"Does TIMN imply developing the so-far least favored (+N?) option: networked non-profit cooperatives?"

David Ronfeldt, about whose TIMN framework I recently blogged, has some thoughts about how a TIMN (Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks) analysis might characterize different kinds of governance. At the end, he points toward further possible work, including this:

Can TIMN help assess what seems to be ideologically amiss with liberalism and conservatism in the United States? Have both moved too far from being soundly triformist? Is one of them turning too tribalist (even monoformist) for its own and the country’s good? And what about a current policy issue — healthcare — that has liberals and conservatives all riled up, at odds over whether to go for a public (+I) or private (+M) option? Does TIMN imply developing the so-far least favored (+N?) option: networked non-profit cooperatives? I’m still working on this part, and I’ll post a separate announcement when it’s ready to be inserted here. Maybe next week.

I'm looking forward to this development. Either way, I like that this theoretical framework can become a tool to think beyond the current twinned either-or fallacy that the health care debate has become in this cycle.