DeKeyser – Swarms make messy democracy work

The cover story in a recent edition of National Geographic talks about how insect colonies, hooved herds and flocks of birds manage to make individual decisions and actions that work out best for the group.

This swarm behavior is accomplished without leaders, each creature taking cues from the creatures around him. There is no General Ant or President Antelope or Supervisor Seagull. Yet these self-governed animals manage to take personal and collective action that consistently benefits the group.

When attacked by a wolf, the antelope zig and zag and throw confusing cuts and turns at the predator. Ants and bees follow cues from each other to bring in food and protect the nest. Flocks of birds move in a unison that would be the envy of marching band directors without any single coordinator.

The details of how that all works is interesting, but a point about how this all translates to human behavior can be illuminating to today’s environment in Maricopa. The human parallel in the magazine piece was the stock market. Somehow, with thousands and thousands of investors making individual decisions based on what they see others do around them provides some consistency and rudder to the system. In spite of tech, housing and tulip bubbles, eventually stocks are priced right, and the bad companies lose or go out of business. It is a pendulum that swings toward one form of chaos and then corrects the other way, always staying within X of reasonable.

I would argue that is how democracy and markets work, and that is how such an open, vibrant and too often in-your-face system like the inmaricopa.com Forum works.

Some political scientists argue that while democracy is a preferred and fairer system, dictatorships are more efficient at getting things done. All the Maximum Leader has to do to get something done is say “Make it so.” In democracies, we have to put up with all the noise, ranting of the ill-informed, demagogery, politics of self-interest, stalling, rumor-mongering and cranks. How does anything get done?

Well, a lot doesn’t get done, and sometimes that’s the point. In our system, cranks get to shout on their soapboxes. Most of them are ignored, and some of them turn out to be right. Wildly unpopular or wrong leadership decisions are impossible to enforce long term (slavery, white-men-only voting, Vietnam, Watergate), and right moves for the country (equal rights, universal suffrage, etc.) eventually come to fore. That’s because the individual decisions of millions of people eventually get to the best solution. That’s not without some pain, losers and hurt feelings.

Democracy is messy, overbearing and sometimes pushed down ugly rabbit holes by devious rumor-mongering. But in the end, we get to what’s right.

There are those in Maricopa who want to shut down the inmaricopa.com Forum because they find it offensive, rumor-filled and painful. In spite of monitoring for offensive language and libel, some ugly comments seemingly designed to hurt feelings slip through, however temporarily. The recent flap over a bar fight involving Maricopa firefighters produced thousands of posts and views – that in a community of only about 30,000 people. The same thing happened with some administrators being let go at the school district, the City Council’s conflict-ridden ineptitude at finding and building a city hall and other real or perceived shennanigans in the city. Sometimes there are flames under all that smoke.

I don’t know what kind of 1950s technological world the local powers that be think they live in, but electronic communication and wide open forums on the Internet are facts of life in 2007, regardless of what inmaricopa.com might present or not. It is a more democratic and less fact-checked universe, but things tend to sort themselves out.

Some business cases in point: A couple who ran a house-cleaning business earned a nasty comeuppance on the Forum for what the venters said was taking hefty deposits and never doing the work and doing a lousy job when they did. Others piled on with the same story and experience, and nary a fan of the duo could be found. They left Maricopa. That would have taken months or longer absent this instant communication device. In an opposite example, one poster trashed a landscaping company, and those comments were instantly followed by clients who disagreed, saying they had gotten competent work and good service there. You couldn’t buy that kind of positive and credible advertising. And one local grill and watering hole was trashed early on, but when the menu and service changed, the Forum posters noted it and gave the owners credit.

The more information you get, even though some of it is dead wrong, the faster the more people see the truth. The same thing happens without a Forum. It just happens faster with it.

Here’s the trade-off of having a Forum in town: People who are petty, vindictive, self-absorbed, downright mean, spout off without a clue and are as funny as a seventh-grade bully get to display their IQ – and most decent people soon figure them out. At the same time, issues and topics that powerfully grab the public’s attention rocket to the top of the issues chart. It demands that the powers that be take notice and action. Things that otherwise would have laid simmering in the angry pool get attention (although not necessarily fixed) because the weight of public attention screams for it, not always pleasantly or knowledgably.

Two points: 1) Do you think that’s a reasonable trade-off, some public unpleasantness in exchange for an instant and powerful thermometer of civic opinion? 2) Whether you do or not, blogs, forums and electronic conversation for good or ill are features of our 2007 world, so get used to it.

We know that the powers that be in Maricopa hate the Forum and would shut it down if they could. I think they would be better served by viewing it like the restaurant manager cited a few paragraphs above: If the vast majority is trashing your policy or operation, perhaps the problem lies somewhere besides the messengers’ vehicle.

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