From: jimruttshow8596
Forrest Landry, a thinker, writer, and philosopher, explores three archetypal models for human governance: consensus, meritocracy, and democracy. His “small group practice,” initially conceptualized before 2000 and published around 2001, outlines a method for these models to work in concert, particularly for groups up to 16 members, to address complex problems facing the world today [00:01:15] [00:01:50] [00:02:00] [00:05:53].
Traditional forms of governance, like existing institutions, often struggle with large-scale, complex issues spanning generations, cultures, and diverse actors, such as ecological problems, global warming, pollution, and sustainability [00:03:15] [00:03:31] [00:03:46]. Attempting new, innovative things within old structures is often a recipe for failure, highlighting the need for fresh thinking in societal governance [00:04:44] [00:05:27].
Archetypal Governance Models
Landry posits that consensus, meritocracy, and democracy span the archetypes of human governance and coordination [00:06:29] [00:06:37].
Consensus
- Description: Everyone is at the same level, communicating as peers, with horizontal communication [00:06:44] [00:06:51]. It aims for a common understanding and uniform agreement [00:07:31] [00:07:38]. Everyone is involved in every choice [00:08:42].
- Strengths: Makes very high-quality choices [00:09:18] [00:33:28]. Ensures coherency, especially for internal group definitions like values or membership [00:19:33] [00:20:19]. Consensus on values means everyone in the community agrees, unlike a vote where there are losers [00:20:49] [00:21:08]. Values, unlike purposes or actions, are not mutually exclusive and can be positively stated, allowing for parallelism [00:21:25].
- Weaknesses: Requires very high communicative bandwidth [00:09:20]. Can be too slow for large groups or situations requiring quick decisions, as there may not be enough time to reach a decision for every choice [00:09:25]. Consensus decisions are “sticky,” meaning one objector can stop a change, making revisions difficult [00:38:58].
Meritocracy (Hierarchical/Executive)
- Description: A top-down structure with an unequal way of relating, where roles and decision-making authority are delegated, e.g., a CEO in a corporation [00:06:54] [00:06:57] [00:07:42] [00:08:11]. Specific individuals are allocated per choice [00:08:07].
- Strengths: Can respond very quickly to a large number of choices [00:09:39]. Relatively simple and robust for emergencies [00:09:44].
- Weaknesses: Highly vulnerable to corruption or “agency risk” (also known as the “principal-agent problem”), where individuals make choices for private interests rather than the group’s benefit [00:09:51] [00:10:04] [00:10:36]. This corruption can be hidden or “occult,” making it hard to identify from the outside [00:11:02] [00:13:57]. If authority exceeds responsibility, it can lead to tyranny [00:45:33].
Democracy
- Description: Sits between consensus and meritocracy, involving subgroups with internal equality but potentially hierarchical relationships between them [00:07:01]. Involves choices through debate followed by a vote [00:08:48]. Often involves a representational model where agents (e.g., elected officials, congress) act on behalf of principals (citizens) [00:13:15].
- Strengths: Perceived as a “gold star” in Western thought [00:12:22].
- Weaknesses: Susceptible to hidden and covert forms of power (e.g., setting ballot wording) [00:11:02] [00:13:36]. Voting efficiently divides a group into two subgroups, limiting effectiveness and leading to political polarization [00:11:25] [00:11:48]. This divisiveness makes communities less resilient to external change [00:11:54]. The institutional structure of democracy can corrupt how ideas are discussed, framed, and how rhetoric is used [00:12:40].
The Small Group Practice: Integrating the Archetypes
Landry’s key insight is that while each model has weaknesses, combining all three in a specific way allows them to act as checks and balances, compensating for each other’s disadvantages and leveraging their strengths [00:15:00] [00:16:13] [00:49:01]. This approach is effective for small groups, ideally 9-12 people, and up to 16, but becomes unstable beyond that [00:01:54] [00:53:00].
The practice distinguishes between:
- Internal Processes (Consensus-driven): Focuses on the group’s self-definition, identity, values, and membership. It aims for high coherence. Decisions on internal organization, like defining roles and the scope of external communication, are made by consensus [00:17:22] [00:17:46] [00:20:36] [00:26:02].
- External Processes (Meritocracy-driven): Deals with the group’s interaction with the outside world, such as farming or external governmental relations [00:19:10] [00:22:58]. Once consensus defines a role’s scope and selects a person (or team) based on skill, willingness, and availability, that person or team operates with delegated authority [00:23:50] [00:25:57]. The meritocratic structure should have clearly partitioned, non-overlapping scopes [00:30:29].
The Role of Democracy: The “Red Button”
In this model, democracy has a very specific, limited function. It acts as a “red button” to transition the group back to consensus [00:28:31] [00:48:06].
- Vote of No Confidence: If the group perceives misrepresentation, incompetence, corruption, or incorrect boundary definition in a meritocratic function, a democratic vote (a true majority of half plus one of the entire membership) can “collapse” that specific meritocratic structure back to consensus [00:27:54] [00:30:35]. This forces the group to restart the process of defining the role and appointing a new meritocrat by consensus [00:30:51]. This is a high-cost action, deterring frivolous use [00:34:03].
- Suspending Consensus: Democracy can also vote to suspend internal consensus communication for a temporary period (e.g., two weeks) if discussions become too heated or unproductive [00:34:44] [00:36:15]. This acts as a relief valve, allowing tempers to cool before resuming internal deliberations [00:37:22]. The rules for such suspensions (e.g., maximum duration) would be established by prior consensus [00:38:09].
This limited role for democracy is designed to avoid its inherent divisiveness, ensuring that even “losers” of a vote of no confidence become integral participants in the subsequent consensus process [00:32:51]. The consensus group would also define reporting requirements for meritocracies to ensure transparency and accountability, allowing the “democracy” (as the collective decision-making body) to act responsibly [00:43:58] [00:45:10].
Scaling Beyond Small Groups
Landry’s later work reveals that the small group model cannot be directly scaled up beyond groups of about 16-30 people [00:53:06] [00:56:16]. Attempts to create larger groups by accreting smaller ones result in instability, largely due to “intersexual dynamics” and underlying evolutionary forces [00:56:26].
- Evolutionary Forces: Evolution, driven by mutation (additive), survival selection (multiplicative), and mate selection/recombination (exponential), strongly favors hierarchically organized structures [00:59:01] [00:57:24]. The recombinatoric effects are far more powerful in shaping information flow and choice-making dynamics [01:00:27]. These “unbounded pressures” prevent direct scaling through accretion [01:01:10].
- The Uncanny Valley: There’s an “uncanny valley” or “no man’s land” in group size, typically between 16 and approximately 200 people (around the Dunbar number), where traditional institutional forms and small-group processes fail to work effectively [01:02:08] [01:02:29]. Existing institutional forms (businesses, schools, governments, religious organizations) overemphasize hierarchical thinking and market-based processes, which are not responsive over long periods due to low bandwidth and lack of global awareness [01:04:25].
- Need for New Principles: Solving complex problems requires a new approach that goes beyond incremental improvements to existing systems (e.g., voting methodology, financial instruments like cryptocurrency or NFTs) [01:06:03] [01:15:00]. These economic systems and current democratic systems are insufficient. The fundamental problem lies at the meta-systemic level, where financialized capitalism destabilizes culture and ecosystems [01:15:37].
- Conscious Sustainable Evolution: Future governance architectures for large groups (200+ individuals) must foster “collective wisdom” and “collective intelligence” capable of “holographic communication” [01:07:01] [01:12:12]. This means balancing sustainability (absence of change) with evolution (the ability to adapt and recognize new solutions) [01:07:26]. It requires a shift from strategy-first to culture-first, where cultural values lead to vision and then strategy, emerging from the community itself [01:11:14] [01:11:41].
The challenge is to create a governance structure that is both stable over millennia and can address challenges like existential risk, protecting rainforests, and ensuring global well-being [01:32:32] [01:35:32]. This involves understanding human psychology and fundamental drivers of human behavior to design governance that addresses causes, not just symptoms [01:17:51]. It also requires balancing the relationship between man, machine, and nature, guiding technology wisely [01:19:07] [01:22:56]. Such a solution must be genuinely unique and address the deep, complex problems that current models cannot [01:36:53].