ABCD and Scaling Carrying Capacity pt 2

This post will continue with the development of concepts presented in the previous post of this series which included the reintroduction of carrying capacity. Any change in the level of community social carrying capacity involves scaling in some form. However, ABCD tends to prefer terms such as ”proliferate” being very wary of ‘industrializing’ or ‘going at scale’ by institutions.

Scaling can generally be defined, using Wikipedia, as changes to a system such as a community in terms of some capacity in one of two ways. One is uniform or isotropic scaling in a linear transformation. If a fishing community doubles in population then it needs to catch double the amount of fish or find substitutes.

Scaling can also be defined as a power law, as a functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a proportional relative change in the other quantity, independent of the initial size of those quantities: one quantity varies as a power of another. If that same fishing community builds better boats going out further at sea catching bigger fish, the carrying capacity increases superlinearly allowing for increased population or greater creation and consumption of resources per capita (ignoring the overall capacity of the resource).

Natural carrying capacity is always inherent, realized and purposive which through extraneous and environmental changes can alter and even lead to the collapse of a population.

Community social carrying capacity and its extension community social capital can be either inherent or external, realized or unrealized, and either purposeful or purposive. The scaling of social carrying capacity can be categorized in three ways - imposed, induced, or inherent.

A Nurture Development post asking, “Scale is Important but Who’s Scale Are We Talking About?” is more of a warning than a question. It advises against attempts to scale or grow beyond a community's own carrying capacity, usually for the benefit of outside agencies.

Imposed scaling would be what Nurture Development warned against but could be seen, at least in my view, not as scaling but a form of colonial harvesting or appropriation of the resources of a community by an institution. Communities are asked to scale their efforts to extend them beyond the community's geographical boundaries or spheres of influence. As a result, a community's own carrying capacity and its established known and predictable processes (the way it works) are likely to be diminished and won't work the same way elsewhere.

Induced scaling, or more bang for the buck, is what agencies such as Acumen endeavor to achieve with their programs such as providing malaria nets at a lower cost per net to provide even more nets. With induced scaling, the burden is not placed on the community being assisted until it develops the capacity to carry it themselves.

Inherent scaling refers to the natural scaling of complex systems whether biological, as in animal populations or sociological such as cities. Professor Geoffrey West has demonstrated that cities naturally scale at a rate of about 15% in savings in terms of economies at a sub-linear rate for infrastructure, having an analog to biology, but scaling at a superlinear fashion at 15% growth with socio-economic network factors.

Inherent scaling in the larger social environment is likely to put pressure on the need for increasing carrying capacity by communities. Inherent scaling though does not naturally result in the equitable distribution either of benefits or of detriments created by the system in the form of socio-economic entropy. A larger issue is that the entire system or collection of systems is likely destined to collapse from the stress being generated without major interventions or transformation of some type. These concepts are expanded upon here. In actuality, all three of the forms of scaling are likely to be ongoing at the same time.

An ABCD definition of community incorporates inclusion. Communities can be categorized whether they define themselves by inclusion or exclusion and by whether they are dependent upon institutions or instead they are either independent or have control over those institutions.

Inclusion could be seen as part of the community’s receptivity influencing the level of its carry capacity and social capital and significantly changing without it the nature of the community.

M. Scott Peck’s definition of an inclusive community is complex, open, and organic. Communities are living organisms.

“Community is and must be inclusive. The great enemy of community is exclusivity. Groups that exclude others because they are poor or doubters or divorced or sinners or of some different race or nationality are not communities; they are cliques – actually defensive bastions against community.” 

Matthew Petrusek’s definition of inclusion and its supposed logical incompatibility within a community is complicated and restrictive. Communities are things.

”But we have every reason to advocate for coherence, as well. Many characteristics of a community certainly are negotiable and can be flexible, even to the point of breaking, in the name of inclusion. But some things, or at least something, must be non-negotiable.” He arguably could still have a point though in a community being allowed to maintain its identity at some level. Too often though this is used as a means of exclusion.

Communities with the power to define themselves by exclusion and still be economically self-sufficient both individually and collectively can be considered cliques. There are then those things that clique communities, through sufficient social capital, can have done for them by outside agencies either because of need and an inability to do so individually but also because of convenience, they want it and it is more efficient for the institution to do it for them and they can effectively negotiate the means of delivery.

Communities without the power to define themselves and that are dependent on agencies can be considered colonies and subject to harvesting by being restricted in the development of their own capacity, by the diversion of resources or by direct appropriation. Colonial communities are also defined by exclusion by the in-use purposive policies of institutions regardless of any espoused claims. Abundant communities, as the ideal alternative, are both self-sufficient and inclusive.

Colony communities do not have the extended social capital to address directly those issues it can through community carrying capacity and using social capital to successfully influence outside agencies to do for it what it can't on its own or to transition from one to the other.

The means of moving past being a colony community or being designated an HTR community (hard to reach community) starts with greater inclusion by both dependent and more self-sufficient communities. Part of the carrying capacity then has arguably come from outside the community but agencies, working sometimes on behalf of those responsible government institutions, maybe competing for resources that are instead being distributed to competing communities.

It becomes then a question of both motivations and of capacity for both the community, or more likely communities, and their associated institutions. Particularly if multiple communities are competing for institutional influence on a political basis and the relationship between a particular community and the controlling institutions may be a confrontational one.

There can be continued maintenance and even manipulation of institutional systems for the benefit of some at the cost of others. People can be redefined or commodified as service users or patients and thereby be defined out of community resulting in the consequent depletion of carrying capacity of that community that was supposedly being helped.

Outside agencies also have different pressures from budgetary committees requiring the imposition of scaling on their assigned efforts that achieve cost savings for the institution. These pressures not only can’t be discounted by agencies, but they also need to be optimized, under the best circumstances, to provide the best possible service with limited resources to the greatest number.

There is then an even greater need for increased social capital through social networking by bonding and bridging tied together in a manner that is both collective and inclusive but which ABCD would insist should be more people based than technology based.

This raises the question though whether ABCD simply focuses through relational consensus on the maximum carrying capacity of each community with special attention towards challenged ones or actually addresses issues between different competing communities through democratic principles?

The role of ABCD in working with communities is separate from the provision of institutional services through agencies and is not meant to save institutional systems money. It is to build community (verb) for the community (noun) to decide its own purpose. There seem to have been some successes in community and agency partnerships fostered by ABCD, particularly with healthcare but while empirically verifiable as to what works, establishing theoretically as to how they work remains less clear to me. The final post of this series will look at this more closely.

part 1
part 3

Using Online Communities to encourage Direct Democracy for On-The-Ground Communities

One of the greatest challenges facing anybody attempting to implement a new community paradigm within their own community will be how to organize venues that allow for decisions through direct democracy on behalf of the group or organization or even entire community. Usually this is left to the traditional political body but this effort would not be seen as necessary by the community if that was already happening to the full extent to which it needed to happen.

In this post, we are introducing other resources available through the New Community Paradigms Wiki related to Governance, particularly the Community Governance and People’s Governance wikipages.

People’s Governance wikipage offers some direct and indirect resources for direct democratic participation.  One of the issues with Direct Democracy which means having community members having direct impact on policy issues is logistically coordinating a large number of people and obtaining the votes. There are tools and resources to address this challenge.  With very large numbers, it may work better to use other methods of ascertaining the wishes of the community as long as the members of the community are comfortable with doing that.

The Center for Deliberative Democracy  which is housed in the Department of Communication at Stanford University does research on democracy and public opinion and developed the concept of Deliberative Polling® which makes possible what can be called Deliberative Democracy.

This concept was applied in the What's Next California? Deliberative Poll | NextCA.org that took place last year.  The project was a first state-wide deliberative poll in California and the 30 proposals presented were deliberated by a statewide scientific sample of 412 participants.

What's Next California is an unprecedented attempt to bring the people into the process in a new way—one that is representative and thoughtful. A scientific random sample of the entire state will be transported to a single place for a weekend of face-to-face discussions, in small groups and in dialogue with competing experts. In California's first statewide “Deliberative Poll,” the people will be supported by factual information and will consider the critical arguments on both sides of issues, then will articulate their priorities for fixing the state.

More can be learned from watching CDD: California State of Mind: PBS Special which features excerpts from the PBS documentary on the What's Next California Deliberative Poll® on governance reform which aired last year.  What's Next California is also on Facebook.

More recently on November 1, 2011 the PBS Newshour did an in-depth report about California and featured "What's Next California's Deliberative Poll" and some of its results in the story California Voters Fed-Up With Gridlock as Budget Crunch Lingers | PBS NewsHour.    

Jim Fishkin of Stanford University, who originated the concept of Deliberative Polling®,  wrote about 100 years of California ballot measures, highlighting findings from the What's Next California Deliberative Poll that could be applied to the challenge of how to Fix California’s Democracy Crisis

SPUR or San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association will be holding a panel discussion on January 3, 2012 by three key organizers of the project — James Fishkin of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, Zabrae Valentine of California Forward and Lenny Mendonca of McKinsey & Company to discuss the project process and findings regarding the originally considered four basic areas: the initiative process, the Legislature, state/local relations and tax/fiscal issues.

MATT MISZEWSKI'S GLOBAL OPEN GOVERNMENT BLOG FIXING POTHOLES back in 2010 looked at the possible ties between Deliberative Polling and crowdsourcing.

The question I have is whether our newer social computing technologies and platforms can move this effort into a better set of outcomes. What if we utilized social media to crowdsource our deliberative polling efforts. The technology, and actually its constraints, can help policymakers better understand the effect of viral messaging within a population, a population that has self-selected interest in a particular topic via their profiles, tagging or other indicators built into new platforms. As a result the Social Deliberative Polling (should I trademark that ) would also be much quicker and provide much needed clarity within a much faster policy ecosystem.

This could allow a community to create a system that kept an eye on the community's vision on a fairly continual basis without being bogged down by endless meetings.  It is also possible though to have public input by all voting community members on very important issues in large American cities.  NYC Gives Citizens a Say in the Budget

"Participatory budgeting allows for citizens to get past that bureaucracy barrier and feel empowered about ideas and about making a difference in the community."

There is still though a need for Everyday Democracy and the organization of the same name, along with other organizations, works with both its website and the Everyday Democracy Facebook page toward the ultimate vision of local communities creating and sustaining a public dialogue for community problem solving believing that such strong local democracies can form the cornerstone of a vibrant national democracy.

Check out this TEDx video about civic empowerment beyond civic education. How do we reach untapped "domestic reserves of energy" - people who don't vote, don't volunteer, or don't talk with neighbors. It starts with participation, respect, and working together toward a common goal.

Completing “we” strongerdemocracy.org

There is no attempt to judge whether any particular community should want to use these resources to push for substantial change in their community.  The political body traditionally assigned the basic responsibilities of community building may be fulfilling this function so well that the issue never comes up. The political body may partner or help with the effort because it sees the potential benefit and realizes that it can no longer do it on its own or it may become more entrenched and oppose the effort to protect its squandered power.  This blog discusses only two communities, Parochialville and Innovattown and neither one of them actually exists.

This is not an effort that can be fully implemented by any individual alone. Individuals would have to gather as groups, groups would have to coalesce into a community-based organization and that community based organization would need to become integrated into the larger community of which they were all members by means of direct democracy, raising again other challenges.  Each level though can still be a catalyst to forming the next level of organization if the need is truly there.  What would also be needed is an environment conducive to dialogue and deliberation that would allow for  Community Governance  and that will be examined more closely in the next post.