I wondered whether to begin the Chapterwith a drawing of a typical organization chart, a la the U.S. Government Organization Manual, but thought better of it. Then I wanted to place a drawing of the Purkinje cell of the cerebellum on the page because it is just as good as the typical chart, but the editors blew the whistle.
The most important decisions of a structure are made by a nodal group of leaders and passed along to the employees in everramifying branches. The top leadership does most of the dealing with top external authorities, such as the chief executive or the legislature. Students could be asked to bring in an organization chart from any one of a thousand sources.
The photos of the buildings are supposed to show the contradiction between a society that professes profound regard for human dignity and yet gives first place to the machines. Students might be dispatched locally to survey average offices of companies and governments and average dwellings to make their own judgments on this matter. (Other countries are worse, especially the underdeveloped ones.) Incidentally, the CDC 2400 was replaced by a CDC 6600 and a new railing placed in the hotel to keep children from falling down the stairwell--progress.
Students might also be asked to do a survey of their local post offices. Are they less efficient now in performing their services than they were fifty years ago? Compare volume, cost, deliveries, errors, courtesy, etc.
The illustrations on this page are all ironical. Sorry. I guess I wanted to avoid glamorizing organizations.
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The "3-p's" come in quick succession in this Chapterand you may want to write them on the blackboard for discussion.
In the example of small-scale structure, we have an informal but true structure; the large-scale example is a fictitious, proposed structure.
The Principle tries to tie in the structure (organization) so that it neither operates in a vacuum and goes wild, nor withers on the vine. It relates the coincidence of the social order with the political order to the Proposition.
The structure for decision-making is discussed briefly in connection with the policy of the separation of powers. Since this topic has received scant conventional and historical treatment in this book, you may wish to elaborate.
Students might bring a constitution of some independent organization, corporation, or government to class for a comparison with the proposed ideal constitution. My kalotic constitution is designed for all associations, but it has several features that would apply especially to a "sovereign" structure, such as the power to tax.
1) Discussion of this point can be postponed to the Chapteron Law and Justice.
2) Why not bicameralism? Why bicameralism? There are easier ways of introducing checks and balances, consideration of legislation, etc., than bicameralism, and we are not writing for a stratified society. The constitutional authorities are named here and they are to be discussed. The subassemblies refer to both geographic and functional councils.
3) Note the peculiar form of amendment. It allows the bypassing of an implacable group, but retains the idea of extraordinary procedures.
4) A three-year term is regarded as sufficient and avoids a coincidence with the presidential election except at relatively long intervals. The word quotas suggests the possibility of proportional representation, functional constitutencies, pluralities, etc., or combinations of them. Why vote at sixteen? Why vote at sixty? Both groups are old enough to be responsible, while being negligibly less intelligent.
5) A one-term presidency avoids charisma; five years is plenty of time to provide whatever leadership might be needed. The Assembly elects the President, another reason for the single term, so that the President won't control the Assembly. Separation of powers is provided elsewhere. What's destroyed the separation of powers is provided elsewhere. What's destroyed the separation of powers in America (unless the general confusion of government is raised to a matter of principle) has been the public focus on the power-image of the President and his interminable campaigning. Most people are naturally unrepublican and have to be forced to listen to others.
6) The Supreme Court is limited in its political role and chosen by lot.
7) Note the new function given the Court.
9) Note that a general overview of subassembly legislation is given the Assembly to insure coordination of the laws of the country. This would be largely a veto power.
10) Three constitutional organs can set up a popular referendum, and there should hence be no danger of a flood of such.
11) The equal-sum activity formula that was discussed in the preceding Chapteris inserted here.
12) This article is designed to prevent secrecy in public business and to keep all orders and rules, internal as well as external, before the public representatives.
13) To provide for counterexpression is difficult, but to disregard it as an important problem is escapism; communications monopolies are worse than, and of course go hand-in-glove with, economic monopolies.
14) A voluntary army is implied, along with the extension of public service to all, which may be governmental or nongovernmental in nature.
15) The intent is to put the true state of the nation before the people at all times to help stabilize public sightings and to fight the pernicious images purveyed by Hollywood and Madison Avenue.
16) The single head tax is discussed in Chapter9.
17) The minimum income is too.
18) The countervalors or tribunes have been discussed on pages 249-53.
Margaret Mead once suggested a "Lobby of the Unborn," here drawn in action, and the class might discuss how to structure it. Or perhaps someone could do a paper on the subject.
It may be well to set people to work creating representative structures for armies, prisons, and hospitals. In the last regard, an article called, "On Being Sane in Insane Places," by D. L. Rosenhan, that appeared in Science, January 19, 1973, is interesting.
A dozen professional and nonprofessional persons with normal backgrounds claimed that they were hearing voices in order to be admitted to a variety of mental institutions. They were admitted and held without question on what was essentially a general diagnosis of schizophrenia. When they finally insisted upon being let out, they were discharged in "schizophrenic remission." Not a single professional person or attendant in any of the hospitals challenged the validity of the experimenters' presence. "The fact that the patients often recognized normality when the staff did not raises important questions," wrote the author.
An objective of corporatism and guild socialism is signalled in the idea of worker-ownership in industry. The doctrine of a new role for unions is proposed. It is felt that, in this spaceship age, the mere extension of demands cannot go on. Heavy approaching pension obligations and implacably rising prices are plaguing many governmental jurisdictions and industries. A tide of indirect, long-postponed costs are catching up with our "developed" society.
This page also asserts a doctrine of a loose party system. Parties operate best, it is said, when they are permeable to reforms generated outside the party system and governmental structure.
There is a need for inventions in political structures. Perhaps I should not have sounded the death knell of behavioralism, since I immediately qualify myself: "John Brown's spirit goes marching on" and gives the behavioralists a large task in switching over to the applied scientific work of creating governmental structures.
The suggestions for future representative devices that conclude the Chaptermight be followed up by pairs or committees of students. They could prepare proposals to implement each of the devices suggested. The implementation might be through a large-scale geographic or functional group. In every case they should add a plan of how to gain public acceptance for the device.