The Last Mile and the Final Straw
How governments can matter more for us or how government must be for us
This article is part of a series of 12 articles about applications of 12 leverage points to intervene in a system. Systems thinking author Donella Meadows published Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, a paper in 1997, in which she enumerated the 12 points in an increasing order of effectiveness.
The goal of the system is the 3rd in the order of 12 leverage points that are effective for systems change. I lifted her thoughts in the paper and have carried them across in a current context.
Often, executives of government departments are detached from the cogs of the intertwined daily experiences of the people they need to serve. Moreover, once they face the interests of those who wield corrupted power, they have their asses facing the populace. Furthermore, perhaps as in any other organization in every sector, these executives act only within their respective domains. The “not our mandate” or “we only deal with department policy” or “not our mission” statements are manifestations of the “drawers-of-the-cabinet” mind-set.
The cabinet system of government was designed in 17th century Great Britain. It was intended to be a privy council of the English monarchs. Hence, today the term “cabinet secretaries” stuck, not only the term but also its essence. The cabinet of the monarchy evolved in the late 18th century to maintain itself in power with the support of a majority in the House of Commons. Today, the cabinet’s members, led by a president or prime minister are collectively responsible to the House of Commons–or Congress–for their conduct of the government. Then in turn, the House of Commons is responsible to its constituents, the citizens whom each House of Commons member represents in government.
The Cabinet creates policies for the rules to govern with Congress-passed laws. Here is where the fragility of the system is imminent, prone to the precariousness of moral conduct in government affairs. The system’s design and its framework breathe a “life” of its own in the system’s actors. So then an inertia of the system, with its actors’ fixed mind-sets, creates deeper complexities in our daily experiences around economics and politics.
This is where we all are today: a 17th century political system which has had undesirable outcomes. A political system that is now dominated by a global economic system that was not designed with the goal to primarily meet the interests of the commons.
Case in point, as Donella Meadows postulated, if the goal is to bring more and more of the world under the control of one particular central planning system (such as the World Bank; the United States Federal Reserve; lobbying techno and consumer goods multinational corporations), then everything further down the list: physical stocks and flows (goods and money); feedback loops (recession, inflation, natural resource depletion, flooding or drought); information flows (Internet and media); and even self-organizing individual behaviors at family level, will be twisted to conform to the goal of centralization with the respective tools that the system’s dominant players yield.
In modern history, democracy (in Greek, direct rule of the people) has been corrupted by a “representative democracy” of elected officials in government. The fundamental responsibility of an elected representative is to create a positive impact on his or her constituents’ lives by faithfully fulfilling the mandate of democracy. Exclusion of people’s democratic interest mirrors what the government’s goals are. How institutions are designed, built, and how they operate obviously reflect that the goals are intended neither to morally serve nor have outcomes that will fulfill the aspirations of their mass-based stakeholders.
Bearing the brunt of misdirected goals and ill-designed systems of government and economics is the populace, the commons.
The Repeated Outcomes
What recourse do the commons have with a government that stifles or tramples their aspirations? If policies are meant to blind-side and maneuver with the intent to limit the commons’ options or enfeeble people into submission, the rules are, at least, a disappointment. Disappointment can be discontent. Once acted on, discontent leads to opposition, however, if unabated, it can escalate into resentment. Then resentment over time, if not rectified, can breed dissent. Dissent’s tipping point can lead to a revolt.
Little will come to bear with opposition for as long as it is done on the same system’s platform, say an opposition party in the chambers of Congress, as the very same rules of the system will apply.
Public dissent in a democracy can be a peaceful expression of protest. Or to change government leadership in a democratic system, citizens vote in an election. But, can institutions of government uphold the legitimacy of such democratic right of the electorate? Yes it can, and it should. However, in many instances, rules of control are circumvented to unleash further control by exploiting cracks in and insufficiency of existing laws. Take the 2022 presidential elections in the Philippines. Old political dynasties once again seeking political power twisted voters’ minds over the years in deliberate calibration to distort Philippine political history. With scheming campaigns to usurp the democratic right of the electorate, they eventually won by a landslide and now have a grapple hold over the entire three branches of the republican democracy.
A Way Forward
Democracy’s essence can still hold. However, because of a phenomenal growth of populations with diverse interests, geopolitics and economics have exploited this diversity into homogeneity and hegemony. Globalization as an example: it is not only an economic dominance over global politics but also a carefully tuned acculturation to a desire for needless consumption. This adulterates the genuine democracy of a nation’s free will and true options.
So then a question is not how the government can be faithful in its exercise of power over the commons but how individuals and sectors of the populace can become increasingly united to wield the power over goal-setting of their government system.
The “last mile”
“Last mile” is a term in supply chain management and transportation planning to describe the movement of goods from a transportation hub to a final destination. The last mile is always the least efficient part of logistics because the end milestones–consumers, users, citizens–are geographically distributed. But the last mile also can be the most effective phase if done right as it is the last leg in the fulfillment of a provider’s promise. To the end user, it is the fulfillment of an aspiration.
So, in central planning systems such as governments and corporations, the end milestones are the root sources of the systems’ exploits to be able to seize control.
The overarching goal for the next system of government is citizen participation and self-governance to meet their nation’s agenda and to help fulfill common aspirations and goals. From advocacy and mobilization activities to programmatic implementation, efforts must continuously plug the exploited gaps in governance by introducing context-specific interventions within the last mile.
System resources utilized within first mile activities can then take into account proper preparation of last mile activities — activities that would bridge the aspirations that will deliver the desired outcomes with the necessary performance of the system’s actors. Inroads to and sealing multi- and trans-sector cooperation or collaboration in the quad-helix networks of civil society: non-government agencies; private sector; the academic sector or academe; and organized communities, are necessary sustained ground level arenas for last mile activities–be it online or off.
At the center of all these networks are individuals, the ultimate actors of human-created systems. By fulfilling their human needs through their participation, empowerment, and self-governance — the last mile actions for fulfillment — they would directly gain, both as designers and beneficiaries of their own government.
The final straw
Epictetus, a Greek philosopher of Stoicism stated, “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. . .do I look for good and evil? Not in the uncontrollable, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .”
Epictetus was born in present-day Pamukkale in Turkey which, 2,000 years ago, was part of the Roman Empire. His life is like a 20th century commons. He was born a slave to a wealthy Roman family, gained freedom, pursued liberal studies, and was mentored by a Roman Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus.
Epictetus would perhaps see the human contradiction in today’s society. Thinking and decision-making are social conformity but ironically individual actions are hardhearted individualism. Unity in individual actions are bound by the rules of authoritative institutions so the individual can only function according to the government’s system rules. This wrongly mimics the biological design of humans — the head or mind leads, the rest of the organs follow. This mimicry has one essential function amissed. A morally self-directed interconnection.
We know that the mind functions in orchestration with the other organs of the body. Individual organs properly function with another. Conversely, organs malfunction because of other organs’ malfunction. So, communities, no matter how small, can be designed as a platform to help embed in itself a network creation-intermediation function for any system that needs change. In this process, setting in place activities at micro scale can enable fluid, at personal levels, access to information and services that can stimulate sense-making through truthful information and knowledge exchange of culture, economics, or politics among individuals and the units that they belong in society. Such activities are what would keep a movement to properly perform the right actions for systemic change, and to move forward.
Devolution of society’s functions must take root at an individual level. Not the other way around. Just as how we mimic natural design in our created world, we need to find the profundity in nature’s design itself. Take a tree. Its roots, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers, or seeds. Each individual component of these parts have their function to perform. One component matters equally with another. Their functions are interdependent, intertwined, and the whole tree is immensely interconnected and interacts with its environs: the sun, soil, wind, and water.
The government system, one we have created as we have other complex systems, can be adaptive. So, must we still ascribe a democracy to a government system that has repeatedly failed us? Must we still play out our acts in the same way we conduct our individual lives today? Will we forever live by prescribed rules that no longer work for us?
Yet, to many, systems are nebulous concepts. There is a disconnection. And this is where the largest cracks and gaps exist. It is the System out there, then there is us here. No. The system is us.
Related articles: What trees tell us: we can learn from them; Ancient civilizations knew better; The power of rules and how change can happen
