Excerpt from "Free Agent Economy" by Daniel H. Pink

THE FREE AGENT OPERATING SYSTEM

Every computer has an operating system, the underlying software that establishes the foundation for everything the computer does. An operating system—DOS, Windows, Mac OS 9, and Linux are examples—manages, regulates, and sets the standards that allow software applications such as word processing programs, spreadsheets, and computer games to run. These invisible lines of computer code schedule tasks, allocate storage, and allow your computer and printer to talk to each other. The operating system is the first program loaded when you turn on the computer, and its main part—called the “kernel”—resides in your computer’s memory at all times. It sets the boundaries of what your computer can do and how it can do it, but most people are barely aware that the operating system exists. Here’s a rough analogy: If this book is a software application, the English language is the operating system. This book wouldn’t exist without the English language, but you (and I) probably never thought about that until just now.

The Free Agent Org Chart I’ve just detailed is akin to a software program. But beneath it runs what I call the Free Agent Operating System, the more fundamental piece of software that allows the programs on the surface to function smoothly.

The basic unit of this Free Agent Operating System—the 1s and 0s of the underlying code—is trust. Trust, as scholar Francis Fukuyama noted in a magnificent book of the same name, is essential not only to a just society—but also to a healthy economy: “One of the most important lessons we can learn from the examination of economic life is that a nation’s well-being, as well as its ability to compete, is conditioned by a single, pervasive cultural characteristic: the level of trust inherent in the society.” ⁹ If buyers can’t trust that sellers will pay, and if sellers can’t trust that buyers will deliver, commerce will collapse. Return to the Free Agent Org Chart in Figure 8.4. What connects the six individuals are what one anthropologist calls “invisible lines of trust.” ¹⁰ Fred trusts Jim to recommend an accountant; Jim trusts Althea to provide good service to Fred. Break the trust, and you break the connection. And the consequences of doing that are dire: You disconnect not just from that person, but from the other people to whom that person is connected.

Respecting and maintaining trust is essential for free agency to flourish. Recall what F.A.N. Club leader Jeremy Solomons said in the previous chapter about his Ghost Ranch Alliance’s decision not to formalize its arrangement: “The minute you start building a fixed relationship, you’re breaking the trust.” It’s the same with the confederations I discussed in that chapter. The glue of those collaborations isn’t a written contract, but the simple belief that each member will honor her obligations to the others. At first, this heavy reliance on trust may seem too looseygoosey to succeed. But the system turns out to work remarkably well. One reason: Where there is no trust, there are plenty of lawyers, police officers, regulators, and other officials of the state. “Societies which rely heavily on the use of force,” writes Oxford University sociologist and scholar of trust Diego Gambetta, “are likely to be less efficient, more costly, and more unpleasant than those where trust is maintained by other means.” ¹¹

The trust I’m talking about here, however, is not the naive belief that everyone will unilaterally do what they say they’ll do. That’s gullibility. Genuine trust flows in two directions—which leads to the essential feature of the Free Agent Operating System: reciprocity. I’ll help you because somewhere down the line, you’ll help me.

Such reciprocity is imprinted in our DNA. “We are human because our ancestors learned to share their food and their skills in an honored network of obligation,” says Richard Leakey.¹² Evolutionary biologists contend that most animals survive in part thanks to “reciprocal altruism,” a process by which creatures from guppies to baboons appear to cooperate with one another, trade favors over time, and cut out those who cheat. Biologists explain what seems like selfless behavior—for example, a fish swimming away from its school in order to undertake the dangerous mission of looking for predators—as merely a way to generate goodwill and eventual payback from its fellow fish. ¹³ Little wonder then that the planet’s most successful and advanced animal does this best and depends on it most. Sociologist Howard Becker says the formal name for human beings shouldn’t be “Homo sapiens,” man the knower—but “Homo reciprocus,” man the reciprocator. ¹⁴ The principle of “givers gain” is not just a good idea. It’s the (evolutionary) law.

Reciprocal altruism is the underlying process that allows the free agent economy to function. And it ruthlessly eliminates those who violate its terms. In the org chart in Figure 8.4, if Althea doesn’t return Jim’s good deeds, Althea is clipped from the network—and therefore severed from the connections to information, ideas, and opportunities she needs to survive. As San Francisco health care consultant Notty Bumbo told me, “The real power comes in the sharing, not in the withholding. Those people who are out there asking for information and not giving back get cut off. It’s a peer process. If it becomes apparent that they’re just sucking the lifeblood out of everybody else, they get cut out of the picture.” Givers gain. Takers lose. What’s more, in the above example, Althea’s reputation suffers because Jim’s account of her lack of cooperation can spread easily to his contacts—and then to their contacts. If you don’t play fair with Notty Bumbo, plenty of people are going to learn that you’re a lifeblood sucker. An employee can more easily hide behind the reputation of his employer. But a free agent is exposed to the outside world—and this exposure actually promotes more noble behavior.

The pragmatic reciprocity that is the platform of the free agent economy is a remarkably enduring concept. Let me haul out Alexis de Tocqueville one more time. When the Frenchman visited America in 1830, he remarked that American democracy was blooming not because its citizens were selfless—but because they were not. Instead, what allowed this remarkable new democracy to flourish was each person’s pursuit of his “own interest, rightly understood.” ¹⁵ Enlightened self-interest is as crucial for free agency as it was—and is—for democracy. Enlightened self-interest, indeed, is the oxygen of free agency. That may not be idealistic, but it just might be ideal.

But another expression of the reciprocal altruism principle is even more enduring and far more profound. Enlightened self-interest—that is, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”—is the cornerstone of every major world religion. In Christianity, the principle comes from the book of Matthew. In Judaism, the Talmud teaches: “What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow men. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.” Islam holds, “No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.” And this idea likewise is central to Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Hinduism. So we are left with what seems like the ultimate paradox: The underlying operating system of the freewheeling, individualistic, hypercapitalistic free agent economy is … the Golden Rule. The DOS, Windows, and Mac OS of the real new economy is one of the oldest principles of human civilization. In the world of free agency, the way to be better off is to be better.