As standardisation moves into more complex areas, such as security and the co-ordination of different offerings, consensus seems to be harder to achieve.
The Big Three networks' nightly news programs used to move in lockstep at the beginning of their broadcasts – offering a consensus on the most important thing that happened that day.
This would remain a social and political decision, with the consensus offering only one piece of (extremely) relevant evidence.
Now Republicans not only accept Keynes but urge stimulus, offering the possibility of consensus.
Voting for populists, he reminds me "can be a rational choice", especially where consensus is offering people no solutions to their most pressing problems.
While no British mainstream politicians are likely to try to make political capital out of the killings -- indeed battlefield casualties usually provoke all-party consensus on offering moral support to troops in the field -- the killings renewed concerns that the campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein was only part of the battle.
Occasionally, for commercial organizations, support entities build consensus by offering to impact the development road maps or voice their concerns about the direction of the development or legal issues surrounding specific community decisions.
Committed to changing Italy's entrenched political system by offering an Internet-driven, consensus-based alternative, the three-year-old Five Star Movement has quickly become a force to contend with in Italy's fractious and fractured political arena.
Though it triumphed only in Parma and three smaller towns, the undisputed winner of the vote was the Five Star Movement, a fledgling grass-roots alliance of citizens committed to changing Italy's entrenched political system by offering an Internet-driven, consensus-based alternative.
"After what we've seen, where companies were blowing through consensus numbers and offering guidance that was dimes, not pennies, above" forecasts, said Matt Arnold, an analyst at Edward Jones, "it has the implication that there's not as much potential for these big earnings surprises to the upside".
