Bill:

I think in addition to supporting principles of social equity, people need to learn techniques.

To some extent this reduces the need for principles because pragmatic development of the structures is frequently a matter of "enlightened self interest."

As an example lets assume that the selection of a stock could be divided into 8 parts. So an individual could chose to analyze one stock or work with 7 other people to analyze 8. And if individuals specialize each doing what they do best, then you might get 12 done and done better than any done individually.

Simple Adam Smith.

Now lets assume that actually it would be nice to do more than 8 things per stock or it would be good to have people double check or it would be nice to trade the information our group has for those of other groups... expotentially increasing the amount of information or wealth availible to each individual.

Plus lets say one doesn't have a fancy organization to direct things, indeed such direction might be counter productive because the best ways of doing the work are as yet unknown, so are the capacities of workers and indeed this group might be changing.

Logically a potentially powerful result is an "open system." This has proven potential, the net was to a large extent built in this way, and currently "open source" software slowly, but surely grows. Many institutions let their employees devote significant time to it's development because they know the collective advantages that I sketched out above.

It *can* work, it often has. It isn't as easy as common sense and logic would suggest, but it a very effective way of creating wealth.

And it allows individuals to unite into entities as poweful in some respects than huge corporations and institutions. Potentially more powerful.

Many concern themselves with "free riders," those who benefit from the public wealth, but produce none themselves.

Such people always consider themselves very, very clever. But they lose out on full benefits of the system.

The first reward for participation is "social capital." Lets say a reader doesn't consider themselves qualified to comment on a subject, but they do keep track of articles they find interesting and put the links in comments or other relevant places, thus extending and sometimes challenging articles, sharing their discoveries.

Such people become known. They earn respect in the "community." They become peers with other contributers, who are the elite. There is networking and exchange of favors.

Some groups are working on this form consciously. New members have a certain amount of free use, then they either contribute work (which may be rated by value by others) or money. The "social capital" system can be made formal.

But even without social capital, contributing is the best way to develop strengths.

- The best way to learn is to teach. To say "this is something I think useful because ... here's a brief description of what it is and how it fits in is to get a better handle on the subject than to emulate people sitting passively. Involvement with the subject is the way to grasp it.

- One is also learning organizational technigues "meta" (to use a computer buzzword) approaches that can be applied to other areas. Learn one's strengths, the successful ways of organizing in a finance community and many of the principles, tools and approaches apply to other things such as organizing one's neighborhood. The more people who practice "grassroots" and "spontaneous" methods, the larger the potential "cadre." The more likely that any group of people can form into an effective collective.

- The effect on self can be important. One interesting thing is that millions of individuals become small time "stars" with their own blogs. It may start in 5th grade. In all sorts of (mostly small) ways one becomes personally familiar with aspects of the "nobility" aura we surround bigshots with. One can become an active and important force and in subtle ways that unclothes many of the kings and queens of this world because one has experienced that role, it isn't magic, it isn't given by god. We weaken our "inner peasant."

I would argue that one of the major reasons that people don't unite, shift from passive to active; is because of a taboo. Start to actively change the world and parts within cry "no! no! no! This is forbidden. I don't have permission." It's one reason the right has been more effective at organizing their own institutions than the left, the right has god's permission.

Indeed much of the left and progressives are bitten by this. 30 years ago a prominent theme was "lets organize, lets create out own (non, counter) institions," but now to a considerable extent it's primarily protest, complaining of power not making power. They refuse to analyze how power works, indeed certain aproaches are designed to encourage impotence, they regard power as immoral and refuse to define any of their activities in terms of it.

But conscious understanding of power, how it is created, how to harness and control it, how to limit certain expressions is necessary.

A first step in doing this is involvement. Thinking "this might be useful to others" and sharing it.

At this stage in most financial blogs there is plenty of room for all kinds of approaches. The comments are almost empty so things only vaguely related or related to the general theme cause no real clutter.

As groups develop organizational problems can develop, but they can be reduced by more advanced tools (eg. blog mediums which allow the naming of comments (often showing nothing but name and author) threading them into hierarchies so relatonships are observable and other methods.

Also there are useful almost automatic social mechanisms, good information often discourages the bad and other tools (such as wikis) can structure a variety of things. People can learn to create a whole and often feel restrictions or directions are required, spammers and disrupters are often few, they can be ignored.

But more discipline is also possible, indeed from first stages one needs to move towards more complex structures.

But the first stages, using availible tools to add to the conversation builds the practices for the rest.

The thing is that people need to understand that you can't build a heterarchy (mathematical network, just as hierachy is a mathematical tree) just by watching, but by acting, experimenting, finding roles and methods.