I think the importance of this article, or any other that spotlights this topic, is that anyone who is involved in the "business" of data administration should be aware of this counter-culture. Both are expanding rampantly, and the one is increasingly fueling the other.Our administrative bureaucracies are mis-structured the world over. The particulars of changing that are complicated when viewed from within. But in the face of this problem, our methods are not locked into the internal view. What is the difference between atrophy and deliberate change when they both yield new starting points? A lot in reality, but not much from a strategic perspective.VRM wants to fix the mis-structured relationships we deal with in the general market... all renditions... in a reputable systems-respecting way. Long road filled with obstacles and slow-moving progress. Some people think that slow progress is enough. Problem is that slow progress fuels unproductive progress simultaneously the same way that no progress does.The black market and system D always exist as an option. No one has to "approve" them. These market models are thriving today. There is a real and systemic cost to that fact.VRM is an opportunity for our data administration practices and bureaucratic structures to self-innovate from within. There is not an option as to whether this happens. It will happen from within or without, one way or another. Incremental change is not going to be good enough... people are capable of more than that on their own.Identity is the perfect place to point to as an example of data administration practices. It should be structured to empower systemic relationships that entice participation across the board by pushing value to the edges. Thats not the current model... instead value is aggregated within systems processes and structures.. This flaw is pushed throughout the system.Reality is, we each function as protectorates within Society today. Obviously, the modern default has us operating as "protectorate customers". This is our default data-model of participation and bureaucratic administration. This is a model that applies happily to many people. Problem is, it lacks foundational strength without it being supported by the existence of "sovereign protectorates". Everything we are as a Society is a result of the self-driven efforts of these people. Question that? Give me a call, I will take you on a tour of a sustainable community and introduce you to the people that provide real local resiliency. Listen to what they care about. What they spend their time doing. How they deal with problems. How they inter-relate with the ground beneath their feet and air they breathe. Customers consume what is provided by these sovereign Individuals who build opportunities, infrastructures, choice structures, community strength, etc. There is no such thing as "customer-first" anything. But thats not stopping our data-models. "The customer is always right" is a marketing slogan...not a reality to be data-modeled.We need data-models to support the primacy of sovereign protectorates in our Society so that protectorate customers can continue benefitting as they wish to without forcing activity outside of the administration framework and into the black/system D market in order for individual people to find what inherently belongs to them... edge-driven power.Alternatively... in lieu of sovereign protectorates empowering protectorate customers, there is always the option of using discrete brute-force data models via drones, surveillance, Patriot Act, ProtectIP, and the like to administer "protectorate slaves". Hmmm.....Devon LoffretoOn Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Markus Sabadello < " target="_blank"> > wrote:
I thought "debrouillard" meant someone smart whose mind is "de-fogged", i.e. someone who - in the middle of a complex world - is still able to see things clearly and therefore make smart, "resourceful" decisions and seize opportunities that others fail to identify.I.e. the Système D is about getting things done quickly and effectively, instead of going through the bureaucracy and complexity of the "regular way of things".Not quite sure whether this actually leads to a more or to a less transparent market..On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 5:22 PM, Katherine Warman Kern < " target="_blank"> > wrote:
System D markets may have survived the megatization of business.
But haven't we forgotten how legitimate businesses with integrity emerged and grew into mega, global corporations? They started in a local community of inventors, investors, sellers and buyers. A local community is inherently transparent and individuals have the power to affect consequences when a customer is betrayed by a business - and vice versa. Since "debrouillard" literally means to "de-fog" I think it is a descriptive label of the the transparency and natural market forces when doing business in a local community context.
I don't know what political baggage is associated with it. But I certainly agree we need to recognize that we failed to anticipate what happens when business expands to a global, virtual scale and dimension.
Have you heard about the new book Locavesting?
K-
Katherine Warman Kern
203.918.2617
On Nov 6, 2011, at 7:45 AM, Doc Searls < " target="_blank"> > wrote:
> I should add, in answer to some off-list emails, that I'm not saying here that the black market is a VRM model.
>
> Obviously System D, as described below (or as I read it) includes all illicit market activity, including drugs and prostitution. But it also includes, I would hope, some things we can learn from.
>
> One accomplishment of the #Occupy movement has been to shine a light on the failure of hierarchy in the very middle of the economy: with banking. Big banks today no longer want to loan money. They don't want your savings, except to play the financial casinos themselves. This is great news for credit unions, but the dysfunction requires many work-arounds.
>
> As we said in Cluetrain, "The first markets were markets. Not bulls, bears, or invisible hands. Not battlefields, targets, or arenas. Not demographics, eyeballs, or seats. Most of all, not consumers."
>
> What should markets be today? Surely not just Wall Street. Surely not governed by federal and state institutions bought and paid for by hierarchical interests in keeping Business As Usual.
>
> Take another look at Geoffrey West's talk on cities:
>
> <http://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_cities_and_corporations.html>
>
> His point: Cities scale in a super-linear way. Businesses scale in a sub-linear way. So do all life forms, which is why their growth is sigmoidal: It flattens out at the top, and they eventually fall over and die. So do governments, for that matter. You can bomb a city, and it lives. Look at Hiroshima and Dresden.
>
> System D, seems to me, includes some lessons in how, at the street level, cities are horizontal entities that do much that companies and governments also try to to do vertically, or hierarchically -- for awhile, but not forever. We need both, in symboisis. But sometimes that symbiosis gets out of whack. We have that now. The hierarchies are failing. One helping the other (as Washington helped Wall Street in '08 and since) is failing. VRM isn't the answer to everything, but it's an answer that comes from the street level.
>
> Prudential and John Hancock built Boston's two highest skyscrapers. Both maintain small offices there, but neither are the Great Companies they once were. Hancock's name still graces what's now the 4th tallest building in Chicago, but the tallest no longer bears the name Sears, which built it.
>
> But big vertical things are interesting, whether they're buildings, companies or governments. They get most of the attention. But they aren't always the answer, except temporarily.
>
> This is why the sports contest of Big Biz vs. Big Gov (how the Dems and the Reps like to characterize each other in the U.S.) requires an astigmatic view. It blurs to the vertical. Cities grow horizontally, while the big institutions within grow vertically. We need both, but the more important and vital context is the horizontal one.
>
> Anyway, I think things are happening today at the street level -- P2P or C2C -- that model in an ad hoc way some of what we'd like to see with VRM.
>
> Maybe System D is too full of illegal activity to work as a model (if it really exists as a "system" at all, which is debatable). But that shouldn't stop us from looking at what happens in places where markets are still markets.
>
> Doc
>
> On Nov 5, 2011, at 10:31 PM, Doc Searls wrote:
>
>> Anybody ever heard of System D?
>>
>> It's the underground economy. Off-grid. Big in places where commerce is personal and taxes are avoided. "Unlicensed bazaars," for example.
>>
>> See here: <http://bit.ly/tEXJhL> An excerpt:
>>
>>> System D is a slang phrase pirated from French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean. The French have a word that they often use to describe particularly effective and motivated people. They call them débrouillards. To say a man is a débrouillard is to tell people how resourceful and ingenious he is. The former French colonies have sculpted this word to their own social and economic reality. They say that inventive, self-starting, entrepreneurial merchants who are doing business on their own, without registering or being regulated by the bureaucracy and, for the most part, without paying taxes, are part of "l'economie de la débrouillardise." Or, sweetened for street use, "Systeme D." This essentially translates as the ingenuity economy, the economy of improvisation and self-reliance, the do-it-yourself, or DIY, economy. A number of well-known chefs have also appropriated the term to describe the skill and sheer joy necessary to improvise a gourmet meal using only the mismatched ingredients that happen to be at hand in a kitchen.
>>
>> Sounds VRM friendly to me.
>>
>> More:
>>
>>> ...System D is on the rise. In the developing world, it's been increasing every year since the 1990s, and in many countries it's growing faster than the officially recognized gross domestic product (GDP). If you apply his percentages (Schneider's most recent report, published in 2006, uses economic data from 2003) to the World Bank's GDP estimates, it's possible to make a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the approximate value of the billions of underground transactions around the world. And it comes to this: The total value of System D as a global phenomenon is close to $10 trillion. Which makes for another astonishing revelation. If System D were an independent nation, united in a single political structure -- call it the United Street Sellers Republic (USSR) or, perhaps, Bazaaristan -- it would be an economic superpower, the second-largest economy in the world (the United States, with a GDP of $14 trillion, is numero uno). The gap is narrowing, though, and if the United States doesn't snap out of its current funk, the USSR/Bazaaristan could conceivably catch it sometime this century.
>>>
>>> In other words, System D looks a lot like the future of the global economy. All over the world -- from San Francisco to São Paulo, from New York City to Lagos -- people engaged in street selling and other forms of unlicensed trade told me that they could never have established their businesses in the legal economy. "I'm totally off the grid," one unlicensed jewelry designer told me. "It was never an option to do it any other way. It never even crossed my mind. It was financially absolutely impossible." The growth of System D opens the market to those who have traditionally been shut out.
>>>
>>> This alternative economic system also offers the opportunity for large numbers of people to find work. No job-cutting or outsourcing is going on here. Rather, a street market boasts dozens of entrepreneurs selling similar products and scores of laborers doing essentially the same work. An economist would likely deride all this duplicated work as inefficient. But the level of competition on the street keeps huge numbers of people employed. It liberates their entrepreneurial energy. And it offers them the opportunity to move up in the world.
>>
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Doc
>>
>>
>
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