The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government

by Eric Liu, Nick Hanauer

American democracy is informed by the 18th century’s most cutting edge thinking on society, economics, and government. We’ve learned some things in the intervening 230 years about self interest, social behaviors, and how the world works. Now, authors Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer argue that some fundamental assumptions about citizenship, society, economics, and government need updating. For many years the dominant metaphor for understanding markets and government has been the machine. Liu and Hanauer view democracy not as a machine, but as a garden. A successful garden functions according to the inexorable tendencies of nature, but it also requires goals, regular tending, and an understanding of connected ecosystems. The latest ideas from science, social science, and economics—the cutting-edge ideas of today--generate these simple but revolutionary

True self interest is mutual interest. (Society, it turns out, is an ecosystem that is healthiest when we take care of the whole.)

Society becomes how we behave. (The model of citizenship depends on contagious behavior, hence positive behavior begets positive behavior.)

We’re all better off when we’re all better off. (The economy is not an efficient machine. It’s an effective garden that need tending. Adjust the definition of wealth to society creating solutions for all.)

Government should be about the big what and the little how. (Government should establish the ideas and the goals, and then let the people find the solutions of how to make it happen.)

Freedom is responsibility. (True freedom is not about living some variant of libertarianism but rather an active cooperation a part of a big whole society; freedom costs a little freedom.)

The Gardens of Democracy is an optimistic, provocative, and timely summons to improve our role as citizens in a democratic society.

Genres: Politics, Economics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Social Justice, Government

194 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a thoughtful but flawed book. The authors argue--compellingly--that rather than using the metaphor of a machine for the economy, and for democracy, we are better served by thinking of it as a garden. I like that idea, and found it to be a useful frame for considering the modern nation in which we live. Transparency and clear rules are the soil, for instance. Education, infrastructure, health and healthcare, a social safety net, are the fertilizer. Rather than planting a monoculture (Too Big To Fail institutions, large monopolistic corporations) we should have a diversity of mostly local businesses that can compete, just as plants do in nature. Citizens, and the goverment of the People, should be gardeners, tending what grows in the healthy soil of our nation's civil and economic garden. Lovely.

The author's lost me, though, with their loving, unrealistic, fantasy vision of a large federal government that sets national goals then lets smaller entities--states, cities, municipal organizations, non-profits, civic organizations, etc. reach those goals without interference. It's just not something that is feasible in our current political culture. It's a nice idea; don't get me wrong. I don't disagree in the least. I just don't think it's possible anymore. The Progressives want top down control coming from Washington, and the Right wants corporatocracy. There is no middle to which thoughtful, intelligent people like these two authors can appeal. Maybe someday, but not now.

So I enjoyed this book in the same way I enjoy reading books about world peace: great idea. Good luck with that.

Update: April 2016. In observing this most recent Presidential election cycle, I am reached the inescapable conclusion that our system is broken beyond repair. Unless the radical ideas like those found in this book are enacted, we are going to lose even the appearance of democracy. Our system is no longer functioning, and we need to do something different--NOW--or we are all fucked. We are an oligarchy and a corporatocracy, not a republic. There are two parties, the party of Wall Street, and the party of (slightly less) Wall Street. Our society, and our culture, have to evolve to face the realities of the 21st century, or we are going to collapse into waring tribes, feudalism, and chaos.

So, yeah...this may be pie in the sky, but the alternative is blood in the streets. I vote for pie.

[John Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little gem of a book, totally unexpected. The author tries to lay out the framework for a new economic and political order beyond the partisanship and polarization that currently dominate. The book book is critical of both laissez-faire and top-down state-centric approaches. It distinguishes between what it calls the outdated "machine-brain" approach the structuring our economics and politics, and the "garden-brain" approach dictated by recent advances in science and technology, such as complex adaptive systems, networks, cognitive science, and computer technology. While the book is largely about the economic system, it avoids the technical jargon and statistics. In some way I would describe the book as "gentle" or "humble. It all makes for a very thoughtful little book. Unfortunately, by virtue of the fact that it leaves a role of government in "tending" the economy, I suspect most people of a libertarian economic bent will think the book is a biased left-wing diatribe.

[KJ Grow · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise and intelligent book I expect I will return to again and again. The authors make the case for changing our mode of thinking of government as a machine that self-corrects and achieves equilibrium when everyone is pursuing their own self-interest, to thinking of government as a garden, where there is conscious cultivation in order to promote the health and wealth of all. A great case for nonpartisan civic engagement and a clear, thoughtful refutation of free-market economics.

I hope this book will become an important part of the political conversation in this muddy election year, but I think it's also a useful and important book for anyone interested in leadership, organizational behavior, and social change.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a couple of months, the presidential election will be over; the winners will be celebrating, the losers will be looking forward to the collapse of our economy/nation/way-of life or planning for the next election and the country will pretty much be back where we were before the election. It will be “business (government) as usual.”

I have read a book that proposes that this is the greater part of our problem: Government as usual. The book is The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer. Many of the reviews I’ve read have mentioned have said that this is a short book, which it is. It could have been much longer and I would have continued reading, I found the ideas and proposals of the authors so relevant and hopeful for our nation.

The authors propose that our usual way of looking at the world, democracy, and the economy is dictated by “machinebrain” and is predicated upon stability, predictability, and self-correction. A new, more effective way would be to picture a garden, which needs to be planned, tended, and changed as conditions demand. And we are all the gardeners.

Within this construct, certain principles emerge:
True self-interest is mutual interest.
Society becomes how you behave.
We’re all better off when we’re all better off.
Big what, Small how (Federal government with a greater hand in setting national goals and purposes and a lighter touch in how we reach those goals.)
We reap what we sow.

Within these principles, the authors address many of the ideas, concerns and fears that are the focus of the presidential campaigns. Fortunately, their approach is much less biased than what we are hearing from the parties involved in the election. That gives me hope.

In the meantime, I suggest you read this short book. It will take less time than many of the things you’ve already read, or posted, or reposted, or “liked”, or argued against. And it might just give us all a place to begin after the election.

[Max Nova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gardens of democracy is a great evaluation of what's currently wrong with the concept of American citizenship on both the left and right. They point out that our political system is based on Enlightenment scientific ideals like linearity and predictability, but we science now tells us that our highly networked, independent, and non-linear society can't be described by those old assumptions and theories.

Liu and Hanauer advocate for a much more pragmatic approach to politics and the rebirth of local/community-based citizenship. They claim that "society becomes how you behave" and emphasize equality of opportunity and strong guards against perpetuation of aristocratic wealth.

[bianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

The basic premise of this book -- that democracy requires active care and involved citizens -- is clear by the end of the book. The book is too short, though, and left me feeling unsatisfied. I finished this a week ago and can't really remember much else besides the basic premise because there wasn't enough examples or discussion for the subsidiary points.

[Bill]

If you're interested at all in the question of what the proper role of government is, run don't walk to read this book. It doesn't matter if you're Occupier, liberal, libertarian, Tea Partier, whatever--there's a lot to chew on here. I've been increasingly troubled by certain aspects of old-school liberalism in recent years (and in fact in some ways I've become small-c conservative), but hard-core libertarianism seems divorced from reality to me, and I'm frankly horrified by modern-day Movement conservatism (much love to my libertarian and right-wing FB friends, though!). And the less said about brain-dead always-split-the-difference "centrism" the better. This book really crystalized what's been rattling around in my brain, and shows a path out of the impasse American politics seems to be in now. Basically, the thesis is that in the 18th and 19th century, the metaphor for government was the machine--the important thing was build it right and set it in motion. However, 20th and 20th century advances in science (particularly behavior economics and game theory) show that a more apt metaphor is the garden: what you plant is important, but tending the garden is also vital, with neither too much nor too little intervention. The book is very short and skims over some ideas that I think should have been fleshed out in greater detail, but the authors say right up front that they sacrificed some rigor for the sake of clarity. Highly, highly recommended.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit that I didn't like every idea for reform within the book. However, the authors presented some very salient points with regard to our current state and approaches to address them. I found myself nodding along to the ideas of "Big What, Small How." The approach for regulations to level the playing field and allow for true competition also rang true. In proper and intelligent doses governments and regulations allow for business to thrive, not impede it. If we operate Education, Police and Fire protection at local levels, why can the same not be accomplished for health care? National definitions, local implementations is a logical approach. Their analogy to the nervous system in the human body works to some degree, in that local nerve clusters are responsible for sensing pain and removing the hand from the fire, but that networking these local clusters also adds value. Further, that the interconnection and awareness between local clusters can allow fast-failures of flawed local models, but can also pass on the lessons to a broader context.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Gardens of Democracy, Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer argue that we need a new metaphor for governance. They term our current mental model for viewing the world as "Machinebrain" - a mechanistic view of the world and democracy, which assumes that the economy is efficient and self-correcting, that people are perfectly rational and driven by self-interest and there is a tendency towards equilibrium. But if we accept that the world is a complex adaptive system, an "entwined set of ecosystems - sinks and sources of trust and social capital, webs of economic growth, networks of behavioural contagion" - then what we need is a "Gardenbrain". A gardener does not seek to optimise but to create the conditions for the right kinds of plants to flourish.

In the first section on Self-Interest, Liu and Hanauer make the case for complexity thinking, outlining the various conceptual shifts taking place in the natural and social sciences (e.g. simple --> complex; atomistic --> networked; equilibrium --> disequilibrium resulting in booms and busts, the butterfly effect and the like; linear --> non-linear; efficient --> adaptive, resilient and 'good enough for now' outcomes; predictive --> adaptive; independent --> interdependent; rational calculator --> irrational approximators; selfish --> strongly reciprocal; zero sum cooperation --> symbiotic, non-zero cooperation supported by positive feedback loops, to name a few).

These conceptual shifts require us to rethink the notion of citizenship. The existing mental model of great citizenship is that it requires efforts "either beyond or against self-interest". For most people citizenship is limited to basic things like complying with the law or voting and the relationship between citizens and the state has been reduced to a transactional one. Liu and Hanauer define citizenship as "living in a pro-social way at every scale of life….showing up for each other".

It doesn't help that the state has "encroached increasingly into arenas of civic action, reducing the space that people have to show up for one another." Instead, Liu and Hanauer argue, "great citizenship treats civic life as a garden demanding constant tending and the willingness to see all problems as interconnected". There is, therefore, no such thing as "not my problem". Instead, every problem society faces is everyone's problem. Just as educating one's kids shouldn't be treated as an issue that parents can outsource entirely to professional educators but is a partnership between parents and schools, people need to see that they have a role to play in shaping societal outcomes, whether it is about community infrastructure, social norms or social trust.

So what does "pro-social citizenship" look like? Liu and Hanauer lay down several rules:
#1: Small acts of leadership compound. People need to step up and participate in civic life, whether by volunteering in the community or participating in townhalls. Small acts count too, like picking up litter, saving water, helping a neighbour. "True citizenship is about treating even the most trivial choice as a chance to shape society and be a leader. It is about laying down habits that scale up throughout society. It is not just setting an example; it is actively leading others to copy you".
#2: Infect the supercarriers. Identify the nodes of networks and have them model the kind of pro-social behaviour desired.
#3: Bridge more than bond. Liu and Hanauer note that "in this light, programs like a universal draft or required national civilian service are necessary for diverse democracies".
#4: Create Dunbar units (where social scientist Robin Dunbar suggested that the maximum size of a coherent community numbers around 150)
#5: Make courtesy count. Liu and Hanauer argue that "courtesy - a cooperative consideration of, and deferral to, the needs of others - is the start of true citizenship…at bottom, courtesy is about subordinating the self, even if momentarily. It breeds trust and trust is everything in civic life".
#6: Trust in trust. How might we "design experiences where people come to know each other, where they can expect to encounter each other repeatedly, and where the quality of life is increased for all if each individual thinks of himself as a steward - or trustee - of the experience"?

In the second section on True Capitalism, Liu and Hanauer argue that the traditional model of the economy as a machine - a linear system with rational actors and a tendency towards equilibrium - "is not an academic curiosity; it is the basis for an ideological story about the economy and government's role - and that story has fueled policymaking and morphed into a selfishness-justifying conventional wisdom". But if we were to understand the economy as a complex system like a garden, we would start to see it in Darwinian terms - where "successful strategies for cooperation spread and multiply…minor initial advantages [and disadvantages] get amplified and locked in" and where feedback loops can create imbalances and outsize effects. The former mental model based on the efficient market hypothesis requires the government to step aside and let efficient markets do their thing. The latter requires governments to tend the garden - to choose which species should or shouldn't be in the garden, and create the conditions for those species to thrive. Governments do not pick winners, but they do choose which sectors to promote, creating a supportive regulatory framework, creating markets where none exist, providing seed funding and the like. Whereas the former model believes in trickle down economics, the latter model believes in "middle-out economics" - bringing prosperity to the broad middle so that it can buy goods and services and "set in motion a feedback loop that benefits everyone - rich and poor - over the long term".

In the third section on Self-Government, Liu and Hanauer make the case for government playing the role of "Big What and Small How". Governments, they argue, are indispensible in the creation of prosperity: "prosperity…is a consequence of our ability to innovate. Innovation requires ever-increasing amounts of technology. That technology, in turn, can only be created and managed by people with ever-increasing amounts of training and education….Prosperity also requires more trade. More trade requires more infrastructure - not just roads and bridges, or airports and train stations, but also treaties, trade agreements, contracts and the people who create them." What is required of governments is to be big on the "what" - to set ambitious national goals and purposes - and to be small on the "how" - to take a lighter touch in how we reach those goals and allow others to compete to find the best ways of reaching those goals. Apart from setting strategic goals for the community, the government invests in enablers - equipping citizens with the skills, capacity and opportunity to pursue these goals, generating trust and encourage cooperation (and conversely to break up concentrations of wealth and power that are unearned and self-perpetuating), equipping citizens to collaborate with one another by resourcing them or connecting them (think "government as a platform"), creating and amplifying positive feedback loops, to name a few areas.

I found Liu and Hanauer's metaphors of Machinebrain vs Gardenbrain compelling (if perhaps awkward in formulation). At 165 pages, it's a pithy and concise read.

[Michaela (Comer) Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

In an attempt to take ownership in my social and political voice (and preparation for law school), I have been reading a few books focusing on economics and the role (or lack of) of government in our society. This book was quoted several times in Doughnut Economics, so I decided to check it out.

I would encourage anyone and everyone to start reading and participating in the call for change in our government and society. This book in particular contrasted the current “machinebrain” modem of government to their idealized “garden brain” goals. While I found that metaphor and the issues presented in the course of the text to be very insightful, I don’t know if I believe their solution is feasible. Their “big what, small how” structure of government that poses large goals with small nudges to completion is a brilliant idea but currently impossible.

Firstly, our society is so polarized on what those goals would be. Secondly, the likelihood that those in power would relinquish their grip and allow smaller factions to wield the power in completing those goals and having the tools to reshape society is laughable. But, I truly wish that it would be possible and be enacted. I think few would argue that our government is functioning in a desirable aspect, so it is obvious that change must occur. I just hope that it doesn’t happen too late.

If you want to take responsibility in the change that is so desperately needed, I would highly recommend reading this book and any book that might propose ideas that are different than what you would originally choose. I believe change comes from unity in the middle and the ability to hear and actually listen to opinions that are different than your own.

[Korin: A Crone Running Amok · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fresh look at Citizenship, the Economy & the Role of Government. Thinking of Society as a garden & all of us collectively as its gardeners responsible for planting, weeding, as well as reaping the benefits. And the re-imagining of progressive taxation not as the redistribution of money currnet thought would have it but as the recirculation of funds to keep the whole process moving.

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heard the author speak this year and wanted to learn more.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to give this book a single rating... my reaction to it is kind of all over the map. With some parts I agreed, with some parts I (strongly) disagreed, and some parts I just couldn't tell where the authors were coming from or what they were saying. However, this book is interesting and thought-provoking, and the authors acknowledge differing opinions and even encourage the reader to come up with their own ideas about American citizenship, economy, and government. The authors' argument is that we need to throw away our existing ideas and metaphors about how people and our government should behave and start fresh with things that we know work today and a new metaphor for American government: as a garden instead of a machine.

What the difference is between those, I'm still not entirely clear and don't agree with their definitions. Nor am I convinced the authors are clear in their own minds exactly what the difference is. In their push to transcend the machine metaphor, they drastically over-simplify some current ideas and set up straw men to knock down. They also use the new metaphor to argue for some current liberal issues that strike me as doing exactly the opposite of transcending to the new metaphor. However, as someone who has tried to think of drastic changes we could make to have government work better, I have come to agree with the authors that a new way of thinking is necessary and a new metaphor would be helpful.

It should be noted that the authors are very liberal and even staunchly Democrat in their ideology. Although they claim to have transcended the conflict between Democrat and Republican, they significantly distort Republican ideals and ascribe greed and idiocy as the reasons for holding them. They say that Democrat ideals are also wrong, but excuse many of them because the holders of those ideas had good motives and the ideals are just outdated as opposed to antithetical to human existence.

The reason I bring this up is that, in many cases, the authors actually agree with conservatives about some ideals and how certain things should be done. They've pushed conservatives further to the right in order to claim some of that ground, and in one case they actually apologize to liberals for agreeing with a common conservative criticism of liberal ideas. In other cases they describe their opinion in a roundabout way, obfuscating the fact that they are long-held conservative values. Clearly they have not managed to transcend the conflict themselves, and to someone in the middle it gets in the way of clearly communicating their ideas.

The end result of this is a three-star rating: it's worth reading, particularly because it's short, but if you're anything like me you will strongly agree with some of the authors' ideas, virulently disagree with others, and marvel at their floundering and inconsistency in others. How can they state that power should be disseminated to local levels as much as possible, claim that too much national control hurts citizenship, and simultaneously bash libertarian ideals of limited government? Or explain that liberals are not socialists while accusing conservatives of being anarchists? And I'm not buying that campaign finance reform is a general principle instead of one of the issues we need to think beyond to address the real problem. And why, if you're saying that government should be revising/shutting down old programs as much as it's creating new ones, do you have some darling exceptions? As someone who is currently projected to receive 75% or less of the Social Security benefits I'm paying for, I don't think there's a single government program that can't be redesigned.

[Danijela Jerković · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government (Hardcover)
by Eric Liu

We Reap What We Sow!
True self-interest is mutual interest.
Freedom isn’t free. It costs a little freedom.

Contents:

I. Seeds
Gardenbrain vs. Machinebrain

II. Self-Interest
True Self-Interest Is Mutual Interest

III.Great Citizenship
Society Becomes How You Behave

IV. True Capitalism
We’re All Better Off When We’re All Better Of

V. Self-Government
Big What, Small How

VI. Harvest
We Reap What We Sow

Acknowledgments
Reading List
About the Authors

------------------------------------------------------

Of Gardens and Gardeners

Effective gardening requires the right setting: fertile soil, good light, water. It requires a strong view as to what should and should not be grown.

It requires a loving willingness to tend constantly, to fertilize and nurture what we seed.
It requires a hard-headed willingness to weed what does not belong.

Great gardeners would never simply “let nature take its course.”
They take responsibility for their gardens.

Great gardeners assume change in weather and circumstance. They adapt.

Great gardens are sustainable only with continuous investment and renewal.
Great gardeners turn the soil and rotate the plantings.

Human beings, it is said, originated in a garden.
Perhaps this is why all of us understand so intuitively what it takes to be great gardeners.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

What kinds of systems make up our economy, our society, and the ecologies that sustain us?

How are the elements in these systems connected?

And finally, how do the agents (people) within these systems behave?

--------------------------------------------------------------------

This is not just about economics or politics; it’s about imagination and our ability to conceive of new ways of conceiving of things. It is about our ability to adapt and evolve in the face of changing circumstances and the consequences of our actions.

History shows that civilizations tend eventually to get stuck in the patterns that had brought them success. They can either stay stuck and decay, or get unstuck and thrive.

Gardenbrain changes everything.
Gardenbrain recognizes such social ills and the shape of our society as the byproduct of man-made arrangements. It is evolutionary and holistic, treating change as the norm, essential and full of opportunity.
It leads you to acknowledge that human societies thrive only through active gardening.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Science is coming ever closer to depicting what each of us already understands intuitively about how the world works. Most of us know in our gut—contrary to the political ethos of raw self-seeking—that our family, friends, neighbors, and customers are bound by something other than raw calculation of interest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Book explores in detail how new ideas—ideas about people and the systems in which they operate—transform how we think about our self-interest and the public interest.

New ways of understanding the world translate into profoundly new ways of thinking about how to
advance our shared interests—and that our politics must change to reflect that.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The three “gardens of democracy,” the interlocking organic realms that comprise public life:
1: citizenship,
2: economy, and
3: government.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The words enshrined in the Jefferson Memorial, written 40 years after the Declaration and 43 years before Darwin authored Origin of Species, capture this spirit perfectly:

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.

We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

True self-interest is mutual interest.

Society Becomes How You Behave!

Citizens as gardeners!

People tend to forget how to exercise both rights and responsibilities.
Citizenship matters because it delivers for society what neither the market nor the state can or should. Citizenship isn’t just voting!

Citizenship is a recognition that we are interdependent—that there are values, systems, and skills that hold us together as social animals, particularly in a tolerant, multiethnic market democracy.

In fact, humans have been social from very the start; individualism is a creation of recent centuries.

The old story of self-interest is a product—and perpetuator —of Machinebrain. The new story is an exemplar of Gardenbrain.

Machinebrain held that citizens are automatons, mindlessly seeking advantage over one another, colliding like billiard balls, and that the best to be hoped for in civic life is that we should channel our irredeemable self-seeking into a machinery of checks and balances that can set one interest or faction against another. Machinebrain uses malevolence to cancel out malevolence in the hopes of
generating benevolence. This is the political and civic culture that has dominated American politics since the early 19th century.

Gardenbrain, by contrast, sees citizens as gardeners, tending to the plots we share—and also as organisms within a greater garden, each affecting the next. We form each other. We are bound up in each other’s choices. We are not separate.

Gardenbrain sees systems. It tempers autonomy with community.

Humans are copying machines.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

When you open doors for others, let others into traffic, say “please” and “thank you,” you are watering the garden of social life.

Courtesy breeds trust, and trust is everything in civic life.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

To assume that society becomes how you behave is to take on the responsibility of everyday “small l” leadership.

Collective character is real and something each of us shapes.

Society becomes how you behave.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Machine view: Wealth = individuals accumulating money
Garden view: Wealth = society creating solutions

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Nurturing an economy from the middle out and the bottom up is how this country can achieve
and sustain real—earned, and unborrowed—prosperity of the kind that trickle-down has never once delivered.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Limits of Limited Government:
Small What, Small How

Many more problems happen on a scale that we citizens can and should own and address

The Government We Need:
Big What, Small How


Trust is the most precious form of capital, generating prosperity and security.

Focus on prevention rather than cure!

Government is what a society creates to solve common problems that each of us alone could not solve.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

We Reap What We Sow!

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Il principe e la ragazza onesta | The Prince and the Honest Girl Story | Fiabe Italiane
https://youtu.be/46qxQ1qob_E?si=BNNgI...

[Chris Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gardens of Democracy gets a 5 star rating from me for its creativity, originality, and thoughtfulness in busting through the conventional wisdom of our stale left vs. right debate over the role of government.

The book is quite lean which makes it less comprehensive than it could be. For example, some of the book's conclusions are based on what the authors claim are the fresh insights of a "new scientific revolution" that is apparently changing the way we think about the nature of humans, society, and the economy. That claim is made without much solid support in the book, but that's not really the point. The authors provide a reading list at the end for anyone who is interested in digging more deeply. The sacrifice of thoroughness is well worth it for what the authors gain in terms of readability, clarity, and elegance of their argument.

I have read many, many books on politics and the economy in recent years and Gardens of Democracy is by far the most memorable. The authors shake up our stale debate by challenging the basic assumptions of our political ideologies and the basic metaphors we use to talk about citizens, the economy, and society. I loved the image of society/the economy as a garden. Tending is what separates a garden from the wild and without intentional seeding and care, weeds will grow and overtake what makes the garden beautiful and productive. It's such a useful and powerful metaphor and a welcome relief to the "machine brain" view that currently underlies our political debate.

I give the book 5 stars for its originality and for how thought-provoking it is, however I didn't agree with every point. I found their arguments on citizenship and the economy to be thoroughly convincing, however, I found myself skeptical of some of their "solutions" for how government should change and adapt. For example, they attack "big government" liberalism that is big on setting national goals (the Big What - which they say is good) and big on determining how those goals should be met (the Big How - which they criticize). While the authors convincingly cited the experience of other nations in discrediting the "libertarian fantasy" approach to governing, they never provide any evidence that their proposed solution (Big What, Small How) has ever worked anywhere else, or would be effective. They also attack the bigness of our federal government and its role as a service provider without much support. They hold up some european countries with regulatory states as big successes, but they fail to realize many of these governments are the kind of "Big What, Big How" governments that they later criticize.

While I didn't agree with everything, this is the kind of book and more importantly the kind of productive, optimistic, problem-solving spirit we need more of to move past our current stalemate and start getting real about addressing our problems as a nation. A great, thought-provoking read!

[Steve Bedford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book. Highly recommended to every body. It is short and accessible, but contains some very powerful ideas. I love the idea of society as a garden that needs tending, not as a machine that should be left to run of its own accord. Much of our current political and economic theory is based in 19th and 20th century Newtonian/deterministic science and philosophy. Well, our science has moved on, and we now know the world is much more complex, and inherently unpredictable (in some regards more than others), but our political philosophy is rooted in the old ways of thinking. I agree with the book, we need a new way to look at the world, a systems based approach, which factors in chaos and complexity and feedback loops.

Very thought provoking. My only possible complaint is there is was so short, and therefore did not delve too deeply into any of its arguments, though there is a nice section of suggested further reading at the back that I plan to take advantage of.

[Anirudh Mangipudi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book largely reiterates the point it began with - We're all better off when we're all better off.

Two points which make this book an interesting one are the argument that Wealth is not individuals accumulating money but Wealth is society creating solutions. Another interesting argument is it emphasize how ill suited the conservative, libertarian & liberal views of governance are which were models created in a time where change happened incrementally. In a world where changes happen before one can understand the ramifications of the previous change, the gardenbrain approach to governance & economy is better suited than the machinebrain approach.

All in all a good read with a new argument especially suited for people tired with the left, right & center arguments.

[uosɯɐS · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw a Nick Hanauer TED Talk ( https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanaue... ), and when I found out he had a book, of course I was interested... especially with "Garden" in the title.

Well, I really got more than I bargained for, not only was the book by NH and based loosely on gardening, with organic principles of ecology woven in, it also references physics, complexity and emergence. What an unexpected confluence of topics that I am interested in! Basically, the idea that the oversimplified math of classical physics can accurately model something like an economy is highly outdated.

[Andrew Gentile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gardens of Democracy provides a digestible overview of topics often too hard to even chew on. The clarity of writing i s matched in the small pages, large font, and approachable look and feel of the cover and layout. I never thought such heavy content could be such an easy read, but these guys achieved it!

As an author myself writing about emotional healing as an aspect of societal healing, this book provides a great basic framework to illustrate where our society is stuck and where we need to go to get thriving again.

[Joelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a thoughtful little book, and I wish every American would read it. It has made think a lot about my role as a citizen and as part of a community. The authors' argument that true self-interest is mutual interest (we're all better off when we're all better off) makes a lot of sense to me. And I think that if these ideas were actually applied to personal behavior and to policy, America would be a better, stronger country.

[Ken Poirier · Rating 4 out of 5]

GoD is a vast improvement on their previous work, True Patriot. However it still lacks supporting evidence and is far too left focused to appeal to conservatives. the authors also lump libertarianism in to conservatives which is a shame because what it is really describing is progressive/social libertarianism. Other than that, the authors lay out a very nice hypothesis as to future trends in politics. despite its problems, I would still consider it a must read for political thinkers.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short book full of big ideas that articulated what I've been feeling - the need for an engaged citizenship and roles for government and capitalism that assume we're all better off when we're all better off.

The old perception of the economy being like a machine when it's really more like a garden that needs to be tended resonated with me.

I read it twice - thought provoking!

[Katherine Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a quirky, awesome little book! Liu and Hanauer reframe democracy as a garden, not a machine (parallel to much of our Honeybee work, trying to reframe investing as a natural system, not an engineered one). “True self interest is mutual interest”! And their list of inspiring books is, well, inspiring.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charting a course between Traditional Left and Traditional Right, Liu and Hanauer try to assert the need for a rejuvenated American political system. They're capitalists, so it's not "BURN THE RICH FOR HEAT", but they believe in a strong role for the state. I think they fall down where most non-politicians fall down: it's easy to say, in generalities, what should happen, but the problem with politics is that specifics of implementation are where things go wrong. After all, the current American system can be described as sounding perfect but it's the details of the implementation that let it down.

Their vague recommendations: "Maximize the number of able, diverse competitors", "Break up opportunity monopolies", "Concentrations of poverty follow concentrations of wealth", Promote true competition. In American policy today, we don’t help people become rich; we reward the already rich for being rich", "Harness market forces to national goal", etc.

The thesis is that the economy is a garden, not a machine or an ecosystem. Things are never "in balance" for long, they're constantly changing. Gardens require gardeners to create the environment for desired activities and suppress undesired ones. The goal is to create a strong middle-class, because that's who spends money to support thriving industries and businesses. They want the economy to "grow from the middle out", summed up in the brilliantly-phrased "we are all better off when we are all better off.

But there's lots of good that I did take. Assembled quotes below.

The words enshrined in the Jefferson Memorial, written 40 years after the Declaration and 43 years before Darwin authored Origin of Species, capture this spirit perfectly: I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

True citizenship is about treating even the most trivial choice as a chance to shape your society and be a leader. It is laying down habits that scale up throughout society. It is not just setting an example; it is actively leading others to copy you.

If we look at good citizenship as a contagion, but as a contagion we want to accelerate rather than contain, then it behooves us to search out the supercarriers—the nodes of networks in every community whose influence and reach are disproportionate.

In every latticework, whether chemical or physical or human, it’s the links that connect a tight ring to another tight ring that add the greatest collective value and make the network bigger and more powerful. Or to put it in terms used by Robert Putnam, bridging social capital is better than bonding.

As a matter of both public policy and private self-organization, we should be de-chunking ourselves into units of no more than 150, and then connecting the chunks.

Courtesy—a cooperative consideration of, and deferral to, the needs of others—is the start of true citizenship.

Designing experiences where people come to know each other, where they can expect to encounter one another repeatedly, and where the quality of life is increased for all if each individual thinks of himself as a steward—or trustee—of the experience.

Within any given competitive environment—or what’s called a “fitness landscape”—individuals and groups cooperate to compete, to find solutions to problems and share the gains from those solutions. The most successful strategies for cooperation spread and multiply. Throughout, minor initial advantages get amplified and locked in—as do disadvantages. Whether you are predator or prey, spore or seed, the opportunity to thrive compounds and then concentrates. It bunches. It never stays evenly spread.

if markets are perfectly efficient then it must be true that: –The market is always right. –Markets distribute goods, services, and benefits rationally and efficiently. –Market outcomes are inherently moral because they perfectly reflect talent and merit and so the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor. –Any attempt to control market outcomes is inefficient and thus immoral. –Any non-market activity is inherently suboptimal. –If you can make money doing something not illegal, you should do it. -As long as there is a willing buyer and seller, every transaction is moral. -Any government solution, absent a total market failure, is a bad solution.

As complex adaptive systems, markets are not like machines at all but like gardens. This means, then, that the following must be true: –The market is often wrong. –Markets distribute goods, services, and benefits in ways that often are irrational, semi-blind, and overdependent on chance. –Market outcomes are not necessarily moral—and are sometimes immoral—because they reflect a dynamic blend of earned merit and the very unearned compounding of early advantage or disadvantage. –If well-tended, markets produce great results but if untended, they destroy themselves. –Markets, like gardens, require constant seeding, feeding, and weeding by government and citizens. –More, they require judgments about what kind of growth is beneficial. Just because dandelions, like hedge funds, grow easily and quickly, doesn’t mean we should let them take over. Just because you can make money doing something doesn’t mean it is good for the society. –In a democracy we have not only the ability but also the essential obligation to shape markets—through moral choices and government action—to create outcomes good for our communities.

As we write, the Chinese government is making massive, determined, strategic investments in their renewable energy industry. They’ve decided that it’s better for the world’s largest population and second-largest economy to be green than not—and they are shaping the market with that goal in mind. By doing so they both reduce global warming and secure economic advantage in the future. We are captive, meanwhile, to market fundamentalism that calls into question the right of government to act at all—thus ceding strategic advantage to our most serious global rival and putting America in a position to be poorer, weaker, and dirtier down the road.

This is not picking winners; it’s picking games. [...] To refuse to make such game-level choices is to refuse to have a strategy, and is as dangerous in economic life as it would be in military operations.

Trust creates cooperation, and cooperation is what creates win-win outcomes. High-trust networks thrive; low-trust ones fail. And when greed and self-interest are glorified above all, high-trust networks become low-trust.

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, under the banner of “limited government” and “trickle-down economics,” marked the start of a Thirty Years War against the middle class.

In their paper, Kumhof and Rancière demonstrated that inequality and financial leverage create an unholy and fatal feedback loop. As the wealthy accumulate ever more money they generate price bubbles in real estate and other assets, which force all other participants in the economy to borrow more just to keep up. As the wealthy accumulate capital, their need to find return for these assets grows. The rich come to financialize their assets in the form of loans to—whom else?—the poor and middle class.

Easy credit is the natural result of enormous pools of money seeking returns. As the poor and middle class borrow more in order to maintain lifestyles increasingly beyond their means, unsustainable leverage follows. In both 1929 and 2008, collapse was the inevitable consequence.

whereas wages used to track productivity, they no longer do: American workers are ever more productive, but the wealthy are capturing those gains. [...] If the income distribution for all Americans had remained constant since 1980, the average American family would be earning $64,395, which is $12,295 and 24 percent more than they do today.

(And while we don’t advocate the 90 percent marginal rate of the 1960s, we would note that America’s growth rates were never higher than during that period of supposedly job-killing high taxes).

this agenda—as exemplified by the Reagan rewrite of the tax code and the Bush perpetuation of it—is itself government-mandated redistribution of wealth: to the already wealthy.

The “state of nature” does not dictate preferential treatment of capital over work, or regressivity of taxation, or the tax-free inheritance of unearned wealth and power: these are all consequences of man-made rules. The question, then, is not whether redistribution but in which direction.

Today the richest 1 percent of Americans has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The richest 1 percent collects twice as much annual income as the lower 50 percent. That is not circulation; it is clumping and clotting.

Economic right-wingers insist that heroic individuals “do it themselves” and that such people are “self-made.” This claim does not hold up under any serious scrutiny. Ford could not have created an auto industry without the roads necessary for them to travel on. He did not build those roads, let alone mark or map them. Amazon and Google did not create the Internet; the federal government did. No company in America has provided the infrastructure that made its lines of businesses possible, much less educated its own workforce.

As James Scott describes in Seeing Like a State, his illuminating survey of social engineering schemes of the 20th century, the very idea of “social engineering” treats complex human problems as orderly, predictable, manageable. The trouble, of course, is that they are not. This desire to “bracket uncertainty,” as Scott writes, is self-defeating in three ways: sclerosis, impracticality, and crowding out.

Progressives say “it takes a village,” but then too often rely on an agency.

We do not accept a false choice between individual rights and collective responsibility. We say you can have both. You can’t have either unless you have both. And to win, you must have both. With inalienable rights come inalienable responsibilities.

Freedom is just another word for we’re all in it together.

[Tony Crispin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was really great! It did very well at what is was trying to be, which is a manifesto, so it was brief, and loud. The authors say themselves they're trying less to create anything new and more so trying to synthesize new information (that is, systems views/science being applied to federal/local government), and I appreciate that. I think most importantly is that they provide a reading list at the end (which is honestly something all books should have in addition to a bibliography and index) so the reader can go more in-depth into any topic they enjoyed. My only criticism is that the authors are not 100% ideologically aligned with me on every issue, which is honestly quite a dealbreaker, but other than that I enjoyed it.

[Steve Bivans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Co-written by an ex-presidential speech writer (Liu) and a dot.com billionaire (Hanauer), Gardens of Democracy lays out their plan for a new, or revised, form of American democracy, that promises to solve the crises that now face the United States, if not the world at large.
Hanauer and Liu argue that the system of government as it has devolved in the U.S., has allowed the upper 1% to accrue the lion’s share of wealth, while gutting the middle class to the point of extinction. This, they argue, is not only morally wrong, but fiscally stupid. They contend, correctly, that wealth does not evolve from the top and trickle down (as so many still think), but rather is created in the middle class, and trickles upward.
The current economic mode of thought is rooted in the industrial revolution: a philosophy that the authors call ‘machine brain’. They define this as a tendency to see things in a linear, input/output way. People, economies and systems work like machines. This is obviously wrong, Hanauer and Liu argue. Consumers make choices, mostly based on emotions, wants and desires. One cannot accurately predict what they will want, or do in any given moment. Liu and Hanauer argue that instead of machine brain, we should think more on the lines of ‘garden brain.’ Instead of treating economies and government like machines, we should think of them as gardens. Gardens cannot be wholly predicted. A gardener can plant seeds, but not predict the outcome. He may, however, weed the garden, water it, and tend it. To let it go, laissez faire, would be to invite weeds to take over. This is what has led to the imbalance of wealth in modern capitalism, according to the authors.
The authors contend that it is the role of good government, or good gardening, to recirculate (not redistribute or ‘spend’) wealth, from those that have benefitted most from the infrastructure and security that government affords, back into the system to reinvest it in more and better infrastructure that benefits all citizens, starting with the middle class. This, they argue, will benefit not only those at the bottom of the economic ladder, but put wealth back into the hands of a strengthened middle class, who will in turn spend it, fueling the economy which benefits the wealthy as well.
They vigorously attack Libertarian ideals that ‘any government’ is too much government, or the idea that all forms of governing are somehow tantamount to communism. They take on the Republicans, who have co-opted much of the Libertarian mentality, as well as the Democrats who have on the one hand argued for more government involvement, but made little changes—even when they had the chance—to the underlying assumptions about how capitalism is supposed to work, i.e., they basically buy into the machine brain mentality. The authors argue that good democratic government can be big on the WHAT—in other words, set out a theory of what government should do, and the goals that the nation, state, or municipality, should aim for (something that the Democrats might agree to)—but small on the HOW to accomplish those things—not micromanaging from the center, or top, but giving power to the local governments to adapt resources to their particular situations—something that Republicans argue for.
The authors acknowledge that in order to accomplish all these changes, major issues of corruption in government must be dealt with. The problem is that their solutions to this problem, while great in theory—they do a damned good job of laying out the issues—are blocked by the very corruption they set out to solve. How does one push through major changes to government, changes that would eliminate corruption, when you need the corrupt institution to make the changes? It’s a Catch 22, and I suspect that Hanauer and Liu know this. I also suspect that they know what must really happen in order to clean up the corruption at the highest levels, since it is corporate money fueling it, but that since Hanauer himself, is a product of corporate money, and a believer in the American Economy, is loathe to articulate it. Instead, Hanauer and Liu’s book seems to be an appeal to the one-percenters to ‘lay off,’ so to speak, and to start thinking about government and taxes as a way to refuel an economy that is dying, something that will not benefit them in the end.
The radical nature of their argument isn’t so much in the actual ideas put forward, which are reasonable, sound and logical. What’s radical, is who is writing it, especially Hanauer, who is firmly in the top .01% of the billionaire club! He is an insider to a world that most of us simply cannot imagine. But he has an unusual interest in history, for one so privileged, and as such, can read the writing on the wall if things remain the same. His insider perspective is refreshing. If you want to know more about his position on issues, I would suggest reading his article, “The Pitchforks are Coming,” online HERE. It’s an eye-opener for sure, and the reason I stumbled onto his book in the first place.
All in all, this is a book that everyone in America should read. The plan laid out is neither Conservative or Liberal, but Reasonable. Maybe there needs to be another political party? The Reasonable Party? The plan they lay out in Gardens of Democracy should be implemented, immediately. I doubt it will be, due to the corruption that blocks such decisions. Maybe the book will reach enough of Mr. Hanauer’s peers to make a difference, since they are the ones corrupting the system. I hope so, for all our sakes. We could stand for some weeding out in the current Garden of Corruption.

[Charles Loflin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Basic Common Sense

In an era where left vs. right political debates have nowhere left to go, the simple truth of a book like this is so hard to lose in the noise. The fundamental argument is that the time has come to move beyond the metaphor of machine used to describe our economy, government and society and replace it with the metaphor of a garden. Rather than view the world through a mechanistic lens of cogs and efficiency, the garden metaphor of careful and intentional seeding and weeding offers another way. As the authors state the simple truth is “we’re all better off when we’re all better off.”

[James A · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing

I always seek intelligent fact based analysis and intellect on addressing our challenges on this planet. There was none to be found. The Authors make frankly ridiculous hasty generalizations and assumptions about most everything in this book. Multiple times inferring that everyone in our country is selfish and that is what teach our children, most perturbing is taking the far far right and left views as the ideology of all Americans and then berating everyone for these views. His resolutions for change are fantasy and make no legitimate case for the how or their efficacy.

[Elizabeth Horton]

I'm always wary of books I agree with too much, and this is certainly one. They lay out the groundwork for different way for our lives and our government to function, and it makes a whole lot of sense. It's slim on concrete details, but the point of the books does seem to be a quick and understandable overview of a society where we all accepted the fact that we all follow and lead in our daily lives, an economy focused on breaking down the unequal barriers to competition that results from luck/previous wealth, and a government that pushes for big ideas but leaves the details of implementation in local hands. How do we get there from here?

[Rin Michaelis · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's ok

I thought the author was too vague, and too flowery. I know it's called Gardens of Democracy, but I wish he wouldn't compare everything to flowers so much. I wish he was more specific about what he wants.

I think taxing candy is anti-poor. It's mainly children of poor people who want candy. I don't believe voting should be mandatory. Sometimes no answer is the answer. Everyone knows that both parties are corrupted and take bribes. Instead, we should have Ranked Based Voting, and ditch First past the post.