Countervailing forces

"My view of the story of this era is that capitalism was one of many forces and it has become, in many societies, functionally the only one. That it was in relationship with religion. It was in relationship with more rooted communities. And, in some ways, because of it, in some ways just because of other changes in technology, it is must less restrained by those, and so it has become not just an economic system, but a belief system and it is a little bit untrammeled. I'm not an anti-capitalist person, but I believe it needs countervailing forces, and my basic view is that it doesn't have them anymore." - Ezra Klein, 'This Conversation with Richard Powers is a Gift"

I'm working on a new essay on organizational governance in a multi-stakeholder world, a topic I've written about more than ten times over the past year.  I keep returning to it, I think, because I am struggling to understand my own views.

The longest essay on the subject I wrote was last September, making the case that technological progress brings forward a need for new leadership models.  Looking back now, I see that essay is too long, and unwieldy. But, I think I was on to something novel and important.  What didn't occur to me at that time was where those ideas came from.  

I am reading a lot these days.  I listen to a lot of podcasts.  I don't take notes on these inputs, but my sense is that these consistent new influences linger, and mix together in an unstable, evolving internal conversation in my mind.   I have no idea why certain ideas linger, and connect with others to form new ideas.  

I wrote the leadership essay soon after reading Richard Powers' Bewilderment.  It is clear to me now that Powers' novel influenced my thinking about modern corporate leadership, even though the book is about a father and son relationship, without any direct mention of business.

Ezra Klein's quote at the top of this post interests me for two reasons. First, it provides new language for a view I have great sympathy with. I'm working to understand and articulate how I can both believe in competitive market driven economic growth and also define where it can and should be limited.  

Second, it introduces the idea of countervailing forces as a control mechanism in general.  I increasingly see areas where I don't believe one side or another is wholly correct, that the preferred path is one that holds competing forces in balance.  This concept is central to Jamal Greene's How Rights Went Wrong, a favorite read for me this year.

How can we understand the stability of system held by dynamic countervailing forces? How can we preserve stability if balance is maintained by seemingly unrelated forces, as Ezra illustrates above with religion and capitalism?  What does the inherent complexity of these systems imply for the toolkit needed to diagnose and lead reform?

I don't know.  But, these questions are giving me considerable pause when thinking about narrow legal or governance tools as solutions for the challenges of modern capitalism.

I am left thinking of the need for greater epistemic modesty, in the sense used by Tyler Cowen in Stubborn Attachments. We don't know all the linkages and directions of causality for so many complex economic and policy issues so we should be more modest in our views.   In such a world, experimentation, trial and measurement become relatively more important, and 'logic' and persuasion become less important.