Since I got such a great response for my blog about "distributed systems", I thought that it may deserve a second blog on the subject. Look up the definition of "distributed systems and you will find that they are just the opposite of "central control systems". There is merit in both, but because 99% of people don't know what a "distributed systems" is, they go directly to the "central control system" as the answer to "all" control problems. As you read my blog, this will become much clearer.
Here are a couple of distributed control systems. First, ants. Ants are organized into social units with a queen who lays eggs and worker ants. The ants all know what to do to survive and part of that is to be sure the colony survives. The ants are motivated by simple survival. Years ago a few ants considered just taking care of themselves and as a result, they did not survive and were thus not able to breed more ants like themselves. Ants with that inclination "died Out". Next, honey bees. They are also organized into social units that operate just like the ants. When I say social units, don't mistake this for socialism old Russia. Notice that Russia has given up socialism or what ever they called it because it did not work. When workers dropped out of the Russian style social control system, they did "better", not worse like the bees and ants. Each situation is a little different. Next, the Wolf. I see a few in my yard once in a while so I know a little about them. They have a social organization much like the Ants and Bees. If a wolf does not operate within the rules of the pack, the other wolves toss them out. As good as wolf is at hunting and finding food, few can survive very long outside the protection of the pack. Like the Ant and the Bee, the Wolf can not survive outside their social organization. The common element in all three of the above social organization is that there is "no" King, Queen or President telling all the members what do do or how to act. This is getting a little long, but the point is that distributed systems like those above work and work better than centrally controlled systems as they get very large.
A little history. I hear people all the time saying that historically "civilization" go thru cycles and all fail after 250 or 300 years. I think this is a valid observation, but it does not identify "why". Look at the common thread. Most started off as small city states and grew over time. The organization of the small city state was "central" by a King or Queen. As the city state grew and grew, the central control model failed. Had they shifted from central control to a more distributed system, I feel that they could have survived.
Compare Canada to the United States. Canada has very strong individual states with a much weaker central government. The United States, on the other hand has gradually shifted from a strong state system to a much strong central or federal system. Even our founding fathers saw ahead as to how this could happen and tried to set up control on the power of the central federal government. Canada is much better educated that we are here in the USA. That is a fact. Canada does not have a strong central cabinet post called "Department of Education" like we do. Isn't that interesting. Bigger turns out to be worse. Take Iceland. They are smaller than many of our cities yet they are also better educated than we are. Are you starting to get the message? Do we need national standardize tests? I think we could just get copies of the tests from Latvia or Chile and see how kids in you town do on the test compared to those other countries. Wouldn't that tell you a lot more and be a lot cheaper and much simpler? What if local school boards made of \poeple like you and your neighbors could select the teachers for your school on any basis that you would want without interference from state or federal departments of education? Do you think we would end up with better teachers on average? That is an easy one.
Distributed means local control, down to individual control. As I have pointed out in prior blogs, when it comes to spending tax money, there is no question that individuals can spend their money a lot better than any government at any level. If that is the case, then what are doing centralizing and federalizing every thing?
I could tackle the Department of Energy or the EPA and the answer would always come out the same. The centralized control system does not do as well as the distributed model. To prevent one person from drilling an oil well and spilling the oil, the centralized system would stop 90% of oil well drilling. The fact that oil is valuable means that no normal person is going spill or waste it. The federal government has even gotten into spilled milk and we all know that we should not "cry over spilled milk" or don't we.
I will continue this in a second blog.
