Hello, I don’t know what has brought you here but you are most welcome.
To introduce myself, I’m Alfie, I live in England. I’ve worked for a number of accounting firms over the years (Q. What do accountants use as prophylactics? A. Their personalities).
My main reason for writing is I haven’t found a better way of clarifying my own thoughts than writing them down (and then usually re-writing them multiple times until they approach something resembling a coherent argument or narrative). I figure since I’m writing anyway I may as well see if there is a niche interest group for posts about history and organisational functioning. If that’s you, welcome to the (I suspect rather small) club!
A few fundamental principles that guide my thinking (very high level, will expand on each in subsequent posts):
Life is difficult. It was hard work to climb down from the trees, become bipedal, master fire and the wheel, agriculture and writing, never mind steam engines, electricity and modern medicine, these things are miracles1. Life is a losing battle against entropy and it is a miracle that civilisation, however brief it may turn out to be, has been possible. Many conspiracy theories and other muddled forms of thinking come from not understanding this most fundamental point.
Almost nothing is more important than human cooperation. Given the above mentioned harsh reality of life, the thing that has made it quite tolerable for a lot of us is an increasingly complex web of cooperative enterprises; governments, corporations, charities, clubs, churches. Some are hierarchies, some are networks, both have their uses. Going it alone is a fast-track to hunger, disease and death.
One of the main benefits of cooperative institutions is their ability to deploy increasingly sophisticated technology at scale. Technology is responsible for most (but not all) progress. Technology also creates its own risks and downsides, which need to be managed as best we can.
Voluntary cooperation is usually preferable to coercive cooperation. Because most humans value a high degree of autonomy, it is psychologically more sustainable to build institutions which encourage voluntary cooperation rather than coercing people. Democracy is usually preferable to dictatorship, companies usually better than state monopolies.
However, because humans can also be selfish, we do need a degree of coercion in some realms; laws limiting damaging behaviour, taxation to pay for public goods where effective markets cannot be made to work.
Cooperation is hard. We are not ants, we have individual drives and motivations which are often aligned against the wants and needs of others. There are better and worse ways to work together, and exploring these functions is one of my primary interests. Why are some organisations so much more productive than others?
Civilisational memory decays. We could learn the lessons of history and not be doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Given our nature, and past track record, there is little reason to be optimistic that we will. This newsletter will be my own very modest attempt to contribute to civilisational memory and learning.
So there we are, I hope you enjoy yourself here. Comments (including constructive criticism) are very welcome. I will try to post to some regular schedule but I have a full time job which sometimes will take priority.
Lastly, always remember your towel, and don’t panic! 😊
If you want an example of miraculous technology, think about Google Translate. Almost anyone on earth can now understand words from other languages at the touch of a button. You can use it on road signs or to translate someone speaking to you when you’re in another country or translate a whole website, all instantly. This has been a dream of humanity since the dawn of civilisation. The real kicker, it’s completely free! Google could probably have charged governments and the largest corporations millions of dollars a year to access it, but they’ve built a business model which means anyone can use it for nothing. This would seem a miracle to anyone from even 100 years ago. I can’t understand how blasé we all are about it!