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BUILDING A WIN-WIN WORLD

Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Contents

List of Illustrations......................................................................................................viiiAcknowledgments............................................................................................................ixIntroduction...............................................................................................................11. Global Economic Warfare versus Sustainable Human Development: Flash Points, Trends, and Transitions.....................112. Juggernaut Globalism and the Bankruptcy of Economics....................................................................493. The Technology Trap.....................................................................................................744. The Jobless Productivity Trap...........................................................................................955. Government by Mediocracy and the Attention Economy......................................................................1126. Grassroots Globalism....................................................................................................1317. Rethinking Human Development and the Time of Our Lives..................................................................1498. Cultural DNA Codes and Biodiversity: The Real Wealth of Nations.........................................................1689. Information: The World's Real Currency Isn't Scarce.....................................................................19610. Redefining Wealth and Progress: The New Indicators.....................................................................21911. Perfecting Democracy's Tools...........................................................................................24712. New Markets and New Commons: The Cooperative Advantage.................................................................26913. Agreeing on Rules and Social Innovations for Our Common Future.........................................................293Notes......................................................................................................................331Glossary of Acronyms.......................................................................................................352Bibliography...............................................................................................................355Index......................................................................................................................366About the Author...........................................................................................................397

Chapter One

After the Cold War, the six-thousand-year-old competition/ conflict paradigm transmuted into the spread of market capitalism, global corporations, and competitive economic warfare. Management theorists and journals such as Fortune began to describe the global economy as a jungle or a new military theater for all-out economic warfare. The global economic warfare system collided with trends leading toward more sustainable forms of development. The common definition of sustainable development is "development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

While early writings on the need for a transition to sustainability were widely ignored or rejected, a considerable body of expert political and government opinion now exists that such a transition is urgent and necessary. In Paradigms in Progress (1991, 1995), I diagrammed three zones of transition. (See Fig. 1. Three Zones of Transition.) Influencing the emerging consensus on the need for a shift to sustainable development are at least six great globalization processes that are increasingly interactive at all levels and accelerating trends toward global interdependence. These include the globalizations of (1) industrialism and technology, (2) work and migration, (3) finance, (4) human effects on the biosphere, (5) militarism and arms trafficking, and (6) communications and planetary culture.

The effects of these globalizations, including the erosion of the sovereignty of nation-states, are driving paradigm shifts in many countries toward reintegration of fragmented, reductionist academic disciplines; emerging studies of dynamic interactive systems; and a new focus on the life sciences and futures research. A set of post-Cartesian scientific principles based on a global life-sciences view includes the following: (1) interconnectedness, (2) redistribution, (3) heterarchy, (4) complimentarity, (5) uncertainty, and (6) change. Today's post–Cold War landscape, with increasing uncertainty, cultural pluralism, and interpenetration, is producing much cognitive dissonance. Yet the new confusion also leads to the possibility of rapid paradigm shifts, social innovation, and learning. Ethnic, religious, and cultural conflict and negative scenarios, some tinged with nihilism and others bordering on paranoia, are increasing.

I will not attempt to assign probabilities to any of these trends and scenarios since today's global system is so highly interactive and accelerating toward further interdependence. Seeking certainties can be comfortable but may not be the most realistic course. In a changing world, policymakers will need to scan broadly, make rapid course corrections, and sometimes resort to skillful improvisation. A useful review of recent global modeling finds many academic, business, and government models retrogressing toward competitive and economic paradigms, while grassroots movements are shifting toward sustainability. Easily the best global model of sustainability is Global 2000 Revisited: What Shall We Do? (Barney, Blewett, and Barney 1993).

A systemic shift from the paradigm of maximizing global economic competition and gross national product (GNP) growth to a paradigm of more cooperative, sustainable development—which in earlier times might have taken hundreds of years—is at least possible in today's interdependent, rapidly evolving world system. Since these are complex, synergistic pathways of interpenetration, we will examine these trends from a cybernetic perspective, identifying key positive and negative feedbacks. As I elaborated in Paradigms in Progress, systems theory and dynamic change models are overtaking macroeconomics, which is based on the idea that economies are in a general state of equilibrium.

The basic models of change and growth come from nature. Nonliving and some living systems can be (1) homeostatic and kept in a steady state and structure (morphostatic), like the temperature in a house governed by a thermostat; or (2) living systems that can grow and change shape (morphogenesis), like children or human cities. These two processes are governed by feedback loops, which in the case of number one are negative feedback loops damping the effects of change and maintaining stability, and in the case of number two are positive feedback loops amplifying...