by Marcus Barrick
In socioeconomic discourse, the often overlooked factor is the way a system scales; if mentioned, it is typically reduced to mere “economies of scale,” the rate at which the human population and technology have scaled, or the desire to scale new emerging systems. Such a term is still interpreted merely as the scale of quantity, yet the defining features of scale are the myriad of qualitative phase shifts that occur at different orders of scale. The way we relate to each scale becomes the central focus: a tree packages the smallest amount of nutrients and information to travel long distances within a seed, it does not regrow a tree beside it and then ship it away to long distances. Throughout humanity’s industrial revolutions we have mastered all too well how to scale quantities, yet have missed an incredible opportunity and lesson in the qualitative dimensions of scale. The global population has greatly increased throughout these industrial revolutions, and again, we have forgotten the qualitative changes that occur within any group or organization.
Nation states, of the size they are today, are not static and settled organizations but highly novel and experimental structures, as historically, the centers of power were city-states (think Athens and Rome). Nation-states are not merely scaled-up versions of city-states; likewise, the global problems and existential risks we face are categorically different from the national problems of the past. Recognizing the characteristic differences in how we relate to each scale is vital. According to Geoffrey West (ex-president of the Santa-Fe Institute of Complexity Science), all life and emergent collectives scale according to super-linear power law distributions.1 Notably, cities were shown to scale as life does, whereas nation-states or multinational corporations did not follow this trend. Cities, after all, are deeply embedded in relational processes, whereas we are mere representations relative to our country’s electorate or citizens.
There is much contention over questions of capitalism, socialism, or communism, but they continue to be interpreted at the national scale; somehow, agency is often only granted to this scale. Why is that? After all, such separation between individual and nation is not only akin to a shrinking middle class but to shrinking the middle scale. This neglect of the local not only maintains the power structure but also transforms each relational process into a transaction capable of measurement, tracking, taxes and fees. Such a shift, as we will see, is indicative of a strong bias and blindspot central to our predicament.
Addressing this calls into question which collective human organizations we identify with, as there are many groups from families and friends that maintain the importance of relations over transactions. While we may want a monetary system to facilitate trust among strangers, the more we rely on money, the more strangers we create. Is there then a place for the “local” to blend the distinctions between strangers enabling new conceptions of an economy? Is there a place for new communication tools and currencies to bridge the divide between relational and transactional, between co-worker and consumer, between passion and labor, and between collaboration and competition? Throughout history there were many local currencies and gift economies that enabled local regions to thrive without adhering to such strict transactions. They were, unfortunately, dismantled one by one to centralize the national economic systems, but if these local regions were to reintroduce their own monetary system, would it grant agency to the local regions?
When we view monetary systems as a communication technology, it would seem like a currency trivializes the richness of communication that is available at the local level. But we need not adopt the game mechanics of a national scale’s monetary system. A local game mechanic need not be confined only to the representational view that focuses solely on products, but can be expanded to include a variety of measures; coupling currency, resources, attention, time, information, decision-making, conviction and voting. However, we must take utmost care in this, as when we begin to represent such things inherent to human social relations, we risk commodifying and debasing the very social fabric that holds communities together.
But at the local level, such rigid boundaries are not viable; instead of products we must focus on processes.
In her book Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth describes various experimental monetary incentive programs that, in fact, debased the cultural norms they were intended to shore up, leading the incentive program to generate outcomes directly contrary to those they sought to achieve. As she describes, “In Hifa, Israel, ten Danish nurseries introduced a small fine for parents who were more than 10 minutes late collecting their children at the end of the day. The parental response: rather than arriving more promptly, twice as many parents started arriving late. Introducing a monetary fine effectively wiped out any feelings of guilt and was interpreted as the market price for overtime care. Three months later, when the experiment ended and the fine was removed, the number of late pickups rose higher still. The price had gone, but the guilt hadn’t come back. The temporary marketplace had, in essence, erased the social contract.”2 Outcomes such as these lead Raworth to conclude, “When market norms replace social norms, the effects can be hard to reverse. As markets reach into spheres of life traditionally governed by non-market norms, the notion that ‘markets don’t touch or taint the goods they exchange’ becomes increasingly implausible. Markets are not mere mechanisms; they embody certain values, and sometimes market values crowd out non-market norms worth caring about.”3 I would suggest the problem here is that they used a value system/game mechanics of the nation to control and coordinate local systems.
If the 20th century was marked by the dependency between the individual and nation-state, which has led to various social and environmental crises, may the 21st century focus on the local and global scales? I suggest that local coordination isn’t merely a scaled-up version of individual coordination, but is distinct in many ways and requires an entirely different frame of mind. Through walls and weapons, we create imaginary lines between self and other, between the products we own and those we trade. But at the local level, such rigid boundaries are not viable; instead of products, we must focus on processes. The myopia of the product-mindset is why we fail to organize at the local and global levels and can only seem to plunder their commons.
To the extent that the diverse processes of our world are construed as mere products with their value somehow reducible and fungible to a single quantity, the true wealth of this world is corrupted. Similarly, when we determine the success of an economy by measuring the sale of products, we promote a system of individual property to increase consumption. Organizing at the local level in a way that fosters the commons, sharing, and gift economies thrive precisely by not measuring the sale of products but focusing on relational processes, which in turn reduce consumption. The failure to organize at the global level has been met with naïve attempts to model it as a singular game led by a world economy operating as a scaled-up neoliberal nation-state. These are all category errors; the local and cosmopolitan scales are different in kind than the individual and national levels. Such a frameshift requires a different way of thinking about life, organization, and economies along with the nature of work, ownership and reward. If we are to take the existential risks of the meta-crisis seriously, the solutions aren’t merely technological, political, or economic, but address the core of our being and identification.
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