Exit, Voice and Loyalty
This week I found myself contemplating human agency in times of change and challenge for values-driven communities, and stumbled upon an interesting book: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Written in 1970, its message still feels quite relevant.
...we have two potential responses when we don't like an institution or community. We can leave it ("exit") or we can advocate change ("voice"). When both options are available, what causes us to choose voice over exit is loyalty.
Peter Levine, on Exit, Voice, and Loyalty by Albert O. Hirschman
This quote narrows down the two choices we face with rapid change in ecosystems that are beloved to us.
The first is to stay and advocate ("voice") for change, to use our voices, contribute our time, and push for a vision that lines up with our own values. The second is to exit, and take that advocacy and creativity to another space.
Central to that decision, however is loyalty, because (and I believe this is especially true for open communities) it's loyalty that keeps us using our voice long after we have thought about leaving. That loyalty is usually to a mission rather than to an organization, which is worth remembering when the two start to come apart.
I saw this tension this past week with the Codeberg post on protecting their commons from LLMs, in both the praise and the dissent. I saw it with Mozilla returning to X.com, with mostly dissent in my circles anyway. And I think to some extent the argument over what counts as Open Source AI gave way to exit, to "let's just describe the stack" and get on with it.
In each case people are loyal to the open web, or the commons, or openness itself, and not to the organization they have been arguing with. I think that is why the decision is so hard.
What the book gave me is the reminder that exit is not always the cost to them that it feels like to us.
...(sometimes they) actually like people to exit. It helps them maintain their power without changing their behavior. For instance, if there really is no alternative to the cable company, then disgruntled customers will make a fuss, using their voices to cause trouble. The cable company prefers the angriest people to leave (albeit at some cost and inconvenience).
Peter Levine, on Exit, Voice, and Loyalty by Albert O. Hirschman
The missions we care about do not require that one company, one group, one technology or one definition succeed, but rather that the people who care about that mission feel empowered, creative and energized to act. I think in this time of rapid change, perhaps loyalty is better understood as something we carry with us, rather than something we give to any one project, organization or definition.
For me CHAOSS is that place right now where I can work on openness and related missions I care about. I believe the CHAOSS AI alignment metrics will help provide people with evidence and clearer choices for advocacy and exits of all kinds, but it helps me to read the thoughts of others like this. Maybe it helped you too. If you decide to exit and find your creativity elsewhere, I hope you'll consider joining a future call