At this point in my life, having been well-acquainted with anarchist collectives, nonprofit boards, community groups, corporate management, labor unions and legislative bodies, I feel like one of the biggest barriers to progress is that people just don't know how to make collective decisions.

I've meet groups of people with little formal education that can run circles around otherwise sophisticated, cosmopolitan urban decision makers when it comes to what to do, how and when. So many of the latter end up either traumatized by the experience and/or create hierarchies, whether formal or informal.

My theory is that collective decision making is a skill that we've effectively lost in modern society. We're told what to do at home as kids, at school as students, and at work as adults and end up stunted. We can't express our desires, our needs, we can't dialogue and we can't compromise.