Sharing the bottle

I recently wrote about the concept of hyperscopic life – life forms too large to be seen from an individual's perspective – and our cellular role in them. I am focusing on one hyperscopic life form - the for-profit corporation. Admittedly, what I am writing in these short essays is the merest summary. Libraries full of books have been written on the history of corporations, their influence in the world, and theories as to their proper place and operation in our economy. I am attempting to lay out the framework of a theory about their biology and how we as a species can compete successfully with them.

There are a variety of forms of this species, but they all share particular important characteristics. They all seek to increase profits. They all attempt to grow. They all seek to minimize or externalize costs. They all attempt to modify their environment to their own advantage. They all use resources and produce modified byproducts of their internal processes (waste). They all have an immune system that accepts or rejects human beings according to their compatibility with the needs of the corporation. If you follow the thesis of Joel Bakan, Jennifer Abbot, and Mark Achbar, the makers of the movie “The Corporation,” a corporation mimics the behavior of a human psychopath. I have explored the behavior of corporate management in an earlier essay, noting that the corporate system selects for amorality.

I tend to think of corporations as yeast. Yeast, as any brewer can tell you, is extremely useful. What a brewer does, essentially, is put water, flavoring, and sugar in a container with a special species of yeast. The yeast eats the sugar and excretes alcohol and carbon dioxide. This continues until 1) There is no more sugar, and the yeast starves, or 2) There is too much alcohol, and the yeast is poisoned. The yeast has no brains, so there is no yeast environmental committee to sit down and say “Y'know, the alcohol level is getting kind of high and members of our species are dying in increasing numbers. Maybe we should think about slowing things down, or controlling our population, or something.” They blindly consume and excrete till their beery doomsday.

So it is with corporations. Absent controlling regulation, they blindly consume and excrete without limit. The unfortunate part is that we share the bottle with them. Corporations themselves are essentially immortal, shedding the parts rendered useless by their reckless behavior and acquiring new people, infrastructure, and resources. Those of us inhabiting the macroscopic world suffer the consequences. Corporations have the benefit of our intelligence, or at least the portion of our intelligence that doesn't conflict with their mission of uncontrolled growth and consumption. We give corporations an advantage that yeast doesn't have – the ability to modify the environment.

A corporation has two environments, the physical and the legal. Much of the corporation is made up of actual physical things, such as people, buildings, mines, and farmland. The legal environment is key, however, because it is both the sinew that connects these physical entities, the DNA that creates the form of the corporation, and, as with us, the rules that circumscribe its behavior.

Corporations are far ahead of us in the field of genetic engineering. A corporation can transform itself from one type to another and modify its internal structure almost at will. Corporations can and do alter the laws that prescribe their form and function. They regularly slice off parts of themselves and attach that part to another entity. It is a feat of shape shifting only seen in science fiction movies. The pursuit of favorable legislation is a very profitable way to spend their resources. A relatively small investment in lobbying and political contributions has historically netted them huge returns. One part of these efforts has been the institutionalization of political corruption in the form of campaign finance and the revolving door between corporate employment and government service. As I have noted in another essay, the present system of political fund raising filters out most politicians with anti-corporate views.

We find ourselves trapped in a closed environment with a group of enormously powerful entities. They have no direct consciousness or moral values, but do have an extraordinary ability to modify themselves and their environment in order to grow and gain even more control over their surroundings. The legal framework in which we live favors the for-profit corporation over other economic structures and allows such corporations a range of behavior that threatens our survival.

The key to our survival, then, lies in our ability to restrict corporate behavior. Our highest priority is restricting their own ability to influence the laws that govern them.

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Hyperscopic life

In my essay before last I wrote about the way people view ownership, the past, and the future. My conclusion was that the structures within which we live tend to determine our worldview. A friend commented that my conclusion about being aware of the structures that shape our worldviews was valid, but didn't point in any particular direction. He used the word “flatulence,” I believe. The question the essay raises is “What do we do, then?”

Part of my intent in writing these essays is offering ideas that help people see the world in new ways. As another friend pointed out (quoting, I think), “You tilt the kaleidescope just a little, and the whole picture changes.” Part of my motivation for this exercise is simply the joy of writing, part is the satisfaction of sharing ideas, and part is the hope that I can make some incremental change in the world. Those of you who have been reading my essays for a while are experiencing a kind of drawn out manifesto, put together almost at random. I'm not promising a well structured book in web-based installments, but I am going to try to be more strategic about the progress of my essays. I'll be circling in on that call to action. The following essay is part of the background theory for my thinking. It may seem less like a slight tilt of the kaleidescope and more like a 180 degree spin. I'd like to point out that you are living within a set of overlapping structures, some at odds with each other, each making a different set of demands on you. I'd also like to propose that these structures are different in their nature than most people suppose.

A fundamental question: what is life, in the biological sense? Life is GRIM. GRIM is a mnemonic device meaning Growth, Reproduction, Irritability, Metabolism. There is still argument in the scientific community about where genetic material leaves off and life begins, but this is a good working definition. Living things grow, have the capability to reproduce others of their own kind, respond to their environment, and extract energy and mass from their environment using chemical reactions. These qualities are common from viruses to whales.

A basic observational dichotomy is between microscopic and macroscopic life. We can see individual whales, ladybugs, moose, mushrooms, buttercups, and maple trees with the unaided eye. Microscopic organisms such as bacteria require magnification to be seen individually. I'd like to propose a third category: Hyperscopic organisms. These are living things so large that they cannot be seen as individuals from an individual perspective.

Consider the E. Coli bacteria in our guts. They actually outnumber the cells in our bodies. Cell for cell, we are walking minorities in our own skins. If we could somehow endow these bacteria with consciousness, how would they view their world? Their universe would be a dark, generally linear, wet place, with nutrients coming from one direction and some members of their species exiting in the other. I would doubt that they would view themselves as part of a bipedal mammal trillions of times their size. We would be hyperscopic to them.

We exist in similar circumstances, yet more complex. We simultaneously occupy multiple hyperscopic life forms. They are human associations. Some are for-profit corporations. Some are political entities such as towns, states, and nations. Some are social organizations, non-profits, and cooperatives. Some are families and tribes. All of them have the capability to reproduce others of their own kind, respond to their environment, and extract energy and mass from their environment using chemical reactions. They do this through the use of our persons, natural resources, and our built infrastructure. Many of the “bodily” functions of human associations are analogous to those of macroscopic and microscopic life.

There is a double relationship between law and human associations. Law is both connective tissue and DNA. Disparate physical structures, people and other living things, land, and materials can be bound together into an active, living entity by law. At the same time, law provides the design of the structure, its patterns of growth, and limits on its behavior. When I use the term law, I mean it in the broadest sense. There is law published in books by political entities, there are customs and traditions passed down by word of mouth, and there are unstated assumptions about behavior that we absorb by observation and imitation.

The physical structure of such an entity is, as I mentioned above, made up of living organisms, land, buildings, machinery, stored materials, underground deposits of resources, and communications networks. Some entities have physical presence stretching across continents. In their complexity, environmental pervasiveness, and fluid boundaries they both match and exceed macroscopic and microscopic life.

Different human associations have different levels of definition and strength. They bind us in various parts of our lives and can be obtrusive or nearly unconscious. Some are almost exclusively economic, some suck up most of our waking hours, and others merit only occasional interaction and have next to no consequences if we withdraw from them.

I belong to a biological family and several groups of friends. I also belong to three cooperatives. I am a board member of an S-type corporation. I am a member of a town, a state, and a nation, several business associations, and a few charitable nonprofits. I am also an ongoing customer of a handful of corporations and an intermittent or single-incident customer of countless more. I have a symbiotic relationship with each of these associations and the other human members of each.

At this point you may be thinking, “Oh, come on! Great metaphor, but you don't expect me to believe...” Yes, I do. To exercise a famous cliché, “If it quacks like a duck...” Scientists who work for NASA have studied the question of defining life so that if they find something strange on another planet they can make a judgment as to whether it is alive. They have come up with formulations analogous to the GRIM mnemonic. The fact is that we have found these overlapping, life form sharing, symbiotic entities on our own planet instead of on the surface of Mars.

It isn't out of character for our planetary ecosystem. Bacteria form biological mats that increase their chances of group survival. Archaic single celled microscopic organisms once joined together and specialized to form more complex organisms that evolved into yet more complex forms. Why shouldn't more complex forms of life such as homo sapiens then join and specialize into the highly complex and interwoven net of human associations that cover the globe? It is our talent as generalists and our external genetics of law and culture that allow each of us to inhabit multiple associative life forms. History and archeology allow us to study the emergence and evolution of new associative species in response to changes in the legal, cultural, and physical environment. Just as in the familiar macroscopic environment, hyperscopic life influences and shapes its environment to enhance its own survival.

This last principle, the drive of hyperscopic life forms to modify their environments, is the crux of the problem we face. I'll discuss this in another essay.

Update: There are essays that follow this one, namely Sharing the Bottle and Breaking the Grip.

Some good news on the solar front

I suppose it is good timing. Congress eviscerated the recently passed energy bill, removing tax incentives for wind and solar. However, in a few years the solar incentives may not be necessary.

I just read that Nanosolar has shipped product.

To recap an earlier post, Nanosolar is a solar module manufacturing company that developed a new way to manufacture the cells that make up the modules. Instead of melting, purifying, and casting crystalline silicon they make a powdered ink out of nanoparticles of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium, and essentially print the stuff on a roll of metal foil at room temperature. The simplicity of the process reduces the cost of manufacturing the modules by a factor of four.

They have started by selling a megawatt of modules to a company in Germany for a single large array at a brownfield site. According to their press releases the eventually intend to manufacture 450 megawatts annually in their plant in San Jose, California. Compare this to the approximately 150 megawatts manufactured annually in the U.S. today. Think of it as Nanosolar replacing a regular power plant every year.

They claim to be able to wholesale these modules for a dollar a watt. Silicon based modules today wholesale for just over four dollars a watt. When I run the numbers on this kind of price drop it brings down the price of solar electricity to between 11 cents and 15 cents per kilowatt hour, roughly the retail price of electricity right now. That is without incentive grants or tax breaks. In other words, once Nanosolar modules get out in the general market, you'd be an idiot not to put them on your roof. It will probably be a few years before ordinary schmoes will be able to get their hands on them because Nanosolar seems to be focusing on industrial scale installations to start out.

I cannot emphasize it enough: This is a turning point in the generation of renewable electricity, and therefore a turning point in the world of electrical generation in general. With or without the actions of our ignorant sloths in Washington, the economics of electricity have tipped. It will take a few years before the movement becomes apparent, but we will witness an exponentially expanding market for solar electricity.

This isn't the silver bullet for our energy problems or global warming, but it is one of the necessary silver BBs that will eventually bring down the beast. So, amidst all the depression, violence, and anxiety in the world, take a moment to rejoice.

The stonemason and the gunman

First, two stories, one funny, one grim.

A couple of decades ago I spent some time at Aberdeen University in the north of Scotland. I struck up a friendship with an old stonemason who worked in the city of Aberdeen, one Henry McKay. Henry came from a line of at least two centuries of stonemasons, and at 68 was building stone walls in a local park. One day I found him in the park, tools set aside, arms folded, looking up at the towers of St. Machar's Cathedral, a 15th century structure then undergoing renovation. The average Scots face is dour at rest, but Henry's was more grim than usual. I asked him what was wrong. He pointed to the scaffolding surrounding the towers. “It's a bad job, it's a bad job,” he said, bitter emotion in his voice. “They're using dry fitted stone. Two or three hundred years and they'll have to do it all over again!”

I heard a radio interview with a reporter who had covered the civil war in Yugoslavia. The interviewer asked him if he had ever been in a place and realized that he really shouldn't have gone there. He said yes and told about driving into a small village immediately after a massacre. There were bodies and pools of blood still on the streets and nervous young Serbian militiamen standing around, their gun barrels still warm. He knew he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but decided that his only course was to brazen it out. He walked up to the nearest militiaman, stuck his microphone in the young man's face, and asked, “What happened here?” The young man began, quite seriously, with the phrase, “In the year 1642....”

There is a concept in finance called the discount rate. Officially it is the interest rate that the Federal Reserve charges banks. Effectively it determines the relationship between money in your fist right now and money promised to you at some time in the future. If you are looking at some investment for your money and you want to know whether it is worthwhile, you have to ask, “Compared to what?” If the discount rate is high, then you can get a good return at the bank, so the other investment should give you a better deal. If the discount rate is low, then you should be willing to wait longer for a payback on that alternative investment. A discount rate of 100% means that money in the future has no value. A discount rate of 0% means that $100 in a hundred, or even a thousand years is worth $100 today. The discount window at the Federal Reserve has been hovering around 4.5 to 5 percent.

There is also a behavioral version of the discount rate. It has to do with our tendency to value the present over the future. Drug addicts, children, and people with terminal illnesses have high behavioral discount rates. Parents, farmers, and urban planners tend to have lower behavioral discount rates. Nate Hagens, in an excellent article on The Oil Drum, discusses human discount rates and global warming, so I will not go into it here. What I am interested in is what one might call the inverse discount rate – how someone values the past.

I told those two stories as a way to contrast two of the possible effects of a low inverse discount rate. In the case of Henry McKay, valuing the past meant valuing quality of craft and taking care of a centuries-old legacy for future generations. In the case of the militiaman, it meant holding a centuries-old grudge and regarding medieval conquests as defining present territorial rights.

That seems to be the defining factor in the relationship between the discount rate and the inverse discount rate. One long view is that what comes from the past does not belong to us, but is our responsibility, to be preserved, improved, and handed over. The other long view is that what comes from the past is our property, to be hoarded and jealously guarded. It also views the conflicts of past generations as rigidly binding the actions of those alive today. The former encourages a low discount rate and a long view into the future, the latter a paradoxically short view.

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Madison, declared that, “...I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living...” The word usufruct means that the living have the right to literally (in Latin) “use the fruit” of the land without degrading it or destroying it and thereby denying it to future generations. It is an old concept in common law, contrasting with ownership in fee simple, meaning, “It's mine. Period.”

This is one of the great dichotomies in thought in our time – ownership in usufruct versus ownership in fee simple. Where the stonemason sees a common legacy to be preserved and passed on, the militiaman sees a gift to his people alone and a duty of vengeance. Sadly, most people in the world tend more towards the militiaman than the stonemason. This is partly due to the perilous circumstances of most of the earth's people. In part it comes from traditions left over from a less populated, pre-industrial world, where human influence was limited and the boundaries of ethics were tribal. That is the double edged sword of valuing the past.

In more prosperous countries I propose that it stems from the propaganda emanating from corporate sources. A corporation is a powerful economic entity, a sprinter in a world of marathoners, winning the short race by its unsustainable use of resources. Just as we humans modify our environment to suit our needs, so too the corporation, a legal creature, modifies its statutory environment to enhance its immediate survival. In a world where incorporation confers inestimable competitive advantages we are caught in a structural trap. The rules of our corporate industrial societies discourage acting as if we owned the earth only in usufruct. (See my earlier essay on corporate leadership)

There is no single clear answer here, but a trend. Part of the trend is increasing our awareness of the structures now present in our society that guide our patterns of thought, and thus our actions. We tend to think of the social and economic foundations of our present condition as inevitable. In fact, they were choices, and rarely enlightened ones. Part of the trend is being careful about the structures, both social and economic, that we create, in order that our thoughts are influenced towards the long view. A vital part is to work for the benefit of those in the world who are most in peril, whether from war or disease or poverty. Yes, it is good in itself, but it also allows them to think past their next meal and assist in the preservation of the whole.

Henry McKay was an old man with a failing heart when I knew him, 25 years ago. He must have died since then, leaving many monuments of his own making. I checked a satellite map online and found that the twin towers of St. Machar's are still standing...for the moment.

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