The Hidden Power

"There's a class war alright," chirruped Investor Warren Buffet recently, "But it's our class making war on yours. And we're winning." It reminded me of the Lao Tsu, where he says that the Way of Heaven is to take from those with excess, and give to those who do not have enough. "The way of man is different," the sage quips. "He takes from those who have nothing, in order to give to those who alre...

In this special edition of  The Hidden Power  podcast for  Democratic Yorkshire , Philip Tottenham talks with Ed Straw, and Professor Malcolm Prowle on the subject of the day and panacea England's ills - Regionalisation.  Talking Points: - The experience of government: consultancy, Thatcher, Blair, powerlessness at the centre of power - Problems with centralisation. How we expe...

Philosophy, famously, will not get the washing up done. And it will not fix the crises of climate and biodiversity. So what can I do? An individual amongst Billions? In economics, a basic unit is - The Household. And while economics tracks the flows of goods and services, it is striking that both goods and services require energy and other resources. Therefore The Household is an important unit to...

It is no secret that the various tribes and bubbles of our world have wildly differing beliefs about things. Why can't people just accept the truth? But the truth is so contentious. And framing is so contentious. And all these people seem to have the most outlandish superstitions. An abiding feature of these podcasts, as we've highlighted many times, is this thing called Systems Thinking , and whi...

The late Ken Robinson, in one of his TED talks, tells the story of a child who was drawing with wild strokes. The teacher asked - What are you drawing? And the child replied "God". The teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the child said, "Well. They will in a minute." Badum Tshhhh. Last week we explored what people are talking about when the talk about gods. But for most peopl...

What are we talking about, when we talk about God? There's no doubt that something has been lost with the pervasive decline of religion in the modern world. Society is fractured. We lack a shared framework. We're tired of trying to work everything out. It's easier just to avoid thinking at all. Which is in some ways the point of religion - to avoid having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to pur...

We left off at the end of the last episode wondering what might make the Biosphere a compelling object for our attention; this in the context of the all-too-human reality of our challenges - the tragedy of the commons, the addiction system, the psychological imperative of avoidance. In listening back over this episode, I'm reminded of two things: one, Edmund in King Lear - "Thou, Nature, art my Go...

When we finished series 2 - Preflight Checklist - one thing was clear, any governance for Spaceship Earth going forward must put the Biosphere at the centre. Governance models from households, up through companies and countries, to international bodies must include the Biosphere as their central partner. So far, perhaps, so obvious. We know we need to act, and in many cases, we know what we need t...

26. In transitioning from polluting to non-polluting activities, communities and companies shall be supported fairly. We have finally arrived to this episode, and this crucial check in our pre-flight checklist, as if through layers of an onion to its core, and yet - its as though we have arrived back where we started. It’s about the people.  A good example of what not to do, in transitioning...

25. Systemic inquiry shall accompany investment commitments in the technosphere; thereafter, end-to-end producer responsibility applies. Throughout Preflight Checklist , and our previous series Proof of Concept we have placed great hope on Systems Thinking. What is that, again? Yes, trying to see systems in their totality - but also: humility with regards to knowledge. In this case, rather than as...

24. Company duty to inform: For each product or service, consumers shall be informed of the biosphere and human impact of its sourcing, manufacture, distribution, and post-use treatment. As consumers, we have more power than we might think. We not only vote with our wallets, but our consumption is conspicuous, and contributes to setting a tone across society - and this is a secondary and perhaps m...

End-to-end producer responsibility: Producers are responsible for all impacts of their activities and products, from raw material extraction to product recycling/disposal. There's no doubt that a single company can create and inspire change. But if all producers up and down the supply chain, and indeed across the economy, are holding each other accountable for all impacts by virtue of this princip...

Companies shall act in the interests of people, and the biosphere. As we've mentioned in recent episodes, from the standpoint of the biosphere, humanity's existence is felt primarily through industrialisation. Resource extraction, pollution, as well as much monoculture in agriculture have taken their toll on both the biosphere and many of the people it supports. Indeed, while populations have been...

The start of a new season is a good time to take stock, and as we look forward to the next series, on companies, we reflect on where we are now, nearly a year after the launch of The Hidden Power Podcast, on October 11th, 2020. But who has time to reflect? These turbulent years have been eclipsed by another Summer of wild fires and wilder floods, as the climate crisis begins to bite - presenting a...

We're off for the Summer! But - I found a great quote on the great _nitch instagram this morning, by the writer James Baldwin, who seems to be almost uniquely articulate when it comes to things that really matter. So I thought I'd read it out. We've finished the Governments section of our Preflight Checklist series - basically, a constitution to save the world - and in September we'll be back, tac...

Check 21 - Governments - Tax: Too much is never enough Everyone pays their taxes. The deceptive simplicity of this principle belies the fact that, obviously enough, not everyone pays their taxes - quite the contrary, and the leaders of the G7 group of the world's richest nations are attempting to address this by imposing a global corporation tax of 15%. Whether this is enforceable remains to be se...

Technocratic democracy: Government designs for action shall be disciplined through their vetting. We often hear that politicians are essentially sales staff - but there are implications of this, if we extend the metaphor. They are not the engineers. They don't really understand what they are selling, they're just playing for the team. And if we were to imagine that someone did really understand ,...

Beneficial change most often results from working with the affected population through the medium of STiP. Systems Thinking in Practice - or STiP, as we sometimes call it - is, frankly, one of the great hopes of our time. It has the endorsement of the UN, the WHO and the OECD and has proved effective in alleviating difficulties of bewildering complexity by engaging social learning. This principle...

Designs for action shall be put into practice in the knowledge and positive acceptance that feedback may result in their amendment. Decisions, decisions: as we saw in the last episode, 150 per week per ministry, each spouting its share of paperwork like a photocopier out of control, swamping its surroundings with verbiage, utterly lacking in practical intent, and for anyone trying to see if the sy...

Recognise that most ‘decisions’ by government are political experiments. ...except that with normal experiments - the scientific kind - measurements are taken, changes are monitored, conclusions drawn, theory is adjusted. Oddly, this is not the case with government decisions: debate is held, rehearsing the full repertoire of grimace, flush, sound and fury; and someone wins, and after that - a hot...

The purpose of government is to produce beneficial change One of our central concerns in this podcast is why government is so ineffective - why don't governments work? And while many roads have led to preferential lobbying, there is arguably a deeper, darker reason even than that: aimlessness. The result? Bureaucracy, shiftlessness, the famous treacle that blinds and obstructs us in our endeavours...

Governments shall serve democracy, and be effective, stable, adaptable, accountable, and open. What is government for? What to we want from it? We can hazard a guess at what we don't want: uselessness, volatility, inflexibility, opaqueness and inaccessibility may seem like familiar themes - and we know we don't want them. And a government that does not serve democracy - well, what would that look...

Eliminate institutionalised bribery: No one shall benefit financially or electorally, directly or indirectly, now or later, from a decision in which they are involved or have influenced. There is a Grey Area. Not a clearly defined circle of criminality, but a vast zone of stasis and obfuscation which represents an almost impenetrable sea wall to buffet back waves of improvement. It's not necessari...

We each have a duty to think before we speak. What does the world look like if people don't take the time to think before they speak? Oh wait, that's the world we live in already. And the results are bemoaned, debated and endured. But what is duty, really? And what does "thinking" actually entail? And what are we really doing, when we speak? In many ways, in this episode, we cut to the heart of th...

Why should we care about political lobbying? Isn't business all about making connections? What's the problem? You hear phrases like "systemic" and "endemic" - but what does that actually amount to? Unfortunately it amounts to a vast global problem that creates the illusion of democratic process, but with out much actual democracy. Instead, all kinds of effects which are clearly and obviously probl...