Unpacking the connectivity straw man
Sunday, May 21, 2006 at 3:56AM It's been a while, so worth doing.
And yes, Robb's recent weird take on the subject prompts me to do so, and for that I am grateful, because his thinking--both good and weak--often pushes mine (as I hope I return the favor on days both good and bad).
First off, think in terms of both degree and kind when considering differences in connectivity.
Degree can be expressed in both sheer volume and sequencing/maturity. In general, states with very high levels of connectivity are those with the highest rates of regulation, social welfare, and governments with great reach but limited power (invoking Fukuyama). They also feature strong rule sets as a rule, meaning lotsa transparency and trust.
This is why the most globalized states are those that are the most developed and typically advanced democracies. These mature, well-connected states simply don't go to war with one another, but they do, under the right conditions, come together to enforce collective rules against bad actors because they see the collective good in such actions. They also tend to be incredibly resilient to all forms of disruptive threats, because all that connectivity tends to trigger lotsa horizontal structures (pol, security, econ, social).
Likewise, as a rule, states with low levels of connectivity tend to feature the opposite of all those characteristics.
When expressed as a global geographic reality that recognizes critical mass (neighborhoods good and bad), there you basically have my argument for Core and Gap.
When a disconnected state purposefully ramps up its connectivity under conditions of state control, the destabilizing elements of such increased connectivity can be somewhat controlled, although never totally erased. You cannot expose previously closed societies to outside elements and not trigger a reaction. That's simply human nature. So as I said in BFA, any rapid uptick in connectivity naturally engenders a counter-reaction, typically expressed as nationalism, usually strongest among the youngest. With time, it moderates. But if done too much too fast, the result can be something on the order of the Iranian Revolution. So speed is everything (The Train's Engine Can Travel No Faster Than Its Caboose), especially WRT reasonable expectations on pluralism, meaning, as I often state, you've got to be realistic about how most states will end up seeking to manage a steep trajectory of growing connectivity--i.e., single-party states tend to be the norm.
Is it better to pursue such a path as a democracy? Sure, assuming you're not deluded by election-driven polities that cleverly mask their genuine single-party statehood (like Japan, South Korea and Mexico did for decades).
Is such masked single-party statehood a bad thing? Well, here we get to the sequencing/maturity argument.
Moving from Gap to Core, as I wrote in BFA, is akin to moving from youth (infantilized socities suffering too little government and thus chaotic, lawless existences or similarly immature societies suffering the oppposite, or authoritarianism) to young adulthood (New Core-ish in uneven development of the rule sets associated with the highest levels of connectivity) to mature adulthood (serious market states with mature democracies). When a mature state has a plus-up in connectivity (i.e., lotsa immigration) or suffers some negative feedback from it or disruption (like 9/11), the chances for organized violence are low (then again, it's good if such harmed states can come together in the aftermath of such shocks to improve their systemic responses in terms of new rules established or responsible parties targeted for justice). These states simply possess the necessary resilience across the board to handle such challenges. So here Kant is exactly right.
Immature states facing a similar challenge are far more likely to succumb to such organized (or disorganized) violence. History says Kant is right there too.
But it's the transitioning states that naturally face the most challenges because they face more rapid and more comprehensive change. In that flux, they face the greatest dangers of heightened violence/instability. It's like they're going through the puberty of connectivity: they feel so much more than they can understand or manage. This is why the Old Core's strategy of integrating the New Core is so crucial--as in, what England did for us way back when, we need to so for China today.
So Kant is wrong as far as the journey goes (i.e., the tendency for young, fragile democracies to war), thus again my preference for pushing connectivity more economically while being patient on democracy.
So how you connect is virtually as important as that you connect.
Here we get to the issue of kind; obviously, not all connectivity is good.
I have sex with my wife and that's good connectivity. I have sex with your wife and that's bad connectivity. I have lotsa sex with lotsa your wives and that's not just bad, it can be hugely disruptive and deadly.
Now, if you want to be obtuse, here is where you ask, "Well, which is it Barnett? Is sex good or bad?"
Obviously, it depends. Within the right rule set, it creates a lot of resiliency and stability and trust. But when mass rape is employed for purposes of racial strife, then it's amazingly destructive--and that's just patently obvious to any decent human being.
When states/societies are immature--connectivity-wise--any rapid ramping of connectivity is likely to be bad, as in, bad people will take advantage of the weak rule sets to do bad things (just like criminals historically take advantage of emerging technologies until the legal system catches up). So a failed state, for example, tends to feature plenty of bad connectivity--as in crime and terror and smuggling and mafias and the like. You can look at this and say, "This proves connectivity is bad!" Or, you can simply recognize bad connectivity can flourish under bad conditions.
This feels like enough of a rundown. I consider all this stuff self-evident, meaning stuff we all just pick up from life, but then I remember how binary we Americans tend to be, so for too many of us, globalization MUST be a choice between COMPLETE INTEGRATION (and thus "universal peace") or COMPLETE DISINTEGRATION (and thus "perpetual global war"), when of course it's a yin-yang relationship (as globalization spreads, it creates tumult and violence in many traditional socities it seeks to reformat, but if survived/managed well, susequent integration drives potential violence and threats from system-level to state-level and ultimately isolates them but never quite eliminates them at the individual level).
"So which is it Barnett? Is more connectivity good or bad? Is more globalization good or bad?"
Well, it depends on whether you're in the Gap or the Core or trying to rapidly make the journey from the former to the latter.
None of this is rocket science, just common sense--as such, always worth repeating.
Reader Comments (6)
More connectivity = increase in velocity of creative destruction in a society.
Weak/failed states cannot enforce (or create) rule-sets for new connectivity.
Incentive situation for private violence as a tool to "mediate" the creative destruction either by enforcing/protecting "contracts" or extortion to " distribute" profits to local actors.
Pretty sharp, Mark.
zenpundit (or others of similar sharpness)-- could you elaborate a bit plz? i think i read you, but not 100%... i'm interested in your definition of "creative destruction" and if you could provide an example or two of the situation you describe in your final sentence.
Also, Tom, thanks for the repetition of self-evident common sense in that post.
Creative Destruction is a term of art in economics introduced by Joseph Schumpeter. Follow the link for a pretty good presentation. This sort of thing is getting much more relevant because technological disruption enables creative destruction. Technological disruption (I'll use TD from here on out) generally runs on S curves. You start off with a slightly lower level of functionality at invention, you have some early fiddling about as you get the thing out of the lab and then *wham!* you start the steep upward slope of the technology. Things change, and change rapidly. At a certain point, the implications of the technology are fully worked into society and the progress that this technology has driven slows down and virtually stops. The curve looks like an elongated/flatened S. TD used to come along every few centuries. Think about the time between the TD of agriculture and the TD of plumbing. As civiliazation has progressed, TD has come along more and more frequently until not only are you guaranteed to see a major bout of TD once in your life, you're almost guaranteed that no part of your life will be without some sort of TD working its way through the system and often, there will be multiple TDs happening simultaneously. This is because engineering connectivity is generally considered benign by politicians. It is not. It is one of the most disruptive of all the connectivity flows because it is the least guarded against.
This TD driven creative destruction is incredibly difficult to handle. Even the Core struggles with the changes imposed by TD. This is why, for instance, the TD of modern medicine is bankrupting the Core. The Gap can't handle it at all which is why they try to separate themselves from it.
At the same time, all that TD is incredibly enabling and providing huge increases in utilitarian value so there's this nasty push/pull dynamic for them. The disruption pushes them away from connectivity but the increased lifespan, much more pleasant lifestyle possibilities pulls them into trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. They don't get that it's all wheat, it's all chaff.
Each TD S curve can change the fortunes of entire industry sectors. Combined, it's all mind boggling and nobody is secure in their leadership. Resiliency/consiliency is the only solution so that when a TD catches you off guard, you can bounce back quickly and not lose too much.
TM-- thank you for the review. very kind of you, and very clarifying.
So, when ZP posits: "Incentive situation for private violence as a tool to "mediate" the creative destruction either by enforcing/protecting "contracts" or extortion to " distribute" profits to local actors."
...he's saying that in failed states, where minimal functioning rulesets exist, theres incentive to use violence (because its very efficient i guess) to reduce connectivity and thus reduce the velocity of CD... therefore preserving the status quo of the existing market. An example would be a warlord with rather monopolistic control of what passes for commerce, using his thugs to keep things the way they are (corrupt and rule-set free) and extort a cut from all transactions.
is that right?
actually, now that i think about it, in my example situation there also would be CD occuring, but in a way that helps preserve the monopoly rather than cause market disruption (like the Wal-Mart example in the Wikipedia entry you linked)-- because the warlord controls commerce and the market, any innovations that do emerge (for example a shipment of new AK-47's, or iridium satellite phones) are deployed just to his thugs, destroying market diversification.
or i could be totally wrong, in which case your further thoughts would be appreciated.
sp0078 - Creative destruction is when Dell takes away huge business from Compaq, leading to the company's being bought by HP because Compaq simply wasn't viable anymore in the face of innovations in supply chain management and execution coming out of Dell. So, Compaq is gone but Dell didn't just get big, its threat made HP et al clean up their act so that they will survive going forward.
What happens in the Gap is that the incumbent monopoly (Compaq analogue) sends warlord thugs to burn out the insurgent producer (Dell analogue). There's plenty of destruction but where's the creation? How do the superior insights of the new guy get diffused out to the general market? In essence, they don't.
Sending thugs out to kill off competitors is expensive, though. If the competitor is small enough, unimportant enough, they are tolerated. Thus you have the common Gap phenomenon of really good microbusinesses that never grow and whose principles often do very well if they go to the Core and open up there. They are suppressing growth in order to fly below the radar and not be abusively acquired or violently put out of business. Once freed from those constraints, they're as likely as anybody else to make the jump to the big time, more likely than most, in fact, because they've gone through a tougher school.