Mike,
The question really isn't whether the proposed model is more appealing than
the existing model. The questions are: whether the proposed model can work
as well or better in any number of diverse circumstances; and whether the
model can be implemented in those circumstances with anything approaching
fidelity. The easiest thing in the world is to give things new labels --
jack up the hierarchy and call it interactive. Impose self-monitoring
(confession) and call it self-management. If labeling can make it so, why
bother with the bazaar, why not go straight to paradise?
Anecdotal evidence isn't good enough. Comparing Eaton's and Amazon.com or
Drudge and the NYT begs so many questions it's hard to know where to begin.
Without a controlled experiment and an explicit hypothesis we can't draw
conclusions about the role that different structures of governance played in
the success of one enterprise and the failure of the other. Some people get
rich by buying lottery tickets. Does that mean that everybody could get rich
if they bought lottery tickets?
The Cathedral/Bazaar contrast leaves me without an image of the good life.
What it offers instead is a technical solution of the good process.
Presumably, once we've established the appropriate procedures for selecting
the ends (and the means to those ends), those procedures will lead to good
ends. Not so. Structural reforms can as easily vomit up political cyphers
like Clinton and Blair, who since they stand for nothing drift aimlessly
until they have to retroactively justify the place that aimless drift has
taken them. Then, with a stroke, the iron fist is substituted for the bazaar
(for "reasons of state"). What's left of the bazaar with the likes of Wesley
Clark, Robin Cook and Jamie Shea manning the booths, calling the shots and
doctoring the spin?
regards,
Tom Walker
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
