Private government

The cover of philosopher Elizabeth Anderson's book, "Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It)"
The words "Private Government" are partially covered by a strip of red tape.As someone who loves to facilitate connection between people, I was struck by this New Yorker profile of the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson. Here’s a quote from her book, “Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It)“:

“Images of free market society that made sense prior to the Industrial Revolution continue to circulate today as ideals, blind to the gross mismatch between the background social assumptions reigning in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and today’s institutional realities. We are told that our choice is between free markets and state control, when most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government[emphasis added].

What else could you call the modern workplace, where superiors can issue changing orders, control attire, surveil correspondence, demand medical testing, define schedules, and monitor communication, such as social-media posts?
Nathan Heller on Elizabeth Anderson, The Philosopher Redefining Equality

Society’s structure and governance impact almost every aspect of our lives. How civic discourse frames our actual structure and governance conditions what we think is ethical. Ever since Richard Cantillon and Adam Smith developed the concept of the free market, political economists have framed the choice for society as one between free markets and state control.

Anderson points out that this framing ignores the reality that the modern workplace increasingly controls adults’ lives. Such loss of individual autonomy threatens to reduce spontaneous connection and authentic community, both inside and outside work.

1984

We are still a long way from George Orwell’s 1984, where the Party only allowed conformist relationships. (Though the current rise of dictatorships around the world is an ominous sign for the future.) But we need to be aware of new kinds of oppression in private organizations. In addition to those mentioned above, organizations continue to further blur the line between work and personal. Corporations require more and more employees to respond to routine “emergencies” day or night.

The number of people with substantial autonomy in their work and life is decreasing with the rise of private government. This concerns me more than the historic tension between free markets and the state. With the ongoing collapse of unions and continuing consolidation of businesses, private government has fewer checks on its power. As a result, workers find it more and more difficult to resist new demands.

What to do?

The first step in tackling a problem is to notice it exists. We overlook the rise of private government by focusing on creating the “right” balance between free markets and state control. Free markets move inexorably towards the minimum “acceptable” competition, typically duopolies (think Uber versus Lyft). State power provides some limits on how much concentration of power occurs.

But inside organizations, there is little, if any, limit on what private government can impose on employees’ lives.

Public government is the only means workers have to communicate their desire to limit the suffocating effects of private government. Private government uses its vast resources to fight such efforts via well-funded media campaigns. Such campaigns use effective tools, such as polarizing and misleading memes, which work at an emotional level to demoralize opponents or sway audiences to an advantageous point of view.

The unchecked power of private government may only be curbed when its excesses become too much for workers to bear and a tipping point is reached. Until then, it’s important to work to increase awareness of the growing control that companies have over employees’ lives and the ensuing deleterious effects.

The third way to make something happen

 The third way 3 paths: a photograph of an elaborately decorated hall encrusted in gold, with three doorways leading outdoors

More value can be gotten out of voluntary participation than anyone previously imagined, thanks to improvements in our ability to connect with one another and improvements in our imagination of what is possible from such participation.
Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky

In his thought-provoking book, Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky reminds us that, until recently, most of the discussion about how to make things happen has focused on two seemingly competing mechanisms.

Private production

The first way to make things happen is private production. Things happen when the cost of doing them is less than what the doers believe the result will be worth. This is how many consumer products and services are created.

Public production

The second way to make things happen is through public production. Society decides that something is worth doing for the common good. An example is the provision of universal health care by a government for its citizens.

There is a third way to make something happen.

Social production is the third way to make something happen

Shirky describes social production as the creation of value by a group for its members, using neither price signals nor managerial oversight to coordinate participants’ efforts. Social production occurs because a group’s members derive benefit from the results of their shared work, and often through their enjoyment of community during the process.

Until recently, the scale of social production was limited. Shirky gives picnics and bowling leagues as examples. What has changed is that internet technologies now give us inexpensive and effective means for group coordination and cooperation. This allows us to aggregate the free time of many people in ad hoc groups that come together for mutual benefit to work on “tasks we find interesting, important, or urgent”. Examples of social production include Wikipedia, Linux, and countless community-run online forums.

How social production will impact meeting design

The rise of social production is important for events such as meetings and conferences. Why? Because the collective knowledge and experience of peer groups normally rivals or surpasses, the knowledge and experience of any one “expert”. When an audience collectively knows more than the presenter at the front of the room (and I’d argue that today this is true more often than not), the question naturally arises: are standard presentations the best way to use attendees’ time?

Traditional conference culture restricts the provider of session content to presenters. Social production culture, on the other hand, supports appropriate openness, sharing, and participation as a norm. When events adopt a social production culture, attendees become participants, involved not only in their own learning but also in the learning of their peers. Everyone benefits from the increased pool of resources, and the opportunity to shape what happens during the event. This adds real value to each attendee’s experience and also to the event’s civic value, i.e. the effect of the event on the world outside it.

As social production becomes an increasingly common way to create value, we need to recognize and acknowledge its ramifications for events. Attendees are going to be less willing to put up with conferences that are designed to make money for the organizers or put on as a public service. Instead, they will go to events where they can participate and shape what happens.

What are you doing to facilitate social production at your events?

Photo attribution: Flickr user stuckincustoms