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 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 Walmart 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 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.

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 and knowledge strengthened the nascent European institutions enabling industrialization.

Over 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.

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.

In all the areas growing and manufacturing cotton centered on households. It was one of many crops used personally and to support the community and rulers. Different communities allocated the tasks of spinning and weaving differently. But since spinning can be done intermitently it is well matched to the other typical demands on 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.

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 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.

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 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.

Following Columbus arrival in the Americas (1492) Cortes made war on the Aztecs persisting from 1518. Portugal followed in Brazil, and French and British entered the New World after 1607.

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 flow. Europeans paid for India's high quality cottons with Gold and Silver mined in the New World.

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 Companies 'triangular' 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 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.
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 time they became more competitive with:

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.

After two centuries of slow growth these developments finally resulted in exponential growth for the English manufacturers and their supply networks between 1780 (Cotton was 2.6% of economic 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

and death.

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.
! 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 focused on supplying slaves to the Americas.

In the US each new plantation had to be provided with supplies. No infrastructure existed prior to 1780. But with the loss of Haitian cotton supply the rising price of cotton encouraged plantation development.

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.

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 and political goals;
Removal of Native Americans from their lands.

Abolition of slavery in the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
decoupled its political constraints from US is the United States of America. policy while leaving Manchester and Liverpool unconstrained and leveraging US actions.

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 sufficed.
Were forced to act due to British competition. The British kept expanding and offered the highest quality product.
Had lawmakers sympathetic to industrialization.

In contrast India, Japan, and Africa did not have these conditions. India in particular was constrained by:

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.

The US is the United States of America. leveraged a hydra like structure to be both the leading cotton grower, in the South and a Manufacturer in the North. They limited, but could not remove, the strategic conflicts by placing barriers between the two parts and encouraging slavery in the South and markets in the North.

Brazil's leaders 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.

It was essential to 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 the new cotton industrial VDS to encourage these people to become wage laborers. This required:

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.

Often workers were trying to survive until farm work was needed.
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.

dropped rapidly!
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.

The exchange was required to support the increasing complexity due to transformation of the global countryside to mobilize more labor, resources and markets. The exchange made everything move.

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.

Eventually import merchants faced competition from US is the United States of America. firms. The largest was Browns. Browns based in Baltimore originally specialized in Irish linens. But by 1820 it was among the biggest traders between US and Liverpool. From 1820 to 1850 Browns expanded into all aspects of the cotton trade: ships, Finance (Banking: Brown brothers & Alex Brown which is now part of Deutsche Bank), Sold cotton on commission, and purchased it outright.

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 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. 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 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 amydala and learned fears which are mediated by the BLA which learns to fear a stimulus and then signals the central amygdala.
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 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.

But plantation owners lost power as cotton prices fell, never to regain it again consumed by debt and costly supplies. The Northern manufacturers won out as the South had predicted they would.

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.

The integration of the vast Indian and Chinese markets resulted in the collapse of the livelihoods of native spinners and weavers. In a social catastrophe 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

affecting more than twenty million people.

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 were no longer required. Cotton could be traded as a commodity allowing consolidation down to a small number of high volume market places. A world price allowed speculation in futures contracts and vastly increased trading volume. Planters and factors lost power.

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

Value captured from cotton then strengthened the colonial state.

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.

Colonizers had to apply labor to the appropriated land. Unlike the basic US model three methods were used:

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).

The colonizers recast the class structure and reduced investment in local food crops resulting in terrible famines 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

and 20% collapse in the populations.

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 US is the United States of America. and European manufacturing nodes similarly collapsed in the 1930s. The US demonstrated greater flexibility in its response. It's state based structures and market segmentation limited the development of union power. The US shifted cotton manufacturing from the North to the Southern states with their low costs and constrained labor.

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 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 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.

In response Manchester lobbied for laws to reduce Indian labor competitiveness. Britain was keen to deindustrialize the Indian countryside to increase the market for UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
products. Tata and the other Indian Industrialists were joined by freedom fighters including M. Gandhi. They pushed to limit the forces Britain was deploying:

Stopped the excise duty on cotton goods.
Advocated consumption of domestically produced textiles (1905).

Still, unlike the freedom fighters, the industrialists agreed with the colonial goal of reforming the countryside as a market for cotton products and a source of labor. The industrialists could gain a home market by import substitution.

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 provide reconstruction and development resources for projects in developing economies.
, 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.

, WTO is the World Trade Organization.
, GATT the general agreement on tariffs and trades is a legal framework for controlling trading between nations. Part of the world-wide trading infrastructure put in place by the West after World War 2. , Wall Street 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 Merchants leveraging the low cost network of producers. US is the United States of America. and EU is European Union.
use subsidies to reduce the price of domestic cotton products which are pushed onto the world market keeping global prices low.

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): Walmart, 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.

Beckert concludes the essential element is the ability to adapt. Civilization and barbarity are linked at the hip. The cotton CAS has been leveraging:

The world's countryside to support its transformations.
Coercion and violence.

CAS theory views the evolution of the cotton trade over time as based on the

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).
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support the emergence of the systems. Examples of constraints are discussed.

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
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.
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.

sexual selection to drive purchasing of highly attractive calico & chintz adornments.
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 captured by Liverpool merchants builds wealth, 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: education, wages, local garrisons, enforcement of contracts and punishment of debtors.

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 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
E. O. Wilson & Bert Holldobler illustrate how bundled cooperative strategies can take hold. Various social insects have developed strategies which have allowed them to capture the most valuable available niches. Like humans they invest in specialization and cooperate to subdue larger, well equipped competitors.

superorganism.
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.

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. Samuel modeling is described as an approach.

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).
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.

actions from across the global cotton network. This ensured brain like
Consciousness has confounded philosophers and scientists for centuries. Now it is finally being characterized scientifically. That required a transformation of approach.
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.

coordination and focusing of the superorganism.
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 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:
1. 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).
2. Preparing, training and recruiting high quality teachers and principals
3. Language instruction for limited English proficient and immigrant students
4. Educational research and training
5. Grants to strengthen state departments of education
6. Aid to handicapped children
title 1 funding allocation responses (May 2016).
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.

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.

justice system was integrated:

Flows of different kinds are essential to the operation of complex adaptive systems (CAS).
Example flows are outlined. Constraints on flows support the emergence of the systems. Examples of constraints are discussed.

Flows of immigrants were controlled.
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:
1. US - $2.9 billion, an amount the FDR administration could transfer from Exchange Stabilization Fund without any need to ask for Congress for funds.
2. UK - $1.45 billion
3. USSR - slightly less than UK quota
4. China - less than USSR.
, 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 provide reconstruction and development resources for projects in developing economies.
, NGO is non governmental organization. s used to support Haiti after the 2010 earthquake further illustrate the features of alignment. Most of the aid financing is captured by western corporations used by the western NGOs to execute on the aid plan. Underlying the process is a core US is the United States of America. goal of limiting the power and control that will flow to the government in Haiti. The infrastructure of the NGOs was designed with this goal in mind. The development of cotton manufacturing using aid in a special zone should support jobs for Haitians. But these are typically very poorly paid. The low priced cotton goods manufactured help keep the global prices low.

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.

.
Market Centric Workshops

Politics, Economics & Evolutionary Psychology

Business Physics
Nature and nurture drive the business eco-system
Human nature
Emerging structure and dynamic forces of adaptation

integrating quality appropriate for each market

This page looks at schematic structures and their uses. It discusses a number of examples:

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.

Strategy | Design |

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.

Program Management | Home
Profiles | Papers | Glossary | E-mail us

Primary Navigation