Part one
7 January 2024 · on VK
Today I wanted to share with you some elements of a live conception of the rational structure of social and economic systems. First of all, the “ladder principle”.
The metaphor is this. In striving towards a given goal, a person as it were climbs a ladder: first he mounts the lower steps, then gets past the middle of the ladder, and finally makes his way up its last section. The lower steps are taken easily, since the person is full of strength, has a clear goal, and the steps are not far off the ground. In the upper part of the ladder his spur is the nearness of the goal, which lets him overcome the fear of height. The hardest part is the middle, whose ascent demands considerable strength and involves overcoming that fear. Yet one cannot imagine a ladder consisting only of its first and last sections: the top can be reached only by passing through all the intermediate stages.
The ladder principle consists in recognising the necessity of moving in sequence through every significant intermediate point from foot to summit. In social and economic planning, departure from this principle leads to a substantial rise in the risk of not reaching the goal. Projected onto the structure of social and economic systems, the ladder principle establishes the preferability of systems whose structures contain the full spectrum of essential intermediate elements with respect to one ranking or another. Thus, if one takes the age of the members of a collective as one variant of ranking, the greatest chance of fundamental success belongs to a collective in which all the broad age groups are present: young inexperienced staff (juniors); staff of middle age and correspondingly of accumulated experience (middles); and older staff, some of whom possess not only a solid stock of experience and knowledge but wisdom as well (seniors). Young staff often know well what one would wish to achieve, and are “bearers of the desirable”; older staff often know what cannot be achieved, and are “bearers of the possible”; staff of middle age effect the synthesis of the desirable and the possible and thereby determine the collective’s actual strategy. Juniors are marked by a certain rashness of decision, seniors by a certain circumspection; the mission of the middles is to keep watch over the system of decision-making, softening the recklessness of the young and the caution of the old.
The conclusion: the greatest chance of long-term sustainable development belongs to collectives in whose structure a balance between juniors, middles and seniors is maintained.
Part two
11 January 2024 · on VK
Dear friends, let us continue our movement up the ladder of knowledge!
The ladder principle gives us a key to the analysis of the rational structure not only of communities of social agents (collectives) but of communities of economic agents (enterprises). In analysing a collective we relied on the age ranking. In analysing the structure of economic agents in a given country or a large region of it, one should rely first of all on the age and the size rankings. By age is meant the length of time an enterprise has worked in the market: a new enterprise, including a start-up; an “adult” enterprise, that is one that has been in the market at least five years; a widely known enterprise, including a brand. Enterprises are classified by size in a similar way: small, medium, large. Between these rankings there is a probabilistic connection, by which most new enterprises are as a rule small and large enterprises are brands; but in the general case the age and size rankings do not coincide.
According to the ladder principle one should strive to create a balanced structure of enterprises by age as well as by size. Just as with social agents, start-ups are usually the bearers of innovation (“the desirable”). Brands embody tradition, that is innovations that have taken root in the economy (“the possible”). “Adult” enterprises play the part of incubators of synthetic technologies combining innovation and routine (“the natural”).
The ladder principle is a constituent part of the systems analysis of social and economic formations and should be applied in the analysis, forecasting and design of social and economic systems.
The ladder and the wheel
26 February 2024 · on VK
The ladder and the wheel are the most ancient instruments for easing a person’s movement through three-dimensional space. The ladder allows movement along the vertical, step by step, rung by rung, covering ever new stretches of height in sequence. The wheel allows movement, just as sequentially, in the horizontal plane of space. The invention of the ladder was an episode in the life of humanity no less important than the invention of the wheel.
The combination of these two devices makes helical movement possible, moving along the vertical and the horizontal at once. The symbols of the ladder and the wheel are the line and the circle.
The ladder and the wheel are not as different as they seem: cut a wheel and unroll it and we can build a ladder; join the beginning of a ladder to its end and we obtain a wheel.
Each of these devices possesses wholeness: removing some of the rungs from a ladder deprives it of its basic function. In the same way, removing part of a wheel’s rim destroys its functional purpose.
In social life we often speak of the career ladder and of fortune’s wheel. And the ladder is not only a device for linear movement but a means of measuring the distance covered. A counter of a wheel’s turns measures the road travelled in the same way. The evenness of a ladder’s rungs and the sameness of the arcs of a circle give us the possibility of conquering practically any height and of achieving any result we set ourselves, using the limited strength of a human being. Linear forward movement and cyclical even rotation form the basis of scientific, technological, social and economic progress.
The ladder and the wheel are the two chief models of moving through life. The ability to see and use the rungs of the ladder, and the ability to see cycles, are two keys that open the way to success in life.