Alex

Visa was a quasi-governmental, quasi-for-profit, quasi-consulting, [...] It was none of them, yet it was all of them. It was chaordic. In the strict legal sense, Visa was a nonstock, for-profit, membership organization. [...] The financial institutions that create its products were, at one and the same time, its owners, its members, its customers,

The issue of duality was the greatest example. On no issue were we more right. On none did we fail more ignominiously. [...] complete freedom of banks to become owner/members of both the MasterCharge and BankAmericard systems would foreclose the emergence of new systems, and severely limit consumer choice.

When speaking of others, rarely was a person referred to by name. The language suggested object or thing, not person. There was classification of individuals by nationality, race, or religious origination, and generalizations about each class. There was reluctance to deal with others as individual human beings. There was even greater reluctance to

The instinctive response is that one's time will be consumed managing self, superiors and peers. There will be little or no time left to manage subordinates. Exactly!

Competition and cooperation are not contraries. They have no opposite meaning. They are complimentary. [...] Cooperation gone mad results in the mindless pursuit of equality, use of centralized force to achieve uniformity, ever-increasing coercion to sustain it, and eventual slavery. Competition gone mad results in the mindless pursuit of

By the standards of what Visa ought to be, it would be a lie to deny a sense of failure.

No part knew the whole, the whole did not know all the parts, and none had any need to.

Why are organizations, everywhere, political, commercial, and social, increasingly unable to manage their affairs?

Why are individuals, everywhere, increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the organizations of which they are part?

Why are society and the biosphere increasingly in disarray?