From: ddfr@ellis.uchicago.edu (david director friedman)
Subject: Decentralization--what we can do
Reply-To: ddfr@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 22:15:54 GMT


"There are a number of useful publications that come out of the
corporation, and which would not be possible without it (ever read
the _Known World Handbook_, Aryk?)  TI is only one of these--Compleat
Ananchronist is another.) "(Alan Fairfax Aluricson)

I don't undestand why you say that these things would not be possible
without the corporation. There are lots of things analogous to CA
pamphlets that are produced within the Society but outside of the
corporation--Salaamallah's book on games, The Miscellany, Seams like
Old Times,  ...  .

"Don't forget that centralization is actually cheaper than 12 orgs. 
The cost of offices, furniture, and paid people for 12 organizations
would be  veryexpensive, and kingdoms would have to find some way to
pay for the increased costs."   (Alan Fairfax Aluricson)

This is not so clear. The other side of it is that you can get more
things done by volunteer labor if the job is broken up into 12
pieces. One reason for this is that five hours a week may count as
fun where fifty hours a week is work. A second reason is that the
coin in which we pay volunteer labor--respect, influence, a feeling
of service, etc.--is more available at the local level. 

On the general subject of decentralization ...  .

It seems clear that the board is moving, slowly but steadily, in the
direction of claiming that the Society (the game that lots of us are
playing) is the property of the Corporation, and that the Corporation
can and should restrict access to the Society as a way of increasing
its ability to sell memberships. For those of us who think this is a
bad idea, there are two obvious responses. One is to try to persuade
the board to reverse its course. I would like to discuss the other.

If the Corporation tries to sieze ownership of the Society, the
obvious response is to create ways in which people can participate in
the Society, play the game we are playing, that do not require the
Corporation's permission. At the simplest level this means holding
unofficial fighting practices, which happens all the time, and
unofficial events, which occur occasionally. 

The Corporation has a legal claim to restrict anyone who is acting in
its name, but it has no legal control over my persona, over the rules
for fighting that we have evolved, over our garb--over anything else
important that makes up the Society. If a bunch of people choose to
do something that looks very much like an SCA event while making it
clear to all concerned that they are not claiming to be the SCA, that
infringes no legal (nor, in my view, moral) right of the Corporation.

Many SCA groups have parallel student organizations which they use to
get university sites for events. In this situation it is typically
the Corporation that is free riding on the student group, not the
other way around--at least, in the cases I have been involved in, the
student group could get the site even if it had no connection to the
SCA Inc., but the Corporation could not get the site without the
student group. 

So any such group that was unhappy with membership requirements--for
example, a group that wanted new fighters to be able to fight in a
tournament without having to become members of the Corporation
first--could put on an unofficial event. It could not be announced in
the kingdom newsletter as an SCA event--but it could be announced as
something of interest to readers, or put in as an ad, assuming the
editor did not object. The group could send out a seneschal's
mailing, making it clear the event was unofficial, and members could
invite their friends from other groups.

If a lot of people want to play the game without being members--want,
in other words, to be in the Society but not the corporation--then
there is much to be said for going beyond individual events to form
parallel organizations. To same extent this has already happened. In
forming such an organization, one important issue is to what degree
you are trying to produce a place where the Society can exist outside
the control of the Corporation, and to what extent you are trying to
"reinvent the Society, but this time do it right." 

Existing groups such as Acre seem to fit the latter pattern. The
advantage is obvious--a chance to use our experience to improve the
rules. The disadvantages are, first, that different people in the
Society have different ideas about how the rules should be changed,
and second that the greater the difference between the new
organization and the old, the harder it is for people to play in both.

Suppose what you want is not an improved Society but a way of playing
the existing game independent of the Corporation? I think one could
do so by following a few very simple rules; for simplicity, I call
the hypothetical new organization X:

1. All ranks, names, and arms recognized by the existing institutions
will be recognized by X.

2. In granting its own ranks, names, and arms X will try to keep
their meaning and content consistent with the existing system.

To expand a little on 2, I suggest:

2a. X should base its willingness to give out its own ranks on its
size in a way roughly corresponding to the present system. In other
words, if X has 50 active members, it might want to have a
head/ruler/etc. called a Baron, but it would not want to have King,
or six Barons. If it has 600 members it might reasonably have a King
and several Barons. 

If X gives out knighthood, it should try to give it to people who it
believes would be likely to get it if they were active in official
events instead of X's events. A situation where X knights someone who
is active in both organizations and not even being considered for
knighthood in his kingdom is evidence that X is making a mistake.
Maintaining consistency will be made easier if there are a fair
number of people, including some knights, playing in both
organizations.

2b. If X has its own system for registering arms, it should avoid
granting arms that conflict with those currently registered by the
College of Arms. If X (and Y and Z and ...) grow and prosper, one
would hope to eventually see a College of Arms independent of the
Corporation and coordinating arms for all of them.

It seems to me that these rules would be enough to produce a
situation rather like international folk dancing (or, I believe, some
of the historical reenactment groups), where there was one game but
it was being played under the aegis of a number of different formal
organizations.

In the latest T.I., Hillary raises the question of how the
Corporation should deal with the problems of growth. I doubt this is
the kind of solution she is thinking of, but it is one approach to
the problem. If a single organization is becoming unwieldly,
encourage the growth of parallel organizations to divide the load. We
would be a lot poorer and hungrier if food growing in the U.S. was
all handled by a single organization.

David/Cariadoc
DDFr@AOL.com
DDFr@Midway.UChicago.Edu