A Cow and Milkmaid for Climate Change

Human beings are a model dependent species, which is to say we can’t conceive what we can’t see and vice versa. Our model-dependence is revealed in our learning of language. Of all the languages and words in the world we’ll only learn ones which are modeled for us, or spoken in our presence in the process of communication. Once we conceive the relationship between words and objects, sometimes we’ll make up words to attach to objects. New words enter the world as a result of modeling coupled with imagination. If we make a new word and use it, others might acquire it through modeling. If it’s a useful word, its use may soon sprout over the earth. This is how everything new enters the world.

A study of the history of science and technology reveals every major advance has been preceded by a modeling event where the advance was ‘observed’ and a lively imagination translated it into an application. These models were not always straightforward and some were extremely subtle. The vaccine for small pox was the result of Edward Jenner ‘observing’ a milkmaid contracting cow pox from being in contact with cows and as a result becoming protected against small pox. From that model Jenner learned how to create the technology of immunization. He did this in an era when we were ignorant of cells, pathogens and antibodies; his discovery helped us find those.

Study of birds showed us the mechanics of propulsion and lift that accumulate to flight but not how to control those two forces to maintain flight. Control, relative to flight, was observed first in bicycles and then in kites. Those two models studied by people with lively imaginations made it possible for us to fly. It has been forever true without exception if something is possible, there is a system in existence proving it is indeed possible. All we need do is find it.

Here’s our situation. We’re facing environmental catastrophe. We know the mechanics of climate change and some technical solutions that hold promise of being able to solve some of the mechanical problems related some of the drivers, one being carbon in the atmosphere. But there are many factors driving the environmental disaster which the conversion to renewable energy sources will not solve; war, poverty, deforestation, soil depletion, groundwater contamination, ocean acidification and so on. When all is distilled, it becomes evident climate change is driven by human behavior. Ultimately it traces back to our inability to cooperate with each other and, by extension, nature. Right now, we’re unable even to cooperate on the issue of transitioning from fossil fuels.

The inability to cooperate is not a new challenge. We’ve known human disagreement and conflict is catastrophic to us and our environment for thousands of years. We’ve been seeking to solve this problem since we left caves, perhaps before. Throughout history we’ve been endeavoring to build governments, business structures, religions, and moral, penal, civil and ethical codes all to the end of solving our social problems so we could cooperate in the building of what today we describe as the sustainable state. When conceiving a solution to our social troubles we’ve been modeling all along, using the family, nature and failed social systems as models. We’ve evolved through theocracies, civil monarchies, representative governments, veered into communism and jumped into capitalism with no success. They all fail.

Family, nature, and failed social systems are the wrong models. A failed social system is a lousy model because a successful model will always be successful relative to the modeled behavior. We need a model to show us how to cooperate to mutual benefit, which failed social institutions and extended families don’t. Nuclear families are not and cannot be peer to peer structures so cannot serve as a model for one. Nature is a valid model, but at a level too sublime for us to access, apparently. We’re distracted by the eating and being eaten in nature. We describe nature as dominated and driven by hostility and conflict — which it is not. We need a valid, accessible model, a social cow and milkmaid.

There is one available. Traffic systems. A traffic system is a community project and enables human beings to cooperate to mutual benefit. A traffic system is a social system in that it moderates human interaction and makes possible for everyone to enjoy positive outcomes which would not be possible but for its influence on human interaction. The positive outcomes are distributed not the same but equitably throughout the community. It is an elegant model to study if one wishes to understand how to build a cooperative and therefore sustainable society.

We’ve built governments and religious out of a desire to organize and coordinate our activity in a way that lets us work us work together, mutually benefit from working together, and then use our personal share of the proceeds from working together as we see fit to fulfill our own personal ambitions. We desire to work together but maintain personal autonomy, to be peers with equal voice, not servants of masters. We don’t typically conceive it as such, but this is exactly what a traffic system allows us to do.

The traffic system exists by reason of numerous, independent contributors: auto makers, road engineers, road pavers, oil drillers, refiners and service stations, sign makers, electricians, motels and so on. The contributors to the system in one town are different than the contributors in the next town, state and country, but look how much cooperation has been expressed to make the traffic system uniform in the essential ways so a driver may drive from town to town, state to state, country to country with confidence. The reciprocity within this system is beyond compare to any other human social system.

Most us of use a traffic system daily and visit places and have experiences we would be absolutely unable were it not for the traffic system. We go where we desire, not where someone else desires to send us. We go seeking to fulfill our own interests, our needs. We can go as much as we wish and still we don’t interfere with anyone else’s ability to use the roads. We choose our own course and if we make a mistake there is always a way to get back on track and continue on our way. There are no traps in the traffic system as designed where, if you end up on this road, your life will be destroyed. And all of this is true for every person on the streets. Everyone is pursuing their own interests in a shared system. There are none who have to sacrifice on behalf of others. There are no winners and losers of the types every other social system sorts us into.

Study our behavior on the streets and we’re cooperating in the most amazing way. There’s no bigotry in the system as designed. We trust perfect strangers, regardless of race, wealth, creed or sex. Each is on a self-invested missions of their own design but we trust them to stop at red lights and stops signs while we accept the right of way which has been accorded us in this instance. We are literally trusting strangers with our lives. At the next corner when the light is against us we’ll cede to the right accorded others regardless of who they are. The traffic system, as designed, is an elegant peer to peer system. No matter the price of your car, if you’re first in line at the light, when it turns green you’ll leave first. The Tesla, when making a left turn will wait while an oncoming 25 year-old oil-smoking tin can passes.

Our behavior in traffic systems contradicts any contention we are unable to cooperate due to an inherently flawed human nature, or our inherent nature is to conflict. If this were true, the traffic system could be not be any way but bigoted, antagonistic, predatory and dangerous as any other social system ever built.

In the traffic system, though there are glitches and accidents, the success rate is 99.99 percent. 99.99% of us are going to travel on the streets today and have a successful venture, which means we’re going to choose where we go, get there and return home safely. And we’re going to do it tomorrow, the day after and… There is no other traditional ‘social system’ human beings have built which comes anywhere near as successful. There is no other social system where humans can choose a destination and have a 99.9% likelihood of achieving that destination. In fact, right now it looks like the success rate in traditional ‘social systems’ is less than 10% and even those 10% are not immune from a social crisis, but only fortunate for the time being because someone is looking to destroy them and/or take what they have. There is still time for them to lose, also.

We drive where we wish when we wish unencumbered by system bigotry but look what happens when we reach our destination. We zoom to university, lured on the promise of an education which will lead to our social success — but leaves many us possessing a degree (on only part of one) which has no market value, heavily indebted, underemployed, and impoverished. That system was engineered to do exactly what it did; take advantage of desires and exploit them in a profit-taking-for-one-side scheme.

We take a bus to our destination — a business with employment openings which we are certainly qualified for. But time and time again many face discrimination for being too old, wrong-colored, wrong-faithed, wrong-schooled, wrong-dressed, physically impaired but in a way which will not interfere with our ability to do the job.

We may get a job and walk there and work as hard as we can, be loyal to the company — be paid a minimum wage, one which won’t pay our bills. We are expected to pay as much per unit of food, gas, electricity, telephone, and insurance as those making more in an hour than we make in a year. There is a very high likelihood if we’re low-waged we’re paying more for equivalent units of goods than the high-waged. This is not due to human nature but human social system engineering.

When we buy a house and apply for a mortgage we’re bedazzled by different loan programs filled with fine print beyond our ability to comprehend — and if we make the wrong choice we fall into a trap. The mortgage system is not designed to be mutually beneficial in any sense of the word though it is marketed as being designed to protect the consumer.

In a medical emergency we rush to the hospital and present our insurance card. We are all treated, and only afterwards are some of us told the hospital is not in network with our insurance plan, our plan is not paying, and we are now thousands and thousands of dollars in debt — after having scrimped to pay thousands of dollars for insurance. Again, that’s an outcome deliberately designed into a system no different than a bridge unfinished but signs indicate the bridge will take us to our destination — covered medical bills in this case. Instead of all getting where we thought we were going, many drive off the unfinished bridge and drown.

Everywhere we drive there are traps, social traps, designed to prey on us. The grocery store is filled with products labeled as healthy, natural and nutritious that if consumed will slowly steal our health away. We can rely on the stop sign, the speed limit sign, the yellow line to mean exactly what they say and all the time, but we cannot do that with respect to any label on any marketed product. Marketers are allowed to use language in deceiving ways to cause us to take actions that, if we actually knew the facts, we would not. That allowance of marketers is engineered into the social system. It can be engineered out.

The social crises of the other social systems spill into the traffic system. There is the problem of driving while being black. That’s not a problem inherent to the traffic system. Neither is the surge in road terrorism and road rage, the speed trap designed to extort strangers, the unscrupulous repair shop, the protesters blocking the roadway, or the insurance company that red-lines our neighborhood. If we solve the other social problems, these problems will no longer spill over into the traffic system. Then we’ll not only be successful in getting to our destination, but we’ll equally as successful at our destination.

If we’ll let the traffic system tell us its secrets it will inform us that the ability and desire to cooperate is inherent to human nature, but human beings are unable to cooperate except there is a social system capable to facilitate that experience. It will inform us the social system which will enable human beings to cooperate must meet what can be called fundamental physical conditions.

The traffic system can be our social cow and milkmaid. The laws of physics which govern social systems have unknowingly been engineered into the traffic systems as the physics of control of machine flight were unknowingly engineered into the bike and kite. We can reverse-engineer the traffic system to learn how to build governments and other social institutions that enable will us to cooperate in them and achieve our social objectives as much as and successfully as we are able in the traffic system.

If you have an ambition to solve a social problem — climate change, discrimination, a refugee crisis, war, poverty — find a perch at a window or balcony two stories above a busy metropolitan intersection where automobiles, commercial trucks, public transportation and pedestrians pass through an intersection governed by street lights. Everything you need to know about how to build a social system that enables human beings to cooperate to mutual benefit will play out minute after minute. Study it like Newton studied falling objects until it makes sense to you why the traffic systems works as it does. Then, the potential exists to couple your imagination to the model and translate the solution into an application for the area of your concern.

In another post, I’ll describe the fundamental physical conditions present in the traffic system that make it a functional social system.

Kurt Johnson, Social System Physicist
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