provide.io, Polycentric Governance, and You
Table Of Contents
Introduction
This is kind of long. So, I had ChatGPT generate distillations. It’s like a “Choose Your Own Summary” game.
Summaries
Summary 1
provide.io seeks to shift business towards collaborative, sustainable models underpinned by Polycentric Governance.
Summary 2
Tim introduces provide.io, advocating for business models based on Polycentric Governance to foster collaborative, resilient systems over competitive, hierarchical structures. This vision emphasizes sustainability, leveraging technology and education towards a cooperative future for businesses.
Summary 3
Tim advocates for a radical shift in business models through provide.io, centered on Polycentric Governance. This approach aims to dismantle hierarchical structures, replacing them with integrated, collaborative systems that prioritize sustainability and resilience. Emphasizing the use of technology and psychoeducation, Tim envisions a future where businesses operate as networks of cooperation, contrasting sharply with traditional corporate competition. Provide.io seeks to redefine the essence of business entities, promoting a model that values collective well-being and long-term endurance.
Summary 4
Tim’s article on “provide.io, Polycentric Governance, and You” discusses his vision for transforming traditional business models through the concept of Polycentric Governance, foundational to provide.io. This entity aims to revolutionize business structure and operation by rejecting hierarchical models in favor of integrated, self-balancing systems that foster collaboration and resilience. Tim proposes a holistic approach, leveraging technology and psychoeducation to build a network of businesses designed for long-term sustainability and optimal integration. Critiquing the predatory nature of current corporate practices, he envisions provide.io as a network akin to schools of friendly puffer fish, emphasizing cooperation over competition. The use of LLMs/AI accelerates the development of organizational frameworks necessary for this vision, positioning provide.io as a pioneering model for a new kind of social business entity.
Summary 5
The article titled “provide.io, Polycentric Governance, and You” by Tim, published on 2024-03-21, explores the concept and application of Polycentric Governance within the framework of a new venture called provide.io. The author, admitting to his ADHD, shares his journey beyond traditional roles into researching interconnected realities and organizational structures. Through a narrative blending personal anecdotes and theoretical discourse, Tim introduces the concept of Polycentric Governance as a foundation for provide.io, an entity aiming to revolutionize how businesses are structured and operate.
At its core, provide.io is envisioned as a business that creates other businesses, employing a non-hierarchical, integrated approach that contrasts sharply with conventional corporate structures. This vision is based on principles of holographic, self-replicating, and self-balancing systems, forming entities that are more resilient and adaptive. The goal is to facilitate a shift towards entities that support polycentric governance, fostering an ecosystem of businesses with durable, distributed authority.
The article elaborates on several key terms within the context of provide.io, such as associations, entities, cellular units, and the ecosystem, aiming to redefine these concepts to align with its vision of collaborative and integrated operations. Tim asserts that conventional business models are fundamentally flawed from inception, advocating for a holistic, technology-supported approach to business design that prioritizes fast-feedback loops, psychoeducation, and optimal integration for long-term endurance.
Provide.io’s mission extends beyond restructuring internal operations to reimagining the very nature of business entities. By adopting models that favor collaboration over competition, provide.io aspires to create a network of businesses that resembles a “network of friendly schools of puffer fish” rather than predatory corporations. The author criticizes the destructive tendencies of capitalist structures, positioning provide.io as a catalyst for transformative change in business practices and societal impact.
The article also touches on the potential of LLMs/AI in accelerating research and the development of organizational and socioemotional frameworks necessary for realizing this vision. Ultimately, provide.io is presented as an opportunity to participate in the creation of a new kind of social business entity, fundamentally different in its approach to governance, collaboration, and societal contribution.
Through the lens of Polycentric Governance, Tim invites readers to reconsider the foundational structures of business and governance, advocating for a more distributed, cooperative, and resilient model of organizational and societal interaction.
Not Summary
My name is Tim Perkins , I’ve got raging ADHD, and one of the many things I currently do during the day, other than taking care of my biological processes , is filling the role of a DevOps Staff Engineer within an organization.
Plus a whole bunch of other stuff.
Like research stuff that makes me better know, and appreciate, what the mechanics of our introconnected, intraconnected, interconnected, shared realities are, and how they work. So far outside of academia. I have a sneaking suspicion that the people that need to cooperate to bring this together are going to originate from some sort academia.
And I learned about marketing. And persuasion. And copywriting. And an even more amount of a whole bunch of other things.
Fucking copywriting. Now I write like a fucking drunk college freshman, who has checked in at an 8th grade reading level, that’s trying to sell you ice… while you’re drowning in an ocean. 🌊
Note
I am also intentionally switching between I, and we, because it’s me, but I’m making an effort to form a we to build, and deploy, a complex support system.
Or, as Doctor Daniel J. Siegel calls it, a MWe (Me + We) .
This post isn’t about me though, it’s me making an effort to share some concepts with MWe. Concepts that are being baked into this entity I’ve been calling provide.io, to support you (and mwe), and are… well… kinda abstract. But, these are some concepts that I feel I have to share with you, and can no longer be kept within myself.
For over 9 years now - since shortly before Intel and I decided to part ways - I’ve had this idea for a “business that creates businesses.”
Which sounds like a freaking multi-level marketing type thing, and which was very much the initial sentiment of the responses I’d first received when I began making an effort to share this idea with people that didn’t know much about social/legal/technical constructs.
Followed by, “Are you high?” I’d follow up with a sigh.
What’s been being architected is way different than a hierarchical structure.
I’ve been thinking about, what I believe I can now call, an integration process of holographic, overlapping, layers, of self-replicating, self-balancing, self-redistributing, cells, and systems. Which then form an entity - or a business. Which then has its own integration, and disintegration, processes.
And then continuously developing, and implementing, technology-supported fast-feedback loops of systems to measure the performance of the individual, organizational, health, and throughput.
Which, I have recently discovered, seems to track with a bunch of concepts that align with the concept of Polycentric Governance .
I think what this means is that I’d like to help with building is a business that builds, deploys, and facilitates the optimal endurance of, polycentric governance structures across an entire ecosystem (network) of businesses.
Info
This is very important if you’re going to track. And this will all be in a dedicated terminology page in the future. These are the meanings of the words within the context of provide.io.
An association
is not only a reference to a group of people, it is also a reference to a “connection between two or more concepts in the mind or imagination
.”
Therefore, an association is not a “circle drawn around a group of people” in a diagram. An association is a sphere surrounding groups of people whom are drawn to a common goal. An association is composed of groups who typically coalesce around the nucleus of the people in perceived positions of power.
The people in charge who are typically making an effort to produce the goals of their entity, and who are typically trying to keep the group at least somewhat on task toward meeting the goal. These people are typically called “leaders
,” but they can be called “tyrants
” too.
An entity represents an association with a “legal (entity) skin ” wrapped around it. It is not one of us natural persons . The most common entity - other than the current preeminent institutions - typically being a corporation . Which is just a wrapper around an association so that it can participate in whatever systems, and whatever markets, that the goal of the entity is.
A cell/cellular unit is a term that represents a cluster (group) of component systems (you and me) that are doing something together. Working toward optimally integrating whatever resources they have available - physical/abstract - toward a common purpose/output .
The ecosystem, that provide.io is designing, Which is a meta-organization called the Integrated Cooperative Network (ICN) . And, which I’m debating if should be trademarked. 🧐 Probably.
The ICN is designed to design, implement, and deeply embed, enduring distributed polycentric economic support ecosystems.
Tim
What does “The Integrated Cooperative Network is meant to design, implement, and deeply embed, enduring distributed polycentric economic support ecosystems” mean?
ChatGPT
The statement “The Integrated Cooperative Network is meant to design, implement, and deeply embed, enduring distributed polycentric economic support ecosystems” suggests that there’s an organized effort or entity, referred to as the Integrated Cooperative Network, whose purpose is to create and establish a robust and long-lasting network of economic support systems.
These systems are intended to be:
- Integrated: Functioning as a cohesive whole, even though they are composed of diverse and various elements.
- Cooperative: Based on principles of collaboration among different stakeholders.
- Distributed: Spread out across various locations or jurisdictions, not centralized in one place.
- Polycentric: Featuring multiple centers of control or decision-making, rather than a single point of authority.
- Economic Support Ecosystems: These are systems that provide financial assistance, resources, and economic opportunities, functioning together like a biological ecosystem, with interdependent parts supporting the health of the whole.
In essence, this network is set up to develop and put into action a system of economic support that is widely distributed, governed through multiple centers of authority, and designed to be durable over time. This is intended to deeply integrate into the fabric of society, ensuring resilience and support for the economy at multiple scales.
provide.io llc is designing, and dogfooding, fundamentally different kinds of entity structures, and operational orchestration models.
We’re working on refactoring what a business is, from the inside out, and obviating the inferior Internal Orderings of other kinda of enterprises - small through large. Building a network that has the benefits of democracy-on-guardrails, while reaping the benefits of the public markets, while being protected by the safety a network of larger entities can provide.
Info
Tim
What are “Internal Orderings?”
ChatGPT
“Internal Orderings” generally refer to the arrangements or organizational structures within a system that define how its components are set up, interact, and function together. These orderings can dictate hierarchies, workflows, decision-making processes, and communication channels within an entity, such as a corporation, a governmental body, or any organized group. Internal orderings establish the framework for coordination and control, delineating how tasks are divided, resources are allocated, and how information flows through the system, ultimately shaping its behavior and performance.
We want to build up, and break up, businesses into smaller local component parts of larger distributed systems with centralized hubs of resource integration points, hence the Integrated Cooperative Network. We want to design the Internal Orderings up front, rather than after organic, unhealthy, complex systems have emerged.
We believe that changing how a business works in our current systems is futile. They’re built wrong. From inception, they usually grow organically, and often chaotically. It isn’t until there are some real problems sprouting up from within that frameworks, and systems, are developed, and applied.
For instance: A couple of Machine Learning savants that are building a world changing technology probably won’t be thinking about the impact that they, their personal emotional systems, and their interactions with others, will have on setting the trajectory for the health of their business.
And, because of this, the internal culture, and growth, may emerge into an unhealthy, disintegrated state. If that happens, chances are the business will go belly up at some point.
provide.io is taking a holistic approach to engineering, culturally conditioning, implementing fast-feedback psychoeducation systems, and individual/organizational assessment, loops, to building networked ecosystems of businesses that have been designed for long-term endurance and optimal integration.
provide.io will research, design, and implement the supporting governmental frameworks, physical/virtual logistics systems, and core supporting infrastructural resources, that will be required to scale the ICN, and its component entities, to effectively: first, maintain harmony, and continuous systems integrations, and optimizations, within the network; second, leverage the public markets for the benefit of the ICN.
Note
You might be thinking to yourself that there are vendors, and existing organizational structures - such as cooperatives - that provide services that facilitate the connection of social support systems within traditional businesses structures.
And you’re right. There are. But, the problem with this entire ecosystem is that it’s filled with fragmented solutions which are just trying to apply bandaids to gangrenous wounds, and defective models.
Yes, systems, and models, and processes, or whatever, can be designed, and implemented, in a corporation that’s still in motion.
The problem is that existing corporations have been designed to be sharks within a sea of resources. Even the non-profits.
Even if the organization is new, if it’s Internal Orderings - it’s operating agreements - implement current “best practices,” to operate on the public markets then the organization is now just a…
Baby shark
Until recently, I have only been able to describe a part of what I’ve been dreaming about. Recently, LLMs/AI have dramatically sped up my ability to research, uncover, and discover, the systems, terminologies, taxonomies, technologies, and more, that apply to what I’m considering. That tech has dramatically sped up my ability to correlate the abstract organizational, and socioemotional, concepts that I believe will be required in order to form, and maintain, a coherent network of entities. And apparently it’s damn close to what some Polycentric Governance material has describe.
I think.
I’m researching.
I may be totally inaccurate.
But, working with provide.io, is working with an opportunity to form a new kind of social business entity.
The word “corporation” doesn’t align with the ICN model. Corporations are cold capitalistic vehicles. Capitalistic entities.
Sharks in the seas of the markets.
Gobbling each other all up. Crushing the souls of the companies being acquired. Or being merged (assimilated) with.
Streamlining processes so well that organizations such as fucking Boeing, are able to build machines that murder people. Which is what their products are doing. Murdering people on behalf of Boeing due to their negligence. It’s repugnant, and should not be accepted.
This operating model, which I’m making an effort to realize as provide.io llc, is being engineered to be more like a network of friendly schools of puffer fish. Just kinda swimming to swim around, gather all the resources around required to live, and hanging out with other puffer fish to socialize and replicate.
Ad infinitum. And, as us networks, of schools, of fish, continue to expand, our shape of our arrangements will protect us from the sharks.
Sometimes a shark might eat up one of the puffers… but that shark just signed it’s own death warrant. It is now poisoned. It now will be feeling the antonym of joy, as they experience a slow, and painful, death, as they sink to the bottom of the sea.
And sometimes bacteria, disease, injury, and decay can extinguish the life of some fish by causing their cellular structures to shut down prematurely.
provide.io is meant to observe the patterns of the environments of the seas, and coordinate all the puffer fish to be most effectively arranged to protect themselves from sharks, and the elements… while also supporting themselves.
Imagine:
You find a group of five friends, and you decide you want to put something together. Let’s suppose it’s a catering company. So, y’all go to provide.io, go through a comprehensive and holistic screening, psychoeducation, and onboarding process. Then go through the appropriate Know Your Customer processes. And then, provide.io can put all the pieces together for your team.
From integrating you with an existing catering company, through incubation of something built from the ground up.
We will create the technology that makes very rapidly assembling the business entities/structures required to support new ventures viable.
With that monologuous, diatriabical, manifestoesque wall of text out of the way, I present to you:
Polycentric Governance
Image Source: The black box of power in polycentric environmental governance .
That diagram above does a pretty good job at describing what has been in mind for provide.io.
Rather than writing my own summary of Polycentric Governances, and how it works, I’ve interviewed some of your favorite LLMs.
Check Out:
- A Fireside Chat With ChatGPT
- Gemini on Governance
- Claude on Polycentricity
- Pi on Enhancing Social Cohesion Across Multi-dimensional Cooperative Networks
Info
Tim
Describe this diagram, and describe what the thickness of the interconnecting lines represent, in detail.
ChatGPT
The diagram is a conceptual representation of power dynamics in polycentric environmental governance, illustrating how different types of power are used within a network of governance centers and are tied to key social science concepts.
The left part of the diagram features an illustrative landscape with various layers representing different levels of a polycentric system, marked by red dots that indicate centers of authority. These centers are interconnected by lines. The thickness of the lines represents the strength or intensity of the relationships of power between the centers of authority—the thicker the line, the more significant or influential the relationship.
For example, a thick line might indicate a strong legislative influence or substantial resource sharing between two centers of authority, suggesting that actions taken by one center could have considerable effects on or require significant coordination with another. Conversely, thinner lines might represent more informal or less influential connections, where the interaction is present but less impactful on the operation or decision-making of connected centers.
The middle part of the diagram lists three types of power within these networks:
- Power by design, which concerns the intentional creation of rules and incentives.
- Pragmatic power, relating to the practical implementation of these rules.
- Framing power, involving the influence on discourse and norms.
The right part aligns these powers with social science concepts, connecting them to theories and ideas from various fields, such as political science, public policy, and political sociology, indicating the academic foundations that underpin the understanding of power in such a governance system.
Tim
How does this model map across to computing?
ChatGPT
Distributed Systems and Networks:
- Centers of Authority: In computing, these can be compared to nodes or servers in a network or distributed system, each with its own processing power and tasks.
- Relationships of Power: The thickness of the lines can be analogous to the bandwidth or data transfer rate between nodes. Thicker lines could represent higher bandwidth connections that allow for more data flow and thus a stronger relationship or level of dependency.
- Polycentric System: This concept aligns with the notion of decentralized networks where there is no single point of failure and each node operates independently, contributing to the system’s robustness and resilience.
Cloud Computing and Microservices:
- Power by Design: Similar to designing microservices architectures, where services are designed to perform distinct functions within an application, encapsulating specific business logic and capabilities.
- Pragmatic Power: This is like the implementation of APIs and service protocols that allow different services to communicate and work together pragmatically.
- Framing Power: Comparable to setting the standards and protocols for communication in a network or within a cloud architecture, which dictates how components interact with each other.
Software Engineering:
- Layers of Governance: In software development, layers often represent levels of abstraction or components such as data, business logic, and user interface. The model’s layers could correspond to these different levels, each governed by its own rules and principles.
Cybersecurity:
- Interconnections and Thickness: The diagram’s varying line thickness between centers can represent the strength of security measures between systems or the level of access control. Thicker connections might indicate encrypted channels or stronger authentication mechanisms, signifying more critical or secure interactions.
Computational Governance:
- Polycentric Governance: This is akin to algorithms that dynamically adjust to the state of the system, similar to governance mechanisms that adapt based on inputs from various centers of authority.
- Power Dynamics: The model’s power dynamics can be likened to the decision-making processes in algorithms or AI systems where certain rules or data inputs have more weight or influence than others.
Overall, the model offers a framework for understanding complex interactions in computing environments, where different systems, applications, or components play distinct roles yet must coordinate to achieve a cohesive goal. The thickness of connections and the governance layers are crucial concepts that have parallels in network design, system architecture, and the deployment of robust, scalable computing infrastructures.