythmed by climate, custom, nature ... not
clocks and machines.
- Most people had been slaves, indentured or worked for
their own subsistence when they had some land rights.
of the new cotton industrial
The complex adaptive system (CAS)
nature of a value delivery system is first introduced. It's a network
of agents acting as relays.
The critical nature of hub agents and the difficulty of altering an aligned network is reviewed.
The nature of and exceptional opportunities created by platforms are discussed.
Finally an example of aligning a VDS is presented.
VDS to
encourage these people to become wage laborers. This
required:The critical nature of hub agents and the difficulty of altering an aligned network is reviewed.
The nature of and exceptional opportunities created by platforms are discussed.
Finally an example of aligning a VDS is presented.
- Legal, social and political shifts
- Land enclosure removed the subsistence strategies that
inhibited adoption of wage labor.
- Power resting on statesmen and capitalists.
- Increased military, police and judicial power helped
force the transition. Pitt the younger's 'two acts'
(1795) disallowed gatherings of more than fifty and
outlawed trade unions.
- New laws forcing people to work (factory acts: 1802,
1833, 1847). 10,000 English workers were imprisoned
for breach of contract between 1857 and 1875.
- Ability for these powers to penetrate into all aspects of
life.
- Between 1792 and 1815 British authorities built 155 barracks in industrial areas.
Machines such as power looms undermined artisan work pushing them into wage labor and forcing rural poor into cities.
Skilled artisans from cloth manufacturing took on the best skilled and paid jobs. Manufacturers would recruit them from other cities and countries.
Owners focused first on the weak and poor: orphan children, and in Europe women paid low wages. Egypt and China would not allow women to work.
Following the plantation methods they started time keeping and stretched the work day to 14 hours. Life expectancy is a measure of the average life time of a new born baby. Without public health assistance many children die in the first five years of life significantly lowering the life expectancy of the whole group. There are representational and data capture problems with the model:
- Not knowing the risk of dying in the newborn's future, demographers use the risks present at that time to predict impacts in the future of the person. No adjustment can be made for increased wellbeing.
- Saving the lives of children has a far larger effect on increasing life expectancy than extending the lives of the elderly
- Impacts that occur in a particular year, such as a epidemic or pandemic, are treated as permanent effects for that years life expectancy even though they may be handled by public health strategies and hence be transients. For life expectancy calculations in subsequent years the impact is ignored.
- Programs that reduced the impacts of infectious diseases, such as antibiotics and vaccine deployment, have reduced the variability of life expectancy following their introduction.
- Vital registration systems gather accurate data for life expectancy. But most countries do not have the infrastructure and instead estimates are generated from demographic and health surveys.
In 1867 the working class obtained the vote (1867 Parliamentary Reform Act). This reduced the pressure from the state to repress workers and unions. But the increased pay and better conditions lowered the competitiveness of British factories.
Wage labor was remarkably well aligned to industrialization. The enlightenment had constrained the elites from enslaving their fellow countrymen. And slavery did not match the boom and layoff business cycle of the new factories.
Making cotton global
Liverpool merchants integrated: Wage labor and slavery, Industrialization and deindustrialization, Free trade and empire, Violence and contract;Liverpool became the key hub for both trade and information. From the docks cotton unloaded by Irish workers from Atlantic sail/steam shipping was transported by canal, and later rail, to Lancashire (Manchester).
The cotton exchange was the 'brain':
- Transmitting information
- Trading and setting prices. Cotton was offered to
manufacturers. Finished goods were sold to
consumers. Ships were dispatched.
- Financed cotton manufacture, backed by London and New York
Merchants. Advanced capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital).
to allow planters to grow cotton.
- Insured shipped goods.
Merchants spent most of their time:
- Writing letters,
- Talking to suppliers and customers,
- Travelling,
- Making calculations;
The exchange was built on: Credit, Trade, Information, Trust and distrust are evolved responses to sham emotions. During a friendship where no sham emotions have been detected trust will build up.
, Connections, Profit;
In its early phase between 1760 and 1780 merchants helped manufacturers get access to raw cotton. But with increased volume general merchants specialized on particular bits of the VDS and particular regions. They also switched from using dealers to brokers.
Brokers don't own the cotton they handle but instead charge a commission. They standardized the trades. These changes increased the flexibility of the network and ubiquity of the goods since the cotton could come from anywhere growing the appropriate quality. Standards allowed for the development is a phase during the operation of a CAS agent. It allows for schematic strategies to be iteratively blended with environmental signals to solve the logistical issues of migrating newly built and transformed sub-agents. That is needed to achieve the adult configuration of the agent and optimize it for the proximate environment. Smiley includes examples of the developmental phase agents required in an emergent CAS. In situations where parents invest in the growth and memetic learning of their offspring the schematic grab bag can support optimizations to develop models, structures and actions to construct an adept adult. In humans, adolescence leverages neural plasticity, elder sibling advice and adult coaching to help prepare the deploying neuronal network and body to successfully compete.
of futures markets once information and samples could be sent ahead of the main crop. Bills of lading supported transfer of ownership.
Import merchants purchased cotton abroad or shipped it for a commission from distant ports to Europe. These merchants imparted the power of a hub to Liverpool. It was based on:
- Liverpool's geographic position for supporting the
Atlantic slave trade.
- Returning ships could be loaded with cotton.
- As cotton growing shifted from Mediterranean to USA Liverpool benefited.
- Nearness to Manchester (spinning) manufacturers with direct canals and later railways.
Bankers such as Barings invested in cotton in 1812 advancing loans to exporters. They built an information gathering network, speculated and advanced loans. By 1842 Barings was the largest importer of cotton.
Credit allowed merchants the leverage to get land cleared, planted and picked by slaves. They further invested in local banks that could further catalyze business. They used 'factors' to connect directly with planters in the US. The factors provided planters with supplies and food.
Between 1800 and 1860 cotton became the major trade item for most 1st world economies is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.
leveraging the merchant's global network - A highly specialized VDS of networked agents.
A war reverberates around the world
Beckert explains that cotton agriculture catapulted the US is the United States of America. into the center of the world economy is a human SuperOrganism complex adaptive system (CAS) which operates and controls trade flows within a rich niche. Economics models economies. Robert Gordon has described the evolution of the American economy. Like other CAS, economic flows are maintained far from equilibrium by: demand, financial flows and constraints, supply infrastructure constraints, political and military constraints; ensuring wealth, legislative control, legal contracts and power have significant leverage through evolved amplifiers.. Cotton was 61 percent of all US products exported in 1860-61. And Britain was dangerously dependent on these US exports: 77% of the 800 million pounds of cotton processed in Britain, 90 percent of the supplies to France and 92 percent to Russia. The global system depended on slavery.
Capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). risk, is an assessment of the likelihood of an independent problem occurring. It can be assigned an accurate probability since it is independent of other variables in the system. As such it is different from uncertainty.
premium was set higher for the South than the North of US since it was assumed that there could be a slave rebellion as previously occurred in Haiti. The North resented the South's dependence on Britain. The Southern leaders aims to develop plans and strategies which ensure effective coordination to improve the common good of the in-group. John Adair developed a leadership methodology based on the three-circles model.
argued that it was best to improve links to Europe and to secede from the Union.
The civil war induced dramatic shifts in the global cotton system: Aimed at forcing a British diplomatic recognition of the confederacy. The confederate government banned cotton exports and the North applied a blockade resulting in no exports in 1862. With ample stocks in the supply chain the initial effects were to increase profits and reduce over production. But by the end of 1861 shortages were reducing imports into Britain 50%. Manufacturers shut 6 percent of factories, laid-off workers and reduced shifts. By 1863 a quarter of Lancashire's workers (500,000) were out of work resulting in riots that required that the military be deployed. The effect was similar across Europe. Merchants were able to speculate for longer. UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. , France governments became involved. Without slave based competition India could finally grow cotton competitively. Rapidly increased prices lubricated the Indian growers who switched land used for food to cotton. Massively expanded production and diverted cotton from other markets. UK manufacturing supplied seed, cotton presses and planned railways. But India's inability to complete infrastructure, or report the situation accurately undermined the efforts. The UK government looked at improving contract law and investing in Railways to enhance the competitive effect. But the British government also feared is an emotion which prepares the body for time sensitive action: Blood is sent to the muscles from the gut and skin, Adrenalin is released stimulating: Fuel to be released from the liver, Blood is encouraged to clot, and Face is wide-eyed and fearful. The short-term high priority goal, experienced as a sense of urgency, is to flee, fight or deflect the danger. There are both 'innate' - really high priority learning - which are mediated by the central amygdala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala. Tara Brach notes we experience fear as a painfully constricted throat, chest and belly, and racing heart. The mind can build stories of the future which include fearful situations making us anxious about current ideas and actions that we associate with the potential future scenario. And it can associate traumatic events from early childhood with our being at fault. Consequent assumptions of our being unworthy can result in shame and fear of losing friendships. The mechanism for human fear was significantly evolved to protect us in the African savanna. This does not align perfectly with our needs in current environments: U.S. Grant was unusually un-afraid of the noise or risk of guns and trusted his horses' judgment, which mostly benefited his agency as a modern soldier.
another 1857 rebellion - India was too big to subdue.
Similar increase in production occurred in Egypt, Brazil, Algeria, Argentina, Mexico and China. But it depended on unsustainably high prices. The production techniques were based on the post slavery US framework. Brazilian cotton was of the same quality as US cotton and its volume ramped as the US blockade was enforced. Egyptian cotton was of the highest quality. Egypt coerced labor into growing the crop. Capital was supplied by Europe and North America who viewed increasing competition for growers as ensuring low prices. The net result was the transformation of the global countryside.
Europe looked to the US is the United States of America. to rebuild a low cost production platform is agent generated infrastructure that supports emergence of an entity through: leverage of an abundant energy source, reusable resources; attracting a phenotypically aligned network of agents.
knowing that it is labor - not land which is the constraint. Cotton capitalists looked for levers to ensure free blacks would continue to produce low cost cotton.
Global reconstruction
Emancipation initially freed large amounts of labor from the cotton plantations in the US is the United States of America. South. The UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. was very concerned. Capitalists and government used credit, private ownership of land, contract law, and Jim Crow to push labor into share cropping and debt.Initially Andrew Johnson pushed for the land to be transferred back to its 'original' white owners. But after the top union generals, and Northern allies of the former slaves interceded land was made available to the freed blacks who became share croppers. But after a cotton business down cycle they were trapped again by contractual debt.
Capitalists in Europe and the North of US agreed with the Southern States fully constraining the 'free' labor by making:
- Mobility and vagrancy offenses.
- Cotton pickers' children go to second rate schools.
- The power structure white only - police, judiciary and
legislatures; and they allowed unpunished lynching.
Legislatures removed the share croppers' rights even as poor
white farmers were driven into share cropping.
Destructions
The abolition of slavery 1865 to 1870 catalyzed the connection of cultivators in India, Egypt, Brazil, West Africa and Central Asia allowing competition to keep cotton prices low.By this time powerful imperial states had the means to reach deeply into once remote parts of the world via: Railways, telegraphs, and military expeditions.
The result was creative destruction of: The old merchant networks, Hand spinning, Hand loom weaving; Millions (of women) gave up spinning and weaving. They lost the work that had previously structured their societies.
Capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). and manufactured goods moved into the world's countryside, including Asia. The port of Bombay was connected through Berar's merchant base where Indian agents linked in the producers in the countryside. This catalytic, an infrastructure amplifier. backwards integration of the global network increased the power of the imperial state. It allowed the replacement of the previously constraining Indian brokers by merchants, agents and manufacturers' capital.
Similar integrations occurred in Egypt, and Anatolia. Statesmen leveraging their state's superior weapons, along with manufacturers and dealers broke through the countryside's remaining barriers between 1830 & 1860:
- Transport costs had been reduced by globally integrated
infrastructure.
- Impact of disease controlled.
- Tariffs and excise duties leveraged.
- Land rights were altered to force transition to wage
working consumers of global markets and allow the land to be
appropriated by the well connected.
millions of people were forced to become agricultural laborers focused on growing cash crops undermining food security and inducing widespread famine is declared when:
- One in five households in a specific area face extreme food shortages
- More than 30% of the population is acutely malnourished
- Two people in 10,000 die each day
With the shift to growing cotton, producers became impacted by gluts etc. The periodic collapse of prices pushed them into debt.
In the USA is the United States of America. merchants pushed inland displacing factors due to the better transportation and communication infrastructure deployed after the war in the American South. Railroads integrated local towns removing the need for factors' supplies. Manufacturers pushed for reduced transaction costs. By standardization and formalizing the operation of exchanges these market places could support both trades and futures. Formal processes protected buyer and seller and supported arbitration. Trust and distrust are evolved responses to sham emotions. During a friendship where no sham emotions have been detected trust will build up.
and kin networks is a strategy of selfish genes, which aims to maximize gene survival & replication across all the bodies where a copy of the gene probably exists: relatives. Altruism is beneficial to gene replication in this situation. Love supports the agent's prioritization of appropriate altruistic strategies. E. O. Wilson was originally an advocate of kin selection but subsequently concluded that there is no mechanism by which it can operate. He abandoned kin selection and now asserts neo-group selection is responsible for the effects. Sapolsky describes an array of strategies used to identify kin:
- Genetically shaped pheromonal signatures. Rodents leverage the immune systems MHC super variable gene regions to develop unique signals. The more similar the signals are the closer is the relative. Pregnancy triggers adult neurogenesis in the olfactory system of rat mothers to allow them to learn the smell of their newborn.
- Imprinting on the female whose birdsong a chick heard while still in the egg
- Degree of paternalism depending on likelihood of being the father in primates
- Humans use cognition
The new cotton imperialism
In 1910 Japan occupies Korea. The Japanese aimed in part to replace Japanese dependency on British Indian cotton. Korean farmers already grew subsistence cotton. The Japanese aimed to recast this farming in the British Indian model.Cloning and mutation of the European colonial cotton CAS occurred across the world. States leveraged power to recast captured countryside. Using the US is the United States of America. cotton meme demonstrated by the Egyptians and Ottomans, Korea, West Africa and Central Africa were captured and transformed.
Using violence and coercion the new subjects were incorporated into the cotton growing complex by:
- Constructing infrastructure
- Creating new labor regimes
- Recasting local social structures
But between 1893 & 1913, as worldwide consumption grew (the US consumed more of the product for example) and plants were attacked by boll weevils in 1892, cotton prices rose for the first time in 25 years. Additionally speculators manipulated the market. Colonial states responded by adopting the goal of raw material independence:
- Russia pushed into Central Asia in the 1860s, adding: Railroads, Seed plantations, Irrigation projects, Leveraged US seed, Built gins and provided credit.
- UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. expanded control of
India and Egypt.
- US expanded into the hinterlands with new railways, and
moved west adding Texas, Arizona and California.
- Europeans focused on African expansion adding colonies and
cotton growing.
- Indigenous farmers continued to grow cotton and then sell
it to western merchants (India).
- Settle formerly nomadic tribes (Central Asia).
Initially made them share croppers but eventually shifted
them over to wage labor.
- Settlers from elsewhere organized plantations of indigenous people (Algeria, German East Africa, Mexico, Argentina).
- One in five households in a specific area face extreme food shortages
- More than 30% of the population is acutely malnourished
- Two people in 10,000 die each day
The return of the global south
Beckert explains the impacts of the global network on Ahmedabad. As its export dependent countryside was hit by price reductions during the mid-19th century local bankers could not lend money at low risk. Local merchants were locked out of global markets. So around 1870 they shifted capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). into cotton manufacturing. The investors in Ahmedabad were interlinked by caste and religion.By 1918 this shift to local manufacturing had developed fifty one cotton mills with 35,000 laborers.
And this transformation was replicated across the global south undermining the colonial home manufacturing industry. Manchester reduced from 61% in 1860 to 34% by 1930 having failed to overcome:
- Lost markets (India and China between 1918 and
1938).
- Higher wages driven by workers having the vote, and
focusing their power through trade unions. Beckert
notes that union power was a significant part of Russia's
1917 revolution.
- Old machines.
The global south included manufacturing strategists who debated how to resist the disruption.
The Chinese argued that industry was the best defense. They aimed to join the game leveraging Western technology. But the goal was difficult to achieve since there were competing elite ideas including slave holding cotton growers.
The abolition of slavery provided the catalyst for a change in Brazil in 1888.
Japan, like Brazil, faced huge cheap cotton textile imports. While the political elite were not industrialists they needed a new strategy to save their wealth is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche. and power. So the Meiji restoration was aligned to leveraging new technologies. The government promoted cotton industrialization. They switched supply to low cost Chinese cotton. They adopted new labor system that made unmarried women available as low cost labor. They resisted any protections for workers in the cotton industry. They encouraged government bureaucrats to become entrepreneurs. And they provided research and funding. Merchants leveraged the new rules, infrastructure etc. and built factories with huge scale. The government used war to gain colonies with cotton and other valuables used to substitute shipping industry and to replace revenues lost to raw cotton imports.
Economic is the study of trade between humans. Traditional Economics is based on an equilibrium model of the economic system. Traditional Economics includes: microeconomics, and macroeconomics. Marx developed an alternative static approach. Limitations of the equilibrium model have resulted in the development of: Keynes's dynamic General Theory of Employment Interest & Money, and Complexity Economics. Since trading depends on human behavior, economics has developed behavioral models including: behavioral economics.
elites working within colonies had extra inhibitors to overcome. Egypt could not remove these forces until tariffs were reformed in the 1930s to protect the cotton industrialists.
Indian industrialists leveraged merchant capital built up during years of high cotton prices. Indian merchants pushed out of the raw cotton industry by Europeans invested in industrial cotton mills which had explosive growth between 1880 and 1929. But India was still molded by Britain and by 1880 80% of the yarn went to China.
Commercialization of the countryside created:
- New markets for industrial goods.
- Provided a low cost labor pool.
- Stopped the excise duty on cotton goods.
- Advocated consumption of domestically produced textiles
(1905).
The 1946-47 decolonizations allowed the radical integration of state and capital:
- Egypt added barriers to trade. Nasser nationalized
the cotton industry in 1960s.
- India,
- China post revolution nationalized the cotton industry and
massively expanded it.
The weave and the weft: An epilogue
By 1963 Europe's domination of the cotton CAS was over. It was disrupted by US is the United States of America. global VDS is value delivery system. with World Bank was setup as part of the Bretton Woods agreements, as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, to repair and reconstruct Europe after the Second World War and as the World Bank continues to provide reconstruction and development resources for projects in developing economies. It includes:- International Finance Corporation
- US - $2.9 billion, an amount the FDR administration could transfer from Exchange Stabilization Fund without any need to ask for Congress for funds.
- UK - $1.45 billion
- USSR - slightly less than UK quota
- China - less than USSR.
- A single market across the members' countries supporting the transformation of the ECSC. It maintained the CAP transfers assisting French farmers.
- A fixed currency 'snake' that allowed the ECSC to operate, binding the deutschmark to the other currencies of participating members: a mini Bretton Woods exchange rate mechanism; that became a single currency, the euro, managed by an independent ECB (based on the independent German Bundesbank).
The key players are now:
- Growers - China, India, Uzbekistan (forced labor policies), Senegal; Typically growers lack power. Communist states invested in irrigation, fertilizers and machinery.
- Spinning and weaving: China, Turkey and Pakistan.
- Manufactured cotton goods: Bangladesh & Vietnam.
- Retailers (Merchants): Wal-Mart,
Metro, Carrefour; which dominate the supply chain using pull
to control the flows. The merchants benefited from the
global countryside's new dependence on commodity production
and consumption. They have developed global brands,
sales channels and organization of production.
- The world's countryside to support its transformations.
- Coercion and violence.
This page introduces the complex adaptive system (CAS) theory
frame. The theory provides an organizing framework that is
used by 'life.' It can be used to evaluate and rank models
that claim to describe our perceived reality. It catalogs
the laws and strategies which underpin the operation of systems
that are based on the interaction of emergent
agents. It highlights the
constraints that shape CAS and so predicts their form. A
proposal that does not conform is wrong.
John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented.
CAS theory views the evolution of
the cotton trade over time as based on the John Holland's framework for representing complexity is outlined. Links to other key aspects of CAS theory discussed at the site are presented.
This page reviews Christensen's disruption
of a complex adaptive system (CAS).
The mechanism is discussed with examples from biology and
business.
disruptive effects of global
interconnection of Europe to the early cotton nodes in Asia, Africa, and the
Americas. - Building on John
Hawkins's deployment of a superior weapon system - the
race-built galleon, England and Holland developed
their expertise in rough sea shipping into a global This page reviews the catalytic impact of infrastructure on the expression of phenotypic effects by an agent. The infrastructure reduces the cost the agent must pay to perform the selected action. The catalysis is enhanced by positive returns.infrastructure amplifier supporting the
Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of complex adaptive systems (CAS).flow and control of goods between Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. As is typical superior weapons and accompanying strategic shifts to leverage them reciprocate. Subsequently both the weapon system and amplifier became the basis for
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support the emergence of the systems. Examples of constraints are discussed.
- Europe reengineering
the cotton trade into an This page reviews the strategy of setting up an arms race. At its core this strategy depends on being able to alter, or take advantage of an alteration in, the genome or equivalent. The situation is illustrated with examples from biology, high tech and politics.evolved amplifier: State chartered privateers projected power to:
- Constrain the flow of cotton and revenues by use of privateer and British navy race-built galleons with long slim hulls and large gun decks.
- Steven
Johnson argues that imported high quality Indian
finished cotton goods became driving fashion items in
London as early as the 1690s, encouraging the development
of sales and marketing systems. RSS is Rob's Strategy Studio concludes Europe
leveraged This page describes the consequences of the asymmetries caused by genotypic traits creating a phenotypic signal in males and selection activity in the female - sexual selection.sexual selection to drive purchasing of highly attractive calico & chintz adornments.
The impact of this asymmetry is to create a powerful alternative to natural selection with sexual selection's leverage of positive returns. The mechanisms are described.
- Introduce a disruptive cotton growing system based on flexible supply of African slaves to drive down costs and rapidly expand the plantation workforce as demand required.
- Use overwhelming military force to grab native land to add capacity to the plantation system as needed.
- Ships provide infrastructure amplifier to triangularly transport labor, and goods.
- Superior product (cotton) and low cost drive access to
and development of European markets further expanding
profitability.
- Capital is the sum total nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market according to Piketty. Capital includes: real property, financial capital and professional capital. It is not immutable instead depending on the state of the society within which it exists. It can be owned by governments (public capital) and private individuals (private capital). captured by Liverpool merchants builds wealth is schematically useful information and its equivalent, schematically useful energy, to paraphrase Beinhocker. It is useful because an agent has schematic strategies that can utilize the information or energy to extend or leverage control of the cognitive niche. , influence and alignment with English state and flexibility to invest in development of markets and technologies.
- New state's laws: enclosure and factory acts; and
mechanisms of enforcement: army, police and prisons; were
used to encourage and coerce the population into aligning
with the needs of manufacturers, through: Salman Khan argues that the evolved global education system is inefficient and organized around constraining and corralling students into accepting dubious ratings that lead to mundane roles. He highlights a radical and already proven alternative which offers effective self-paced deep learning processes supported by technology and freed up attention of teams of teachers. Building on his personal experience of helping overcome the unjustified failing grade of a relative, Khan:education, wages, local garrisons, enforcement of contracts and punishment of debtors.
- Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging
short videos focused on content,
Converging on mastery,
With the help of
neuroscience, and filling
in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach
to the mainstream method.
- Assesses the broken US education system: Set in its ways, Designed for the 1800s,
Inducing holes that
are hidden by tests, Tests
which ignore creativity.
The resulting teaching process is so inefficient it needs to
be supplemented with homework.
Instead teachers were encouraging their pupils to use his tools at home so
they could mentor them while they attended school, an
inversion that significantly improves the economics.
- Enters the real world: Builds a scalable service,
Working with a
real classroom, Trying stealth
learning, At Khan Academy full time, In the curriculum at
Los Altos, Supporting life-long
learning.
- Develops The One World Schoolhouse: Back to the future with
a one
room school, a robust
teaching team, and creativity enabled;
so with some catalysis
even the poorest can
become educated and earn credentials
for current jobs.
- Wishes he could also correct: Summer holidays, Transcript based assessments, College education;
- Concludes it is now possible to provide the infrastructure
for creativity to
emerge and to support risk taking.
Following our summary of his arguments RSS frames them from the perspective of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. Disruption is a powerful force for change but if its force is used to support the current teachers to adopt new processes can it overcome the extended phenotypic alignment and evolutionary amplifiers sustaining the current educational network?
- Iteratively learns how to teach: Starting with Nadia, Leveraging
short videos focused on content,
Converging on mastery,
With the help of
neuroscience, and filling
in dependent gaps; resulting in a different approach
to the mainstream method.
- Bootstrapping
English manufacturing required protection from the This page discusses the effect of the network on the agents participating in a complex adaptive system (CAS). Small world and scale free networks are considered.global network centered on Liverpool's merchants.
Barriers are particular types of constraints on flows. They can enforce separation of a network of agents allowing evolution to build diversity. Examples of different types of barriers: physical barriers, chemical molecules can form membranes, probability based, cell membranes can include controllable channels, eukaryotes leverage membranes, symbiosis, human emotions, chess, business; and their effects are described.Barriers limit
This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the expression of new phenotypic effects within an agent.extended phenotypic alignment allowing local competition to build differentiated
This page discusses the benefits of geographic clusters of agents and resources at the center of a complex adaptive system (CAS).geographic clusters.
- The post
revolution US developed into a hydra-like superorganism is a wealthy autonomous entity needing and controlling the richest niches in the proximate environment, that emerges from the bundled cooperation of schematically aligned agents. The term is based on the social insect model, used by: ants, termites, and bees; and identified by Holldobler & E.O. Wilson. These genetically identical insect superorganisms cooperatively limit their reproduction to align with the resources available in the niche. For humans it is an evolved cultural strategy used when the environment is supportive. It depends on inter-agent signalling. In both insects and humans it allows specialization, and encourages operations and flows that are tightly controlled, limiting waste, leveraging parallel activity, supporting coherence. Superorganisms reflect cliodynamic flows. A superorganism has a development and operational phase. As additional agents are coopted into the superorganism they align, participate in supply and demand activities and so contribute to the evolutionary amplification. Damasio notes that prokaryotes, in rich environments, can similarly operate in a symbiotic fashion expressing cultural behaviors.
. - The Liverpool
cotton exchange developed a This page discusses the interdependence of perception and representation in a complex adaptive system (CAS). Hofstadter and Mitchell's research with Copycat is reviewed. The bridging of a node from a network of 'well known' percepts to a new representational instance is discussed as it occurs in biochemistry, in consciousness and abstractly.perception and representation architecture. This allowed the exchange to
The agents in complex adaptive systems (CAS) must model their environment to respond effectively to it. Evolution's schematic operators and Samuel modeling together support the indirect recording of past successes and their strategic use by the current agent to learn how to succeed in the proximate environment.model and then to integrate the
Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment. This page reviews how these events become signals associated with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from the Darwinian information model. Signals can indicate decision summaries and level of uncertainty.signals and
Plans are interpreted and implemented by agents. This page discusses the properties of agents in a complex adaptive system (CAS).actions from across the global cotton network. This ensured brain like
It then presents examples of agents in different CAS. The examples include a computer program where modeling and actions are performed by software agents. These software agents are aggregates.
The participation of agents in flows is introduced and some implications of this are outlined.
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for centuries. Now it is finally being characterized scientifically. That required a transformation of approach.coordination and focusing of the superorganism.
Realizing that consciousness was ill-defined neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene and others characterized and focused on conscious access.
In the book he outlines the limitations of previous psychological dogma. Instead his use of subjective assessments opened the window to contrast totally unconscious brain activity with those including consciousness.
He describes the research methods. He explains the contribution of new sensors and probes that allowed the psychological findings to be correlated, and causally related to specific neural activity.
He describes the theory of the brain he uses, the 'global neuronal workspace' to position all the experimental details into a whole.
He reviews how both theory and practice support diagnosis and treatment of real world mental illnesses.
The implications of Dehaene's findings for subsequent consciousness research are outlined.
Complex adaptive system (CAS) models of the brain's development and operation introduce constraints which are discussed.
Rather than oppose the direct thrust of some environmental flow agents can improve their effectiveness with indirect responses. This page explains how agents are architected to do this and discusses some examples of how it can be done.Indirection was added to improve the
To benefit from shifts in the environment agents must be flexible. Being sensitive to environmental signals agents who adjust strategic priorities can constrain their competitors.flexibility and throughput of the infrastructure amplifier. It also ensured transactional robustness, using standardization and insurance reduces volatility in standard of living by compensating for losses of income during periods of unemployment, for catastrophic losses from disaster, or death of a family income earner as described by Gordon. Insurance companies must set aside reserves to handle such claims. Britain initially required that insurance buyers also have an insurable interest. That is required in insurance markets to ensure buyers of insurance don't destroy their asset just to obtain the insurance. Health insurance is treated separately being unusual, since the subscriber is likely to know more about their state of health than the insurer is and the subscriber is more likely to purchase the health insurance when aware of their increased risk. This behavior collapses the risk pool by: forcing the insurer to increase the premiums, and encouraging healthy individuals to opt out of health insurance coverage. to build ubiquity of supply and payments.
- This page reviews the inhibiting effect of the value delivery system on the expression of new phenotypic effects within an agent.Extended phenotypic alignment pressured the US to return the freed slaves to low cost cotton growing. The need to borrow merchant capital to purchase crops and supplies soon trapped the growers in debt as competition and weather removed pricing power.
Through the operation of three different food chains Michael Pollan explores their relative merits. The application of complex adaptive system (CAS) theory highlights the value of evolutionary testing of the food chain.In the USA Earl Butts eventually replaced this corrosive process with oil based fertilizers, food storage and minimum price guarantees. Others within the global network responded to the pressure for alignment. Further strategies layered on top ensured the continued alignment (Aug 2017):
- Housing was zoned with actions by Federal and state
officials along with realtors across the country limiting
access by blacks to housing in other areas. This
access constraint later became an amplifier of the
resource divide as a Federal A key agent in the 1990 - 2008 housing expansion Countrywide is linked into the residential mortgage value delivery system (VDS) by Paul Muolo and Mathew Padilla. But they show the VDS was full of amplifiers and control points. With no one incented to apply the brakes the bubble grew and burst. Following the summary of Muolo and Padilla's key points the complex adaptive system (CAS) aspects are highlighted.housing amplifier provided additional capital to those who owned housing.
- Education was funded from local resources ensuring
poorly financed, illiterate areas remained so.
Bussing appeared to remove the constraint but the funding
for the education and bussing was drawn from the local
resources to be provided to fund the education and
transport. This 'black gold' further reduced the
resources of the poor areas ensuring that officials in
these areas would work to curtail the bussing
programs. This education based strategy is still
present in current US public education policy: ESEA is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 signed by LBJ. It is the framework later used to develop 'No child left behind'. ESEA's original titles include:
- Provides funding to local school districts to improve the academic achievement of disadvantaged students. The original authors worried that local and state authorities might use the federal money to replace rather than supplement their budgets to poor schools. When this was found to be the case Congress amended the act in 1970 requiring districts to spend Title 1 dollars on additional education for poor children (supplement), above and beyond what they already received from other sources (not supplant).
- Preparing, training and recruiting high quality teachers and principals
- Language instruction for limited English proficient and immigrant students
- Educational research and training
- Grants to strengthen state departments of education
- Aid to handicapped children
- Provides funding to local school districts to improve the academic achievement of disadvantaged students. The original authors worried that local and state authorities might use the federal money to replace rather than supplement their budgets to poor schools. When this was found to be the case Congress amended the act in 1970 requiring districts to spend Title 1 dollars on additional education for poor children (supplement), above and beyond what they already received from other sources (not supplant).
- The Matt Taibbi describes the phenotypic alignment of the American justice system. The result he explains relentlessly grinds the poor and undocumented into resources to be constrained, consumed and ejected. Even as it supports and aligns the financial infrastructure into a potent weapon capable of targeting any company or nation to extract profits and leave the victim deflated.justice system was integrated:
Taibbi uses five scenarios to provide a broad picture of the: activities, crimes, policing, prosecutions, court processes, prisons and deportation network. The scenarios are: Undocumented people's neighborhoods, Poor neighborhoods, Welfare recipients, Credit card debtors and Financial institutions.
Following our summary of his arguments, RSS comments on them framed by complex adaptive system (CAS) theory. The alignment of the justice system reflects a set of long term strategies and responses to a powerful global arms race that the US leadership intends to win.
- Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of complex adaptive systems (CAS).Flows of immigrants were controlled.
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support the emergence of the systems. Examples of constraints are discussed.
Agents use sensors to detect events in their environment. This page reviews how these events become signals associated with beneficial responses in a complex adaptive system (CAS). CAS signals emerge from the Darwinian information model. Signals can indicate decision summaries and level of uncertainty.Sensors were deployed to detect undocumented immigrants. Any detected were
Terrence Deacon explores how constraints on dynamic flows can induce emergent phenomena which can do real work. He shows how these phenomena are sustained. The mechanism enables the development of Darwinian competition.constrained.
- Poor neighborhoods were
massively controlled.
- Rich neighborhoods were treated differently.
- Weapon like financial infrastructure was treated
differently.
- The global structures: IMF is the International Monetary Fund developed as part of the Bretton Woods agreements to provide liquidity to national gold denominated reserve banks at times of stress in the global financial network - a shortage of a particular currency which was inhibiting trade; in support of a broader Bretton Woods framework designed so as to ensure that currencies did not become misaligned with one another, and were a fair representation of what things were worth. The IMF removed the need for nations to depend on private loans from commercial banks, such as Britain's dependence on J. P. Morgan during the 1920s and 30s. The agreement required each Bretton Woods signatory to provide a capital investment or 'quota' into the fund which would subsequently correspond to the amount that the country could borrow from the fund in times of financial stress. The top four countries and their quotas were set by IMF architect, Harry Dexter White, to match FDR's priorities:
- US - $2.9 billion, an amount the FDR administration could transfer from Exchange Stabilization Fund without any need to ask for Congress for funds.
- UK - $1.45 billion
- USSR - slightly less than UK quota
- China - less than USSR.
- International Finance Corporation
- US - $2.9 billion, an amount the FDR administration could transfer from Exchange Stabilization Fund without any need to ask for Congress for funds.
- The low cost business model created by the global cotton network This page reviews Christensen's disruption of a complex adaptive system (CAS). The mechanism is discussed with examples from biology and business.disrupted the global South's traditional cotton production system.
Beckert's exceptional and detailed book shows how the current world power and financial structures emerged, and developed into their current states. The transformation catalyzed by cotton is a key demonstration of CAS principles in action.
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This page looks at schematic structures
and their uses. It discusses a number of examples:
As a working example it presents part of the contents and schematic details from the Adaptive Web Framework (AWF)'s operational plan.
Finally it includes a section presenting our formal representation of schematic goals.
Each goal has a series of associated complex adaptive system (CAS) strategy strings.
These goals plus strings are detailed for various chess and business examples.
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- Schematic ideas are recombined in creativity.
- Similarly designers take ideas and rules about materials and components and combine them.
- Schematic Recipes help to standardize operations.
- Modular components are combined into strategies for use in business plans and business models.
As a working example it presents part of the contents and schematic details from the Adaptive Web Framework (AWF)'s operational plan.
Finally it includes a section presenting our formal representation of schematic goals.
Each goal has a series of associated complex adaptive system (CAS) strategy strings.
These goals plus strings are detailed for various chess and business examples.
This page uses an example to illustrate how:
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- A business can gain focus from targeting key customers,
- Business planning activities performed by the whole organization can build awareness, empowerment and coherence.
- A program approach can ensure strategic alignment.
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