One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organizati…

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

Efforts to make information conform to archaic notions of scarcity, ownership, and finite physical quantity--concepts that grew out of the agricultural and industrial age--merely lock us into old mental boxes of constraint and exploitation.

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?

I could think of no way to fully realize the concept by including merchants and cardholders as owner/members. The slightest hint in that direction raised a storm of opposition. We should have included them. Perhaps, with more time, tenacity, and ingenuity, we could have.

Nation-state monopolies on the issuance and control of currency would erode. [...] The vast preponderance of the system would fall to those who were most adept at handling and guaranteeing alphanumeric value data in the form of arranged particles of energy.

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 mind

After sharing the Visa story and underlying concepts, I told a small story. [...] Why then does such a system still lie dormant in the field of health? The answer is not complicated. Who would you trust to own and control such a system? [...] Only with the evolution of a chaordic organization in which all relevant and affected p

How much time, energy, and ingenuity did they spend obeying senseless rules and procedures that had little to do with the results they were expected to achieve?

people with power to write and enforce rules rarely spend much time following them.

the first and primary function of the card was to identify buyer to seller and seller to buyer. [...] The seller would receive good funds in local currency and the buyer would be billed later in the currency of their country. Thus, the second primary function was as guarantor of the value data. Clearly, it warranted to both buyer and sell