Central Planning and the Time-Space Brainpower Continuum

As governments and other organizations get larger, there is a natural tendency to concentrate power arouns some central point. In the worst case, a single person might make all the big decisions. If an organization gets overconfident, it may try to plan things far in advance, as well. But central planning actually reduces the amount of brainpower that is used to run an organization. I will consider Central Planning one word at a time:

"Central"

When a huge organization is controlled by one or a few people, then only the brainpower of that few people go into the decisions. In a more decentralized organization, more people make decisions, so more brainpower is used. For example, in the United States, the federal government does not make all the decisions, since much authority is delegated to the states. Within states, much authority is delegated to cities and counties. This adds the brainpower of all the people elected into state government to the US governmental brainpower. But The U.S., through Democracy and Capitalism, also delegates much power to individuals, and organizations composed of american people. No matter how smart the President is, he doesn't have the equivalent of 270 million brains.

Another example is the old Soviet Union. We all know how well they did. The Kremlin had iron-fisted control over everything. Smaller divisions of the Soviet Union, such as Poland or Chechnya, were forced to do what the central government demanded, or else. Since the soviet union was Communist, companies and consumers had no say in what things were produced. Even the supposed 'Legislature' was required to be submissive to the boss. Lack of democracy led to the decision of who's in charge to be made by a tiny fraction of the available brainpower.

As the United States trends increasingly towards increased Federal power, we face losing what makes us great. Recently, state electoral decisions were made by the federal Supreme court. A federal beaurocracy took over the airport security job once handled by private industry. Reagan once talked about emphasizing state power in the "New Federalism", but that idea seems to have been forgotten, even by Republicans.

Centralism cuts off the use of brainpower in the space domain; only brains in a limited space, the central leaders, gets used, while other brainpower in the organization is stifled.

"Planning"

Planning ahead can be a good thing, but it can also be a problem. Predicting anything very far in the future has proven difficult. When a plan is to be followed without possibility of change, that's when it weakens the organization that writes it. A plan is a series of decisions made by people at the time of the plan's creation. It the plan can't be changed, it prevents the brainpower of the future from working; the people who are affected by the plan in the future, even the planners themselves are prevented from improving parts of the organization that are already planned.

Picking on the old Soviet Union again, Which is fun, since they were such a menacing foe and spectacular failure, one could point to their habit of '5-year plans'. Since 5 years can contain many unpredictable events, it's no surprise than many of these plans were failures.

But the plans that can be the most dangerous are ones so ancient that failure to follow them is considered evil or blasphemous. Many religions set forth ambitious plans for their spread across the world. Islam in particular has rules and plans on how to deal with infidels who don't follow their religion. Their plan was for an ever expanding Islamic empire, which seemed to work fine during Mohammad's lifetime, but has gone somewhat astray since then. But these plans are still in writing, and people strive to follow them to the detriment of themselves and others; the Islamic terrorists are the prime example of this.

You can't really discuss Islamic terrorists without discussing their long-time enemies, the Zionists, who are represented by Israel today. The Israelis are following ancient plans as well; they wish to return to the Holy land, which inconveniently is occupied by rather uncooperative Muslims. Is it really the divine duty of Jews to return to Israel? Could Israel realy accomadate all the Jews in the entire world; it seems too small.

Two groups of people who seem to worship the same god are embroiled in non-stop slaughter because they are following obsolete plans.

Planning that allows for change can harness the brainpower of the future. If the planners are willing to change the plans when conditions make it desirable or necessary to, then they are trusting not only their current decisions, but their future decisions as well. And it doesn't mean its necessary to scrap the entire plan. For example, Jews and Christians have moved beyond ancient plans that forbade eating non-fish seafood, but still agree that adultery and murder are to be avoided.

Planning can limit brainpower in the time domain, allowing the people of the past to prevent the people of the future from using their brainpower for the organization.

The US constitution is an example of a plan than balances the need for planning with the need to adapt to change. The ability to amend the constitution prevented the founding fathers from forbidding future americans from making decisions based on changing circumstances. The constitution also differes from other codes of law by stating that powers not specifically granted to the central government belong to the states and the people.


Central planning can make any organization stupid in both time and space.