My tree is the decidedly un-sexy idea of the evolution of organizational structures. My study of the evolution of cooperation has led me to identify the mechanisms at play in this second tread of the evolutionary story that runs concurrent to the traditional "dog-eat-dog" view. It goes like this -- in order to keep free riders from taking all the benefits of cooperation, and therefore creating a barrier to cooperation, it is necessary in designing human organizational structures to insure that cooperators are able to capture the effects of cooperation.
We did this 230 years ago with governments, where we designed American Democracy to have checks and balances on power, branches of government, and elected/accountable leadership in order to insure that those who gained power in our political democracy could be removed if they became free riders. But now governments are a declining power and corporations are ascendant. 2007 was the first time in human history that of the 100 largest economies in the world, more than half are now corporations not traditional governments. **It is hopeless naive to base an economic system, as our current one is, on the hope that leaders will do what is right.*
This latest implosion of ponzi capitalism only exposes the urgent need for self regulating economic structures because our society is so dependent on multinational corporations. Incorporated Democracy is the cure to a vast myriad of social ills.
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