Only when the gap in wealth and status approaches that level which would be considered fair within a Dunbar's number-sized social network in daily contact… only then can we consider the possibility of a healthy, scaled social organism*.

*A self-recognized and internally governed economic/political grouping organized for basic survival decisions and actions.

Moreover, it may be that the rapid expansion of ICT and the nature of the Ultimatum Game makes this first assertion no longer just a nice ideal but a survival necessity.

This begs the questions: if the previous two statements are true, can this necessity be reasonably satisfied while avoiding pitfalls? (e.g. a monoculture as undesirable and unhealthy in a society as it is in organized agriculture from the serious dangers of losing needed variation, but more on this later.)

Are the first statements true? I believe they are but can also see how each could be credibly attacked. As a way to assert their validity, and at the same time expand on their definition let me deal with anticipated counter-arguments.

• What is healthy in this context and how can it possibly be evaluated objectively?
• Why assume primitive societies were healthy?
• Who can say what gap in either wealth or status is appropriate and wouldn't what's fair to one individual seem unfair to someone else anyway?
• Humanity has made great material and intellectual progress... and isn't it often (or even generally) true that the individual inventiveness that drives that progress IS inequality in wealth and status?
• A socially-stratified globe has existed at least since the birth of agriculture and done pretty well. Why should ICT specifically change anything about that?
• Is it possible that human stratification leading to either speciation or extinction of portions of humanity is inevitable anyway and so its best to let nature take its course?

Assuming I can drag a few of you through this first stage of this very fuzzy subject...

Can this Necessity be fulfilled in a reasonable way?

• Can a Global Social Organism be successful where individual wealth/status gaps are bounded? (I assert that it not only can, but cannot survive without them!)
• What might it look like?
• What are the dangers?
• What are the potentials?
• Can beneficial market mechanisms survive? Or is this some dream of communal utopia? (I believe markets, competition, creativity and healthy ambition will not only survive but will expand to overcome multiple distortions associated with inadequately addressed scaling issues... in tandem with better managed commons functions where market approaches are sometimes counter-productive)

And finally, what does it all have to do with decision mechanisms in representative systems?

(This post is a quick introduction to what will be a very much longer post or series of posts addressing these issues. I'm on the road and may only have intermittent chance to write for the next couple of weeks but for various reasons want to at least begin laying out some of these ideas now.)

Freedom of Speech & Association are Essentials! When civilization's scale requires technology for their exercise... then that technology is also essential in its design, implementation and broad availability.

"Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech." Benjamin Franklin

(reposted from my blog Chagora & Civilization Systems )