The End-game

Other posts in this series describe the micro-oriented approach, compare the ideas to others in development, and provide examples of the benefits of the micro-oriented approach. 

This post focuses on the goal. What is the end-game for the micro-oriented approach?

If we brought the micro-oriented approach to its logical conclusion, what would society look like? What is its endgame?

There are two aspects pertaining to the issue. First, can elements of the model be implemented without others. Second, how extensive does the model need to be for the approach to be effective at achieving its goals and realizing its values.

The first answer aspect is clear—the four primary elements of the micro-oriented approach—small scale, low-tech, smaller communities and a focus on the least of these—must happen in tandem. Small-scale but high-tech will still exclude those with low levels of formal education. Large-scale but low-tech will still present barriers to entry and will tend towards the kind of environments wherein sweatshops thrive. Failing to resist urban bias tends to encourage scale and technology for its own sake, as does not changing the metrics of success from accumulation to human needs and equity. 

The micro-oriented approach cannot be done halfway. Omitting one element risks undermining the entire approach. A piecemeal approach—one that is local and shallow—will fail.

If all aspects of the approach need to be done in tandem, what about the second aspect of the question. How widespread must the implementation of the micro-oriented approach to achieve results? Would achieving the end goals require radical change on a nearly global scale? Or could the change be more modest, more local, and yet extensive in terms of the depth of implementation?

The numerous examples of successfully implementing the micro-oriented approach suggest that local-yet-deep approach can work successfully on a small scale and in a local context—a piecemeal approach. A community or a local government can choose to implement principles on their own—encourage small-scale production, dismantle bias towards large-scale industries, forgo technology for its own sake in favor of technology that makes sense, and nurture more human-scale communities.

Even actors smaller than a town or a community can implement this approach. We’ve documented examples of neighborhoods, farming communities, tourist sites, and individual factories benefitting from adopting the micro-oriented approach. Whatever actor does this must first decide to forgo profit maximization, rapid growth, and the shock and awe value of technology and scale in favor of more inclusive, more participatory, and more egalitarian systems and values.

The challenges of local implementation

However, implementing the micro-oriented approach raises at least three additional challenges.

1. Can locally-implemented small-scale production compete with larger-scale competitors operating globally? 

2. How can local actors resist the encroachment or interference of powerful external forces who benefit from GUTA? 

3. Do implementers of the micro-oriented approach need to be exclusive, protectionist, or closed to outsiders?

Question 1: Competing with GUTA

Regarding competition, as other posts describe, small-scale, low-tech production can and does successfully compete—and oftentimes does so easily. After all, small-scale producers have natural advantages that they bring to the playing field. For instance, subsistence farmers use land more productively; family businesses can employ un(der)paid family members; small businesses can use a more intimate knowledge of the local market to change nimbly.

Question 2: The role of powerful GUTA proponents

To be sure, the advantages of scale and technology alone can, under some conditions, overwhelm smaller-scale competitors. These cases undermine our confidence that the micro-oriented approach can be implemented on a smaller scale.

However, when smaller-scale producers fail to compete with their larger counterparts, it is often not due to “economies of scale” or some other natural  advantage purported to large-scale production, but because the larger-scale producer uses its size to create unfair advantages. A community factory can compete against a larger competitor—unless that competitor uses its power to secure subsidies or other policies that support it. A community of small-scale farmers can compete against larger agricultural producers—unless their competitors have more access to inputs or other technologies that make their land more productive. There are numerous ways scale and market-share can translate into advantages that are divorced from market competition.

As discussed below, higher level government can help re-level the playing field. However, more commonly, higher-level authorities compel those who implement the micro-oriented approach to shift away from their strategies. History is rife with tales of central, state, or provincial authorities that force lower-level governments to change their policies and approaches. International organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, when bailing out distressed economies, have a notorious track record of attaching loan conditions that preclude strategies that are often consistent with the micro-oriented approach. Many local governments have resisted these efforts. But quite often, such defiance fails in the face of power.

Question 3: A need for exclusive small communities? 

The third question is even more difficult to answer. After all, if communities that implement the principles of the micro-oriented approach start to succeed, they may attract newcomers who wish to join the party. Such in-migration, once large enough, could overwhelm local efforts to remain small. This migration, combined with unfair competition from outsiders can tempt smaller-scale communities to close themselves to trade, migration and outside interference. Does implementing the micro-oriented approach make closing off to the outside world necessary?

Scaling out: spreading small scale

The difficulty in managing these three forces—outside competition, high-level authorities, and even well-intended migrants—suggests that implementing the micro-oriented approach on a smaller scale or a more local level can be difficult. This is one reason why, in implementing the micro-oriented approach, we may be best off to “do” small, but do so on a large scale. Scale up small scale by bringing ‘small’ to other communities. (To avoid more confusion, let’s call this ‘scaling out.’)

Given the nature of the approach, scaling up the micro-oriented approach can never mean greatly expanding the scale of any single initiative. Instead, what must occur is the “scaling out” of the smaller-scale paradigm itself. Scaling out could mean encouraging more communities to take up the mantle of the micro-oriented approach, spreading the norms and values of that approach, and adapting such values to other contexts and cultures. 

Broadening the implementation the micro-oriented approach can lead to wider implementation. By changing the outside, external threats and interference is less threatening.  Instead of migrants joining micro-oriented communities, people can enjoy the advantages without moving.

Scaling out is easier said than done. As we’ve seen with other ideologically based ideas, such as the Grameen Bank, to spread an ambitious idea requires much more than copying institutional forms. Instead, the ideology itself must travel—be fully understood, accepted and adapted by the receiving community. The institutions grow out of the ideas, which are the roots that nourish the outgrowth of the micro-oriented approach.

Despite the difficulties inherent in scaling out, there are many compelling reasons to do so.

First, a set of neighboring communities, in the process of pursuing the micro-oriented approach, could meaningfully use the support of larger-scale governments.  Such support—from a county, state, a province, or even an entire country—allows more coordination and resource sharing. Such arrangements with larger scale entities can have both political and economic benefits. Consider Switzerland, with its federal government supporting 26 regional governments (cantons), which in turn support even smaller communities (communes)—each of which are practicing the principles of direct democracy. 

In addition, the “Varieties of Capitalism” theory emphasizes the benefits of “co-specific” assets—that is, outside agents can produce assets that all can share. Education systems can be oriented towards a vocational education that produces workers who use technology not to save labor but to stretch capital and land resources. Production can be coordinated to preclude unhealthy forms of competition. Infrastructure, roads, parks, and other public goods can be more easily nurtured and shared. Consider Bergen County, New Jersey, where small-scale communities faced intense pressure to merge to save resources. Instead, these communities shared many of those resources, creating division of labor and mutual support.

Thus, scaled-out small scale communities can pool and redistribute resources, bringing equity across communities with differing resources. That’s one practical reason to scale out.

But a second reason justifying spreading the micro-oriented approach as quickly as possible is far more urgent than these practical considerations. 

As discussed at length in other posts, we are butting up against—and have even exceeded—the limits to our unrestrained growth. Technology has developed in ways that harm humanity, rather than serving it. Sprawling urban cities waste resources and bring additional stresses to residents. Inequalities in most areas of the world mean that the benefits of progress have been unequally shared. Rather, the progress enjoyed by some come at the expense of others. The levels of inequalities have increased throughout the world to the extent that the stability of our communities is undermined and threatened.

The ambition to expand the implementation of the micro-oriented approach as far as possible—to a more global scale—is vital, not just to protect individual communities that enact such an approach, but also to husband the earth’s remaining resources. 

However, there is one major drawback to thinking so ambitiously. Doing so has discouraged many advocates of the micro-oriented state. With the forces of GUTA so entrenched and so powerful, even managing to implement an alternative in a modest arena is daunting. GUTA has benefitted many powerful benefactors whose short-term interests the micro-oriented approach directly threatens. More than this, the ideas marshalled behind GUTA have had centuries to develop. They continue to dominate economics. They are encased in unconscious norms. Even many victims of GUTA cling on to these ideas—even those that are clearly against these victims’ best interests.

Given how entrenched the ideas of GUTA have become, the aspiration and urgency to implement the micro-oriented approach on a global scale is so daunting that it can discourage any kind of action. One author firmly within the micro-oriented approach family dedicated his concluding chapter—two words long—to express despair at the prospect.

For this reason, supporters of the micro-oriented approach face a quandary. Piecemeal action may not be enough. The global implementation of the micro-oriented approach may be a bridge too far.

Dilemma be darned, we must start somewhere. 

There may be a way past defeatist thinking—a realistic way forward that could still create the forces counteracting GUTA.

It is possible that piecemeal action can spark something in a way that is more realistic than mere belief that “every bit counts.” Noted historian Thomas Kuhn’s research on scientific revolutions might provide a way forward. He has documented how history’s most established paradigms—a set of unnoticed assumptions about the way that the world work—collapse and are replaced. These scientific revolutions begin with piecemeal anomalies.  Over time, anomalies to these paradigms mount. As such anomalies are increasingly accepted, they create crises for prevailing paradigms. Crises mount, creating a cascading effect. The weight of such unexplained anomalies compels a reevaluation of science’s most accepted assumptions. The old guard resists—often violently. Despite this resistance, a paradigm falls under the weight of accumulated anomalies. A new paradigm is born. 

Kuhn’s arguments have also been applied to normative change. This process starts with norm entrepreneurs—people who notice injustices in our social order that cause them to question our norms. Such entrepreneurs distinguish here-to-fore assumptions and unnoticed norms that undergird such injustices, and advance alternative norms that invite new social relationships. Anomalies mount, creating those cascading effects. More people—attracted by new social orders—accept and spread these norms. Normative revolutions face counter-revolutions, as the beneficiaries—and even the victims—of old norms become reactionary, clinging to the past. In some cases, despite this resistance, a new social order is born.

The micro-oriented approach may be approaching a crossroads. Advocates of the micro-oriented approach are not alone in their questioning of the assumptions of GUTA. A wide range of approaches and theories have called into question the assumption that bigger is better, that high-tech is progressive, that cities are superior, and that accumulation is the scorecard of progress. Many of these dissenting theoretical camps are akin to cousins—they promote ideas that the micro-oriented approach also shares. Others of these dissenting theoretical camps are more like neighbors in that they strenuously disagree with the micro-oriented approach, even as they proffer some criticisms and concepts that are useful to the micro-oriented approach. 

These norm entrepreneurs—though they may envision different possible futures—all contribute to the questioning of the assumptions of GUTA. 

However, as Kuhn emphasizes, overthrowing entrenched paradigms requires work. It means establishing new methodologies, and new pedagogy that teaches others in them. It requires new epistemic communities, networks of scholars, policymakers, advocates and others to push forward critical questions and establish the institutions of paradigmatic revolution.

Irrespective of strategy—radical, deep, wide or piecemeal—let the work begin. The anomalies, the examples, the insights—let us contribute these together, and encourage others to act. 

Come to our round table, cousins and neighbors. Let us join forces—in words and in action—to fight an unsustainable old order.

Welcome adversaries of old. Give up your assumptions and join our discussions. The revolution will soon be over. Welcome to the winning side.

Let us establish that epistemic community—one that combines debate with action. I invite you to think big, by thinking small.