2010-03-03

Living In Pyramid Land (Part 2)


As the first real kingdoms came into existence, the final structure of later Pyramids Of Might was born. Most residents populate the basement, some live on the second floor, less on the third floor, a few on the fourth floor, a handfull on the fifth floor and just one sits on top of them all in the 6th floor. Since then, there were no huge changes, only some fine tuning of control mechanisms was applied to improve the efficiency of this construct. Today, Pyramids Of Might are highly optimised constructs with zillions of ways to control thinking and acting of their residents. Having this coarse skeleton in mind, we should populate it with real residents and bring it into live.

As mentioned, most residents of each Pyramid live in the bottom level. In general, they are born here, grow up, work here most time of their life, retire when they get too old to work and die here at the end of their life. It surely is possible to climb up the stairways to the next higher level, but 'bottomers' are not welcome on the second floor. Whoever wants to survive there has to be eager to stay and has to provide outstanding skills to be accepted as a new second floor member. Because most positions already are assigned to second floor residents, upstarts most times replace a former resident who held that position. If so, the replaced second floor resident probably will be downgraded to a 'bottomer' (a true exchange), depending on her/his overall status. However, upgrades are seldom and pertain to less than one per mille of all 'bottomers'.

Let us climb one segment up. On the second floor, most residents are busy with bookkeeping. Some gather raw data, some apply preset filters, some organise the filtered results for statistical and administrative purposes. Only a small part of second floor residents are trustworthy and skilled enough to be established as supervisors for a small group of 'bottomers' (workers) or second floor residents (clerks). Nevertheless, most second floor residents are entitled to apply general rules, capable to control important aspects of a bottomer's life directly - be it tax assessments, construction permits, payroll acountings or other notifications and permissions of any kind. Compared to the bottom, more might is concentrated in the second floor, even if it is populated with far less residents.

One level up, we can find two different types of residents. The predominant part are 'mental workers', specialised in areas of expertise. 'Mental workers' generally maintain and improve actual production processes, some of them are are capable to enhance existing or develop future products and technologies. The remaining residents occupy positions in the lower or medium management. Third floor residents are empowered with as much might as they need to keep all production processes seamlessly running and to guarantee a smooth and efficient administration of both lower levels. Because the third floor sits between the lower and upper parts of a Pyramid, its residents are exposed to pressure from the upper segments as well as to complaints and latent reluctance of the lower segments.

Up again. The entire fourth floor is reserved for the top level management. All private decisions are made somewhere in this segment. Depending on the type of the Pyramid, a lot of smaller Pyramids Of Might might be established inside. If private Pyramids are a legal option of a Pyramid's internal structure, the tips of these private Pyramids sit somewhere inside the fourth floor. Many common decisions are influenced by residents of the fourth floor, as well. Even if common decisions generally are made by resident of the remaining two levels above, residents of the fifth and sixth floor have no experience in many fields, so their decisions depend on the help offered by experts living on the fourth floor. Whether that help is reliable or not is a question of beliefs, not of facts. Either those experts are accepted as trustworthy or they are ignored.

Let us climb up to the fifth floor, where the Pyramid's government resides. Most common decisions are made here. But, as mentioned, many of these decisions are heavily influenced by experts living on the fourth floor. Depending on the Pyramid's type, residents of the fifth floor either are elected for a fixed period of time (so called democracies) or they are appointed to specific positions in hieratic administation structures (dictatureships, ???-ist countries, kingdoms). Anyway, the fifth floor's purpose is to administrate the underlying paramid. Like all other segments, the fifth floor is subdivided into hierarchical levels, as well. Most residents perform mundane tasks and use their votes to deny decisions or let them pass. Some residents (called ministers, generals, et cetera) have special rights and are able to influence the voting behaviour of all others.

Finally, we reach the sixth floor, populated with just one resident. This is the Center Of Might, where all powers are concentrated and controlled. Well, almost true. In reality, the person on top of the Pyramid just is a human like you and me. Firstly, a human brain has quite limited capabilities. Secondly, humans make mistakes. Thirdly, no human can know everything. Hence, the top level resident needs a staff. This staff is responsible for filtering incoming information and present the results to the person on top. In the other direction, many different options are evaluated and weighted against each other, until an optimised solution is found. The result then is drafted out as the 'decision' of the person on top. As a rule of thumb, the quality of a government heavily depends on the quality of the top level staff. The described mechanisms also bear possibilities to turn the person on top into the staff's marionette. And: Even a high quality staff has no chance to inact required decisions if fourth floor residents block them, because they collide with concurrent interests of private Pyramids.

To be continued...


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