Great post, Dave. Question- what would you need to see to say that the Quadriform has arrived on the scene? We've seen networked movements arise on the world stage (Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, MAGA, etc), but are you saying they aren't enduring enough forms as of yet? I wonder how the return of Guilds for various disciplines plays into this.
Hey, Adam. Delight to hear from you. Strong question. I already plan to take it up in a later post. Right now, quickest easiest way for me to answer is by reiterating parts of a comment I left at a blog about healthcare matters. Here we go:
“I welcome your advice for healthcare advocates to seek “foundational change” and play the “long game.” I quite agree, and here’s what I’m what I’m wondering: The ultimate answer to realizing foundational change in the healthcare sector may not lie within that sector, nor within the broader “medical-financial-industrial complex” (MFIC). The answer may depend on the eventual emergence of a new realm of society that health and other care-centered matters move into.
“Our society, like all modern societies, is loosely organized in terms of three major realms of actors and activity: civil society, with its largely voluntary sectors; government, with its public sectors; and the market economy, with its private sectors. Healthcare does not fit neatly into any one of them; it gets bounced around. Some leaders claim it’s a public-sector responsibility; for others, it’s a private-sector matter; or it is keyed for mixed public-private cooperation. Plus, it’s a problem that civil-society actors have a role in addressing too. Healthcare is thus a vital matter without a true consistent home in the American system.
“That has been the case for decades, even centuries. And by now, as a result of growing enormity and complexity, it seems evermore evident that healthcare cannot be fit, properly in our existing public and/or private sectors, and is too overwhelming to leave to civil-society. It’s a dilemma; and it’s likely to get worse.
“Curiously, healthcare is not the only societal matter stuck in this kind of systemic doldrums. Education, welfare, and environmental matters are stuck there too — they are all stuck in it together. None is exactly a matter for civil society, or government, or the market economy to resolve. That lack of fit is now too big and burdensome to ignore; it's constraining America’s future evolvability
“Here’s my point: While all four matters — health, education, welfare, and the environment — are viewed and treated separately by analysts, policymakers, and other actors, there’s a key commonality that’s being overlooked. All four are about maximizing care: people care, life care, planetary care; the care of body, mind, and soul, individually and collectively. Plus, each activity affects the others; their dynamics and vectors interact. Better health can lead to better education, and vice-vera, especially if welfare and environmental conditions are improved as well.
“Furthermore, the set of policy principles and positions that may be raised for any one of the four is pretty much the same for all of them. For example, debates exist for all four as to whether it/they should be recognized as a legal right, whether to approach matters individually or collectively, how to protect against risks and vulnerabilities, etc.
“What I deduce from this is that health, education, welfare, and the environment have so many affinities and are so intertwined as policy problems that it will make increasing sense for policymakers and other actors to view them as a bundled set — and eventually as bedrock components for constructing a new care-centric realm (sector) of society.
“Today, even if that analysis may sound potentially sensible to some people, it will still seem like fanciful unwelcome academic speculation in many circles. As I’ve been told, government agencies and capitalist enterprises presently have “hammer-lock” grips on healthcare and education. There is no way they will let go in today’s political and economic environments, much less allow health, education, welfare, and environmental matters to be bundled. But I see a path opening up in the years ahead. …
“… As a result, information-age network forms of organization and related strategies, doctrines, and technologies (not to mention ideologies) are currently spreading far and wide. One way or another, they lie behind and help explain nearly all the turmoil disrupting our society and the world at large. Network factors and forces are modifying the natures of civil societies, governments, and markets everywhere, often via the creation of hybrids with the earlier forms — sometimes for the better, sometimes not. The growth of so-called health and hospital networks in the profiteering hands of venture capital firms and giant insurance corporations is a manifestation of this.
“But it’s one thing to disrupt and modify what exists, quite another to transform and radically improve a system’s complexity. Still missing so far are clear signs that the rise of the network form will have the major evolutionary consequence that each earlier form has had: the generation of a distinct new realm/sector of society, through a long hard-fought process of structural-functional differentiation.
“Maybe it’s too early for signs of that. Or maybe I don’t know how and where to look yet. Nonetheless, assuming my deductions are correct — i.e., that a fourth realm will emerge in the decades ahead, and its core purpose and function will be care-centric — then I’d like to say it’s advisable to start anticipating and planning now for its emergence and construction.
“Here are some signs I’ll be looking for, and questions to wonder about. I’ve derived them from wondering what makes the earlier three realms so distinctive.
• Have actors in the fields of health, education, welfare, and the environment started talking together, making common cause, finding mutual concepts, developing a language around care that spans all their fields — much as civil-society, government, and business actors have distinctively done for their own realms of activity?
• To the extent this next/new realm may be identified as a particular sector of society, what would be a good name to reflect its essence? My own sense is that it will (and should) be a “commons sector” per writings by Elinor Ostrom, as well as other pro-commons theorists. Or a “social sector” per an old proposal by Peter Drucker. Other theorists already have other intentions for those concepts, so my view is bound to be debatable.
• What specific types of network organization and governance are going to be needed? I’m not sure they exist yet. It’s encouraging to see experiments with DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) and DisCOs (distributed cooperative organizations) moving ahead, but so far mostly for small artisanal business ventures that are not care-centric. New kinds of internetted collectives and cooperatives may be what are needed. But my sense is that something unusually vast and dense, that spans and integrates all four care-centric fields, and that is transnational as well as national in scope is what will be needed. Such networks don’t exist yet, but I like to think of them as “equinets.”
• If the above is roughly correct, then lots of additional questions and issues will surely require attention, say about instituting new forms of property, finance, and administration. The answers will surely be, and will have to be, very different from what people have developed for the existing three realms and their various sectors.”
I hope that excerpt helps, Adam. If you have further questions and/or ideas about the matter, keep posing them. Thanks. Onward. (I have to look up something about guilds before adding about that.)
OK, so for me this begs the question, what do you consider the commons, or how does that fit in here? Is the commons for you just natural resources, or is it more? I guess what I’m terming commons, you are saying is civil society? And you envision that the networked “quadriform” model is the one that will ultimately be able to address these big, messy, care-centric problems? So just as climate/health/education is a confluence of public/private/commons stakeholders, you think the network form will leverage the best parts of tribe, institution, and market to solve these care-centric problems?
Great post, Dave. Question- what would you need to see to say that the Quadriform has arrived on the scene? We've seen networked movements arise on the world stage (Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, MAGA, etc), but are you saying they aren't enduring enough forms as of yet? I wonder how the return of Guilds for various disciplines plays into this.
Hey, Adam. Delight to hear from you. Strong question. I already plan to take it up in a later post. Right now, quickest easiest way for me to answer is by reiterating parts of a comment I left at a blog about healthcare matters. Here we go:
“I welcome your advice for healthcare advocates to seek “foundational change” and play the “long game.” I quite agree, and here’s what I’m what I’m wondering: The ultimate answer to realizing foundational change in the healthcare sector may not lie within that sector, nor within the broader “medical-financial-industrial complex” (MFIC). The answer may depend on the eventual emergence of a new realm of society that health and other care-centered matters move into.
“Our society, like all modern societies, is loosely organized in terms of three major realms of actors and activity: civil society, with its largely voluntary sectors; government, with its public sectors; and the market economy, with its private sectors. Healthcare does not fit neatly into any one of them; it gets bounced around. Some leaders claim it’s a public-sector responsibility; for others, it’s a private-sector matter; or it is keyed for mixed public-private cooperation. Plus, it’s a problem that civil-society actors have a role in addressing too. Healthcare is thus a vital matter without a true consistent home in the American system.
“That has been the case for decades, even centuries. And by now, as a result of growing enormity and complexity, it seems evermore evident that healthcare cannot be fit, properly in our existing public and/or private sectors, and is too overwhelming to leave to civil-society. It’s a dilemma; and it’s likely to get worse.
“Curiously, healthcare is not the only societal matter stuck in this kind of systemic doldrums. Education, welfare, and environmental matters are stuck there too — they are all stuck in it together. None is exactly a matter for civil society, or government, or the market economy to resolve. That lack of fit is now too big and burdensome to ignore; it's constraining America’s future evolvability
“Here’s my point: While all four matters — health, education, welfare, and the environment — are viewed and treated separately by analysts, policymakers, and other actors, there’s a key commonality that’s being overlooked. All four are about maximizing care: people care, life care, planetary care; the care of body, mind, and soul, individually and collectively. Plus, each activity affects the others; their dynamics and vectors interact. Better health can lead to better education, and vice-vera, especially if welfare and environmental conditions are improved as well.
“Furthermore, the set of policy principles and positions that may be raised for any one of the four is pretty much the same for all of them. For example, debates exist for all four as to whether it/they should be recognized as a legal right, whether to approach matters individually or collectively, how to protect against risks and vulnerabilities, etc.
“What I deduce from this is that health, education, welfare, and the environment have so many affinities and are so intertwined as policy problems that it will make increasing sense for policymakers and other actors to view them as a bundled set — and eventually as bedrock components for constructing a new care-centric realm (sector) of society.
“Today, even if that analysis may sound potentially sensible to some people, it will still seem like fanciful unwelcome academic speculation in many circles. As I’ve been told, government agencies and capitalist enterprises presently have “hammer-lock” grips on healthcare and education. There is no way they will let go in today’s political and economic environments, much less allow health, education, welfare, and environmental matters to be bundled. But I see a path opening up in the years ahead. …
“… As a result, information-age network forms of organization and related strategies, doctrines, and technologies (not to mention ideologies) are currently spreading far and wide. One way or another, they lie behind and help explain nearly all the turmoil disrupting our society and the world at large. Network factors and forces are modifying the natures of civil societies, governments, and markets everywhere, often via the creation of hybrids with the earlier forms — sometimes for the better, sometimes not. The growth of so-called health and hospital networks in the profiteering hands of venture capital firms and giant insurance corporations is a manifestation of this.
“But it’s one thing to disrupt and modify what exists, quite another to transform and radically improve a system’s complexity. Still missing so far are clear signs that the rise of the network form will have the major evolutionary consequence that each earlier form has had: the generation of a distinct new realm/sector of society, through a long hard-fought process of structural-functional differentiation.
“Maybe it’s too early for signs of that. Or maybe I don’t know how and where to look yet. Nonetheless, assuming my deductions are correct — i.e., that a fourth realm will emerge in the decades ahead, and its core purpose and function will be care-centric — then I’d like to say it’s advisable to start anticipating and planning now for its emergence and construction.
“Here are some signs I’ll be looking for, and questions to wonder about. I’ve derived them from wondering what makes the earlier three realms so distinctive.
• Have actors in the fields of health, education, welfare, and the environment started talking together, making common cause, finding mutual concepts, developing a language around care that spans all their fields — much as civil-society, government, and business actors have distinctively done for their own realms of activity?
• To the extent this next/new realm may be identified as a particular sector of society, what would be a good name to reflect its essence? My own sense is that it will (and should) be a “commons sector” per writings by Elinor Ostrom, as well as other pro-commons theorists. Or a “social sector” per an old proposal by Peter Drucker. Other theorists already have other intentions for those concepts, so my view is bound to be debatable.
• What specific types of network organization and governance are going to be needed? I’m not sure they exist yet. It’s encouraging to see experiments with DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) and DisCOs (distributed cooperative organizations) moving ahead, but so far mostly for small artisanal business ventures that are not care-centric. New kinds of internetted collectives and cooperatives may be what are needed. But my sense is that something unusually vast and dense, that spans and integrates all four care-centric fields, and that is transnational as well as national in scope is what will be needed. Such networks don’t exist yet, but I like to think of them as “equinets.”
• If the above is roughly correct, then lots of additional questions and issues will surely require attention, say about instituting new forms of property, finance, and administration. The answers will surely be, and will have to be, very different from what people have developed for the existing three realms and their various sectors.”
I hope that excerpt helps, Adam. If you have further questions and/or ideas about the matter, keep posing them. Thanks. Onward. (I have to look up something about guilds before adding about that.)
OK, so for me this begs the question, what do you consider the commons, or how does that fit in here? Is the commons for you just natural resources, or is it more? I guess what I’m terming commons, you are saying is civil society? And you envision that the networked “quadriform” model is the one that will ultimately be able to address these big, messy, care-centric problems? So just as climate/health/education is a confluence of public/private/commons stakeholders, you think the network form will leverage the best parts of tribe, institution, and market to solve these care-centric problems?