Low bandwidth and impersonal exchanges are not the same.
Like some people -- but very definitately not everyone -- I thrive on
low bandwidth, personal exchanges.
Edward Hugh, who is not on the Brin mailing list, but to whom I have
been sending my messages regarding Douglass North's new book,
"Understanding the Process of Economic Change", wrote
I suppose our contact is entirely 'impersonal'.
That got me thinking. From my point of view, our contact is
`personal', but it is also very low bandwidth. It consists of written
communications. That is all.
In his book, North talks about personal and impersonal exchanges; his
thesis is that in our genes, people are predisposed to personal
exchange, but that institutions may provide appropriate incentives to
engage in impersonal exchange.
However, North does not go into exactly what he means by `personal'
and `impersonal', at least not in the part of his new book that I have
read.
For some people, low bandwidth communications are not the same as
impersonal exchanges. For others, low bandwidth communications are
impersonal.
Some of my friends hate written messages in electronic mail or mailing
lists; other like them.
Letters are low bandwidth communications. You cannnot see the body
language of the person reading a letter nor smell him or her. With a
letter, you cannot even hear the other person's voice, which you can
with a telephone communication.
What did those who prefer low bandwidth communications do before the
invention of writing?
My thought is that they interacted with the physical world more than
with people, or as much as with people. These people were the
wanderers and the hermits. (From the point of view of those who
enjoyed personal exchanges, they were the explorers and spies.)
In addition, people did not mind low bandwidth communications figured
out how various ways to predict the eclipse of the moon ("How the
Shaman Stole the Moon", William H. Calvin, 1991, Bantam). They
learned how to keep ants out of the cooking area -- a useful, but also
`magical' action ("The Spell of the Sensuous", David Abram, 1996,
Pantheon, page 13).
Since knowledge was not well integrated in a realistic manner, they
could not do much, but they could do some. ("The Gifts of Athena",
Joel Mokyr, 2002, Princeton)
This schema fits North's claim (also without much evidence that I have
read so far, but which I favor) that people have two modules in their
minds, one which focuses on the human environment, the other which
focuses on the physical environment. The two modules work differently
from each other. (I suspect there are more modules; but this typology
is currently good enough.) In an individual, one module may be more
important than another.
Low bandwidth, but personal exchanges make impersonal exchanges more
possible. Those who enjoy letters will accept the idea that disputes
between people who are strangers can be settled by a mechanism that
does not depend on feud or direct tyranny. As a practical matter,
such dispute settlement is the key to enabling impersonal exchanges.
Thus, North summarizes Avner Greif as saying
... [in] the eleventh and twelfth centuries ... in the
Mediterranean ... traders from the Islamic world developed
in-group social communication networks .... While effective in
relatively small homogenous ethnic groups, such networks did not
lend themselves to the impersonal exchange that arises with the
growing size of markets ... In contrast, the Genoese developed
bilateral enforcement mechanisms which entailed the creation of
formal legal and political organizations ...
So we see humans with
* modules to interpret the human and/or the physical environment
* a preference for either high bandwidth or low bandwith
communication, which goes with a preference for the human and/or
the physical environment (this latter is a testable proposition; I
think it is correct, but not so sure)
* an initial preference for personal exchanges
* the ability to engage in impersonal exchanges, mediated initially
by those with a preference for low bandwith communications (I am
moderately sure of the latter notion, but it need not be the case)
* (From yesterday's message, 2005 Nov 29, part 4 of "Douglass North:
new book")
an increase in the US portion of the working population who come
to exchange their labor for income in a hierarchy rather than in a
market as an independent proprietor or in their own family.
* (Not included in yesterday's message)
the understanding that Coase was right in arguing that
corporations makes economic sense when prices cannot be set
inexpensively in a market, but that they can manage such
difficult-to-price activities and can charge an overall fee that
covers the cost both of the activities and of managing the people
doing them. (I find Coase's argument very persuasive)
* (From yesterday's message)
That more and more people in the US see their work and what they
achieve as more or less unrelated, with rewards going to senior
management.
So, we not only have (as said in yesterday's message), a growing
dislike of impersonal exchanges, which are misperceived as being
always and intrinsically unjust rather than being unjust when the
institutions that support them are bad, we also have
* a history that suggests that more and more people will come to
view impersonal exchanges as always and intrinsically unjust,
since production using at least one form of technology requires
difficult-to-price activities.
I have heard that modern computer and communications' technology
enables previously difficult-to-price activities to be priced in
markets, but have not seen the software. If this last claim is true,
then the current romantic and feudalistic movements should fade.
Otherwise, these thoughts are grim.
--
Robert J. Chassell
[EMAIL PROTECTED] GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc
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