6 Star Special–Soros Out-Grows Broken System, June 24, 2011
On its own merits, without the Foreword from George Soros, this book is a solid five. With the most extraordinary Foreword, a Foreword that draws the lines of battle between a totally dysfunctional global governance and financial system of systems all lacking in integrity–where truth is not to be found–and the need for transparency, truth, and trust, the book goes into my top 10%, 6 stars and beyond.
The essay is a *major* part of the book, the first 57 pages out of just over 335. The essay is available free online and is a “must read” item for any person who wishes to be part of restoring the Republic and laying the foundation for creating a prosperous world at peace. Searching for <George Soros My Philanthropy> will lead directly to both the New York Review of Books and the GeorgeSoros.com offerings–select the latter to get the full article without subscription nonsense from the New York Review of Books.
I confess to having lost faith in George Soros–he fell for the Barack Obama Show and wasted a lot of time and money on what ends up being the Goldman Sachs Show–to the point that Goldman Sachs not only continues to own the Secretary of the Treasury, but now has installed its own man in the role of National Security Advisor. The irony does not amuse me.
This essay is phenomenal, and bears on the book at large, because Soros has finally put his finger of the sucking chest wound that I, John Bogle, William Grieder, and most recently Matt Taibbi have been sounding the alarm on: the lack of intelligence and integrity in the system of systems. Soros is halfway there; he is now outside the system looking in, and that is good news for all of us.
“I am looking for novel solutions in order to make an untidy structure manageable.”
“This book is a product of applying systems thinking to the management and organization of enterprises”. Russel L. Ackoff writes, “therefore, an understanding of the nature of systems and systems thinking is essential for understanding what this book is about. Although most people can identify many different systems, few know precisely what a system is. Without such knowledge, one cannot understand them, and without such an understanding, one cannot be aware of their implications for their management and organization and for treatment of the most important problems that currently face them” (p.5).
Thus, he firstly argues that a system is a whole consisting of two or more parts that satisfies the following five conditions:
(1). The whole has one or more defining properties or functions.
(2). Each part in the set can affect the behavior or properties of the whole.
(3). There is a subset of parts that is sufficient in one or more environments for carrying out the defining function of the whole; each of these parts is necessary but insufficient for carrying out this defining function.
(4). The way that each essential part of a system affects its behavior or properties depends on (the behavior or properties of) at least one other essential part of the system.
(5). The effect of any subset of essential parts on the system as a whole depends on the behavior of at least one other such subset.
In 1970 I taught from this book when it was entitled
“Choice, Communication and Conflict”
What makes this book “magical” is Ackoff (from his
management and behavioral science roots) provides
“operational definitions” for many ill-defined words
and concepts — from defining ‘knowledge' & ‘understanding' to providing definitions of feelings/emotions that — operationally — you know — that if certain events take place in a person's life, that you know the feeling they have.
This is only a glimmer of what this book is about. In terms of Kuhn's idea of “paradigm shifts” — this book
represents a shift that has yet to be appreciated, thirty years later!
Chuck Spinney, along with Pierre Sprey and Winslow Wheeler and a few others, one of the top twelve brains with integrity on US defense fraud, waste, and abuse, raves about this book, calling it “one of the very best books of the subject of guerrilla warfare and insurrection that I have ever read.” For myself, this would normally be a four, but since Chuck is one of my intellectual way points, I won't argue and go with five. I can see what Chuck likes so much about the conclusion–it is a summary of the “true cost” of a government that lacks both intelligence and integrity, and strives to perpetuate global war as a matter of momentum. The author does an excellent job of including in the “total cost” the mental and physical disability toll, the social toll, the foreign “collateral damage” toll, and of course the financial toll including all the borrowing that has been done “in our name” but not in our interest.
Phi Beta Iota: The industrialization/ chemicalization of agriculture, in combination with the corruption of every aspect of society beginning with governance and extending to the media, has allowed for the desecration of the Earth and the poisoning of humanity. This has been done with the explicit consent and encouragement of the so-called elites of the West, who have a vision of eugenics and the covert eradication of the poor and uneducated over time. These elites do not see that the brainpower of the three billion poor is the only thing that can restore natural harmony and sustainable agriculture as well as legitimate governance and natural capitalism. The time has come to create M4IS2–public intelligence in the public interest.
Beyond Five Stars–Epic, Poetic, Startling, Reasoned, June 11, 2011
I have been totally absorbed with this book, and I HATE electronic books. At the age of 58, if I can't hold it and flip back and forth and quickly check the index, and so on, it's just not a book. This is why I have encouraged the author, whom I know and respect enormously, to offer this book as an Amazon CreateSpace soft-cover hard-copy. It should certainly be translated into Arabic, Chinese, and other languages. This book goes into my top ten percent “6 Stars and Beyond.” See the others at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, under Reviews (middle column).
Right up front, let me give the author and this book my highest praise: both have INTEGRITY. Integrity is not just about honor, it's about doing the right thing instead of the wrong thing righter, it's about being holistic, open-minded, appreciating diversity, respecting the “other.” There is more integrity in this book than in the last thousand top secret intelligence reports on Afghanistan, all full of lies and misrepresentations.
I was expecting so much more from this book, it is almost a three in relation to disappointment, but assuredly a solid four as far as it goes. This is a very good review of politics at the top personality level, but devoid of any discussion at all of corruption, government ineptitude, and so on. The index stinks, mostly a name index, but that sums the book up–names, not root cause and effect.
Part I is about Deng, Thatcher, Reagan, Gorbechev, Eastern Europe coming free, Latin America moving to the center, and India awakening.
Part II is about Fukuyama, Greenspan (before he was striped naked), Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Asia rises, and in a most interesting but all too short section: the role played by the anti-globalization advocates and the neo-conservatives.
Part III offers three scenarios, the world as Europe, the world as China and Russia, and the world as Pakistan.
In relation to my broader reading habits the book is disappointing. It is a journalism story not at all illuminating. Particularly annoying to me, and especially so noting the financial reporting capabilities of the author, is the absolute refusal to call a spade for what it is: a spade. The destruction, de-construction, corruption, and flat out fraud that permeated all of the governments under the varied leaderships discussed by the author do not exist within the jacket of this book.
At a simplistic level there is certainly value to the book, but it ignores so much I was constantly resisting the urge to simply put the book down and move on.
The author concludes that there are three sources of zero sum thinking:
1. Slower economic growth
2. Rivalry between the USA and China (no mention of Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, and Wild Cards like South Africa and Turkey that I noticed)
3. Clash of national interests in face of global challenges–the author's range of understanding of global challenges is very limited and traditional: climate change (which is 10% of environmental degradation), global economic imbalances (but no focus on massive fraud and corruption), nuclear proliferation (ho hum compared to poverty and infectious disease), resource shortages (duh, especially when farm land is the next bubble and food prices suffer from unethical politicians pushing ethanol), and failed states (no mention of the role of the US in increasing that number from 25 to 175 in the last 12 years).
When the author states that China is “stealing” jobs from the US I almost drop this book to a three. That is idiotic. Jobs are being exported from the USA by unethical CEOs with no grounding in moral capitalism, and allowed to do so by unethical politicians who are absolutely not making policy in the public interest.
The author anticipates that polarization and protectionism are the most likely near-term national reactions, and this is the point at which I realize he has absolutely no idea about what is going on among the young and those that have labored in the evolutionary activism, emergence, and open everything circles these past twenty years.
QUOTE I liked (275): “On every one of the big global issues, a mixture of national interests and ideological disagreements blocks the chances of an international deal.”
Although I like the quote it reflects a complete lack of appreciation for panarchy, end-user democracy, open information-sharing, hybrid coalitions across the eight tribes (academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, non-governmental/non-profit).
My view of the author as totally status quo and convention is confirmed when he states that the existing international economic system must be preserved at all costs.
There is nothing in this book that actually helps understand complexity or foster resilience.
6 Star Special–Soros Out-Grows Broken System, June 24, 2011
