Assigning scores from 1–10 for each of these aspects made sense as an action needs to be both implemented and impactful for it to adress the problem. By researching to assign these scores and multiplying them, I could get an overall idea of where an action would compare to another one. Below is a graph summarizing my results, followed by the details behind each ranking.

1. Make higher education more easily available to all.

Feasibility: 7

Rates of higher education have doubled worldwide 19 to 38 percent over the last two decades, indicating that increased access is very possible. Although the process of making education truly available will take decades, governments clearly recognize the need for it and are taking steps towards achieving it, with education becoming a larger percent of GDP for most countries.  

Impact: 8

Higher education has been known to increase earnings significantly, thereby reducing poverty. Additionally, education has been known to have various benefits towards poverty like reducing food insecurity and standards of health.

2. Invest in Kickstarter-like crowd sourcing to reduce the concentration of wealth.

Feasibility: 7

Kickstarter projects are already common, but not every country has internet and access to these Kickstarter sites. The industry is however rapidly growing each year.

Impact: 8

Kickstarters allow for a low bar for investing, especially into businesses, as an alternative to traditional stocks. Lack of investing is a large part of the cycle of poverty many experiences. Kickstarters offer an excellent way to fight this void of investing.

3. Poorer regions should be assisted in investing more in developing finished products and “leapfrogging” to more advanced technology for export and extending local value chains instead of relying on income from exporting mineral and other natural resources, commodities

Feasibility: 6

There are existing initiatives and strategies in place, such as the Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA), which aims to promote industrialization and economic diversification in African countries. Additionally, there are examples of countries that have successfully transitioned from relying on natural resources to more advanced value-added products, such as South Korea and Singapore. However, implementation may face challenges due to lack of infrastructure, resources, and technological capabilities in poorer regions.

Impact: 9

Diversifying economies in poorer regions through developing finished products and advanced technologies can lead to sustainable economic growth, increased employment opportunities, and reduced dependence on volatile commodity markets. This can contribute to poverty reduction, improved livelihoods, and long-term economic stability, allowing for more inclusive and equitable development.

5. Establish community centers for access and training for self-employed to use advanced technology like 3D printing, AI/robotics, and AI apps.

Feasibility: 5

There has been talk of transforming libraries to similar centers of learning and would be feasible with enough government funding. However, not every country has the funds to do this, or even the basic libraries.

Impact: 9

Similar to libraries, such learning centers are invaluable resources for everyone, especially people without access to paid resources. This free resource would heavily help people access opportunities in the technological revolution.

6. Increase emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and lifelong learning and retraining.

Feasibility: 6

Although the concept of STEM emphasis is simple, implementing it requires teachers with skills and funding from nations, with the idea of a global STEM fund prosed in this article.

Impact: 7

STEM careers have less unemployment and make more money, with or without a degree in STEM. Although the data is from the US, it can be applied globally.

7. Tax next technologies for new income to social support systems and create tax systems that ensure big business and wealthy individuals pay their fair share.

Feasibility: 6

There are ongoing discussions and debates at the global level on how to effectively tax next technologies, such as digital services and automation, to ensure that they contribute their fair share to social support systems. However, implementation may face challenges due to complexities in defining and valuing intangible assets, cross-border transactions, and potential resistance from big business and wealthy individuals.

Impact: 7

Taxing next technologies for new income can generate significant revenue for social support systems, which can be used to address poverty, inequality, and other social challenges. It can also promote a more equitable distribution of the benefits of technological advancements and ensure that big businesses and wealthy individuals contribute their fair share to society.

8. Expand micro-credit and small business credit systems and business training.

Feasibility: 9

Microfinance institutions are established around the world in places like India, Cambodia and Bangladesh. Investors already back these loans and big banks are a part of the movement, making it easy for expansion to occur.

Impact: 4

A study found that microfinance did help people in poverty make better financial decisions but did not increase income. (However, there are some negative effects of micro credit, such as increased stress and pressure from payments.  

9. Conduct training programs on how to use mobile phone Internet access to find and develop markets worldwide instead of looking for non-existent local jobs.

Feasibility: 5

The essential problem with such an idea is the infrastructure needed in developing countries. More than half the world is still offline. Although the market for such jobs is accelerated already from the pandemic, there is still much work to do before such a future is a reality for everybody.

Impact: 7

Allowing access to online jobs circumvents immigration laws and provides a way for people to find work beyond their country. It enables their skills to be applied wherever they are best and opens up opportunities for digital entrepreneurship.

10. Consider seriously new progressively equalizing instruments, e.g. wealth tax and revising inheritance laws.

Feasibility: 5

Although a wealth tax is supported by many, even millionares, passing such laws across the world will be slow and difficult. Some governments may simply refuse to pass such laws.

Impact: 7

Wealth taxes and revised inheritance laws have the potential to reduce wealth inequality and generate revenue for governments to fund social programs and services. These measures can help address wealth concentration, promote economic fairness, and contribute to poverty reduction. However, the effect of these measures varies across regions based on governments.

11. Tax carbon and international financial transfers to support global infrastructures and institutions.

Feasibility: 5

Implementing carbon taxes and taxation on international financial transfers has been done in various countries and regions. Many countries have already adopted carbon pricing mechanisms, and international financial transactions can be subject to taxation. However, achieving global consensus and coordination on such measures may pose challenges.

Impact: 7

Taxing carbon emissions can incentivize the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change mitigation. Revenue generated from these taxes can be used to fund global infrastructure projects and support international institutions aimed at addressing global challenges. This can have a positive impact on both the environment and global development. It is estimated that a carbon tax globally could raise 125 billion a year, which could be used to fund thousands of public works projects, which provide jobs.

12. Explore alternative transaction systems like blockchain and cryptocurrencies (over 22,835 cryptocurrencies with $1 trillion (not billion) market capitalization).[2]

Feasibility: 8

Cryptocurrencies are widely known and used and are very easy to set up. Implementing a new currency would not be difficult.

Impact: 4

Although cryptocurrencies have allowed for “banking” for all and allowed easy transactions for everyone, especially in places where currencies are not so stable. However, cryptocurrencies are also inherently volatile leading to crisis when prices rapidly fluctuate, so their effectiveness is limited.

13. Give greater attention to the frontiers for work related to the forthcoming biological revolution, which may be as large as or larger than the industrial or information revolutions.

Feasibility: 4

Governments are limited in their abilities to incentivize certain types of jobs. In prior revolutions, such as the tech revolution, governments added coding to education, starting as early as 6^th grade to prepare students for future jobs. However, this is difficult to actually implement, especially because the biological revolution has not boomed yet, and there is a significant delay in passing legislation for education.

Impact: 8

In any revolution, people who “arrived” early were rewarded greatly. The same would be the case for the biological revolution, and if the incentivization of it was universal, people from lower economic backgrounds and poverty would have the chance to reap these rewards and lift themselves out of their class.

14. Promote Decentralized Autonomous Organizations for an unlimited number of peer-to-peer ad hoc “workers.”

Feasibility: 6

DAO’s have been implemented successfully multiple times, and are easy to setup with a group of voluntary workers. The lack of worldwide internet limits the implementation of DAO’s, however.

Impact: 5

DAO’s act as an alternative to standard corporations, which have a board of directors. DAO’s allow for more control from each participant, and remove many administrative costs involved in standard corporations. This makes it accessible and more efficient for most people, allowing them to participate in ventures they would not have previously been able to.

15. Establish Labor/Business/Government Next Technologies databases.

Feasibility: 5

Creating Labor/Business/Government Next Technologies databases is feasible from a technological perspective. Building and maintaining databases to track and share information about emerging technologies and their impact on labor, businesses, and government policies is technically achievable. However, it may require significant collaboration among these stakeholders and adequate resources for implementation.

Impact: 6

Establishing such databases can have a positive impact on various aspects of the economy. It can facilitate information sharing and collaboration between labor, businesses, and government entities, leading to more informed decision-making. This can help in adapting to technological changes, addressing workforce needs, and developing policies that support economic growth and job creation. While the impact is potentially significant, its realization depends on effective utilization and cooperation among the involved parties.

16. Outlaw tax havens, that collectively cost governments $500 billion to $600 billion a year in lost tax revenue.

Feasibility: 4

Efforts to crack down on tax havens have been ongoing, with international organizations and governments working to improve transparency and cooperation in tax matters. While progress has been made, completely outlawing tax havens may be challenging due to legal and jurisdictional complexities. Some countries may resist such efforts.

Impact: 7

Eliminating tax havens can significantly increase government revenue, especially in developing countries, by preventing tax evasion and avoidance. This additional revenue can be channeled into public services, infrastructure development, and poverty reduction programs. It can have a substantial positive impact on reducing income inequality and promoting economic development globally.

17. Raise minimum wages and address executive wages.

Feasibility: 5

Controlling executive wages is hard because they are determined by the board of directors of companies, and minimum wage increases are generally done by locality rather than entire nations. Even the US has barely changed minimum wages over the last decade, indicating that governments are reluctant to change them.

Impact: 5

Exec pay has been severely inflated to the point that halving the pay of the top 5 executives of the top 350 companies would approximately increase the profits of the companies by 3 percent on average. These are potential profits that could be going towards shareholders of the company, profits that could be redistributing wealth. However, most shareholders are already wealthy, so this redistribution’s true impact is unknown. Minimum wage increases on the other hand increase the level of earning of the least paying jobs, but also cause people to lose their jobs. However, there are many places where workers are paid less than minimum wage, where enforcing the minimum wage would be helpful in reducing poverty.

18. Create mechanisms to help people invest in automations that replace their job; e.g., truck drivers manage and invest into ownership of driverless trucks.

Feasibility: 4

There are programs where workers work alongside technology, such as truck drivers who act as backups for automated trucks. However, investing is often limited by the capital of workers, which may not be enough to for example, purchase a truck driving unit. However, working together, workers could own a truck together and share the profits. This however, could be limited by the existence of companies who make these trucks, who would much rather work out deals with companies than to sell individual trucks that freelance in this method.  

Impact: 6

Such an opportunity would expand the investment capabilities for individuals with lower paying jobs, but it would be limited by the amount of capital each worker invests into the automation. This would provide passive income but not act as a replacement for a job most likely. Thus, it would not really act as a solution for workers losing their jobs to AI.

19. Explore global workforce sourcing solutions that overcome immigration and migration barriers to allow qualified workers to move where they can meet the vacant skilled labor requirements.

Feasibility: 4

Immigration laws vary across nations, making it hard for workers to travel to where they are needed. However, there have been cases of laborers moving for work, such as the construction of the burj khalifa, during which most workers were migrants, although they were treated poorly. The potential for workers to now find work online allows them to cross borders much easier.

Impact: 6

By introducing workers where they are needed, no unnecessary unemployment exists. However, migrant workers are exploited often, as they are paid less and abused.

20. Create personal AI/Avatars to support self-employment.

Feasibility: 4

The idea of personal AI is limited by the technology required itself. 40% of the world still does not have access to internet, and AI avatars are a developing technology that have not been fully used yet. However the actual creation of the AI avatars already exists so it could be used for the people who do have access to it. The only limit lies in the expansion of the technology and the internet.    

Impact: 6

Although hard to implement, AI avatars have a lot of potential in employment opportunities and learning opportunities. They are already used for marketing videos, but the impact could be limited by its access to povpoverty-strickendividuals. However, if internet access was expanded, these avatars could help individuals find freelance opportunities and ways to profit from hobbies.

21. Business schools should teach synergetic analysis as well as completive analysis.

Feasibility: 4

Introducing synergetic analysis alongside competitive analysis in business school curricula is feasible. It involves updating and expanding the existing curriculum to include a broader perspective on business practices, collaboration, and sustainable development. Many business schools already adapt their programs to reflect changing business paradigms, but the novelty of synergetic analysis may lead to a slow shift.

Impact: 6

Teaching synergetic analysis can help future business leaders understand the importance of collaboration and sustainable practices in a globalized world. It can lead to more responsible and ethical business practices that consider the broader social and environmental impacts. However, the impact may vary depending on the extent to which these concepts are integrated into business education.

22. Explore guaranteed income programs, as next technologies may lead to long-term structural unemployment, and create cash flow projections to explore financial sustainability of universal basic income.

Feasibility: 3

Guaranteed income programs have been proposed in the US before, but are a foreign concept in most countries, because of lack of funding. For a true guaranteed income program, there would need to be a mostly automated society, which is not the case currently. However, the system has been implemented in a few cities for a brief period, and there has never been a true cash flow projection to maintain the system.

Impact: 7

From the testing done so far, people of color with little to no income benefit greatly. Interviews with people receiving this aid show mothers with reduced stress, people able to pay childcare, etc. This shows that these programs have the potential to create societal change for people in poverty by setting a basic standard of living for them.

23. Conduct research for options to counter entrenched privilege.

Feasibility: 2

Countering entrenched privilege is a massive task and vague. People’s perceptions are not changed overnight, and bias persists even after it is legally banned. “Privilege bias” is hard to change and requires a societal shift in thinking, something extremely difficult to do. Ideas like basic income and progressive tax brackets can be tools governments use to fight this privilege.

Impact: 8

Although a large goal, the impact of changing entrenched privilege would be large. Entrenched privilege leads to cycles of poverty through generations, and its end would be significant in giving people the opportunity to escape this cycle. It would “even” the plane in many areas of people’s lives like the workplace.

Learn more about other actions for other global problems at the Millenium Project.

And there is a ulterior motive in being a columnist for Lifeboat. Analyzing the dynamics of durable value leads to some surprising conclusions about the money supply and what a society chooses to use as money. We’ll get to this at end of this post.

We know that value comes from supply and demand. There are no exceptions. But, we have not addressed the properties that make an asset hold value over the long haul. Let’s consider some examples…

Cars

In an affluent, mobile society, most people desire personal, point-to-point transportation — and so there is clearly a demand for automobiles.

But style & technology change rapidly and automobiles deteriorate with use and weather. After 8 to 10 years, their cost and maintenance rise dramatically, and owners lust for a new model. So cars don’t get our award for assets that hold value.*

Popular Toys

In the 1970s, the Cabbage Patch doll from Calico Industries, and later, Tickle Me Elmo in the 1990s created a buyer frenzy that rivaled a lemonade stand in the desert. Shoppers fought each other to grab a limited supply. Clearly, demand was very high. The one shown below is listed at Ebay this week with a starting bid of $5,000. Other, less popular styles can be found for $4.99.

At first, this demand was driven by clever marketing and crying children in the week before Christmas. Demand was driven by a parent’s love. But at the peak of frenzy, demand shifted to buyers without children who felt certain that they could profit from selling the dolls that they snatched up first.

But the demand was not durable. Fads driven by frenzy don’t hold value for the long haul—especially when a manufacturer can simply turn the spigot back on.

Stocks & Bonds

A share of stock represents ownership in a corporation. A municipal bond represents a lien against a city—or the fees generated by an infrastructure project.

In both cases—especially bonds, which are a limited promise—no one expects value to last forever. It is a time-sensitive bet with the intention of expiration, redemption or exchange. So, these things also fail our criteria for durable value.

Houses & Real Estate

Like cars, homes require ongoing maintenance. But, most people weigh the maintenance cost against the benefit of having shelter, rather than comparing it to their gain or loss in value.

On the other hand, real estate value fluctuates in the long run due to things that are difficult to predict — population density, demographics, and quality-of-life issues related to infrastructure: weather, seismic events, politics, and access to health care and education.

Some real estate rises enormously in value over 50 or 100 years. Yet, we have seen boom-and-bust cycles that wipe out substantial wealth. So, real estate does not cut it in our contest for durable value.

Gold

The allure of gold and other precious metals is that their supply is capped — or limited by slow and predictable growth. The asset is difficult to find. It is acquired only from natural phenomena.

So, if we can also make it fungible, divisible, portable and difficult to counterfeit, then it meets most of Aristotle’s requirements for a functional currency. Theoretically, this can lead to widespread demand.

Gold certainly has exhibited its ability to hold value throughout thousands of years. But it is not so easily tested and divided in the field, and the impression that it has intrinsic value is an illusion. That’s because the fraction of gold acquired by investors dwarfs the amount actually needed for dentistry, electronics and even jewelry. In this modern era, even gold is becoming a house of cards, because its value is built upon speculation and emotion.

Oil (aka “black gold”)

With the rise of the automobile and power plants that burn fossil fuel, oil became a reserve currency of the 19th and 20th centuries. But there are two problems with it holding value over the long haul.

First, unlike gold, oil is a consumable in every market. Therefore it is difficult to think of it as an asset. Also, we now live in a century in which energy and transportation is rapidly switching away from oil, while at the same time, new technology is making it cheap to acquire new oil. This (along with a history of violent political theater) dramatically deteriorates its potential as a store of value in coming years.

Money

The supply-demand dynamics of money is widely misunderstood. More than 2,300 years ago, Aristotle defined the properties of a functional currency.

Earlier, we stated that all value comes from supply and demand. But, it is fair to ask “What creates the demand?” or “What backs the expectation of future demand?” Surprisingly, even if we limit our scope to just one country (USA), the value of government-issued currency has been tied to different things over time:

• Gold
• Promise of redemption
• Legal tender (public must accept it for all debts)
• Settlement of taxes
• The “good faith and credit” of workers

Ultimately, demand is influenced by oversupply and by public perception more than government promises or laws. The perception that the US dollar has no cap and that its supply can be inflated whenever a body of transient politicians decides to raise the debt ceiling may eventually cause its value to collapse. Although it has not happened yet, at some point consumers (or those holding our debt), will begin to question if Americans have the capacity and will to produce and export the goods & services necessary to balance their mass consumption of the past half-century.

And so, government-issued Fiat does not pass our smell test for durable value. Sooner or later, all national currencies collapse. On a personal level, the only question that matters is if you will be caught by surprise—with a fraction of wealth tied to your favored currency.

What has the potential to meet all requirements for holding value?

Wouldn’t it be fascinating if we could find an asset that is a product of pure mathematics? A perfect asset would be fair, fungible, immutable, and capped. It could never be inflated or manipulated by politicians. It would decouple governments from monetary policy. It would be politically agnostic.

If correctly designed, it would be capable of absorbing and incorporating improvements developed by any copycat or pretender nipping at its heels. Most important, it would be open source, peer-to-peer, massively distributed, redundant, and completely permissionless.

This perfect asset would derive trust from mathematics and crowd-sourced consensus. It would not require that anyone believe in a government, a bank, a land mass, or the uncertain supply of precious objects. Authenticity could tested easily and its value transmitted instantly. The history of each unit would be completely transparent. With free tools, anyone, anywhere could trace its history of moving from one owner to the next.

Ten years ago, such an asset was unleashed into the wild by a person or team of developers under the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. It not only meets all of these requirements, it has built-in immunity from competition. It even resolves a technical problem that troubled Aristotle more than two millennia ago.

I won’t name this radical yet natural evolutionary development in this answer—but, I can confidently state that it passes our test for an asset that will hold value over time. Despite a wildly fluctuating exchange rate with Fiat currency, its inherent value has never dropped. Ultimately, you will no longer asses value based on the exchange rate of an anachronistic currency that fails all of the other smell tests. Instead, you will assess value on how many heads of lettuce you can buy or how much that new sailboat costs.

* A classic car avoids the problems associated with use & maintenance—and it can hold value over a long period. But like a Picasso painting, the market for classic cars has a limited audience, especially for the florescent green ’63 Mustang that I found in in my great uncle’s garage. Additionally, it is subject to the whims of popular perception. Styles go in and out of vogue and so we cannot predict how long that car will hold value. (Please call me if you value my uncle’s Mustang at more than $150,000).

Philip Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA, hosts the Bitcoin Event and is keynote speaker at Cryptocurrency Conferences. He is a top writer at Quora.

In a past article, I explained that Bitcoin fundamentals ought to place its value in the vicinity of $10,000.* (At the time, it was less than $450, and had even fallen to $220 in the following year).

For many consumers viewing the rising interest in Bitcoin from the stands, there is great mystery surrounding the underlying value. What, if anything, stands behind it? This is a question with a clear and concise answer. In fact, it has a very definitive and believable answer—but it is easiest to understand with just a little bit of historical perspective.

At one time, G7 fiat currencies were backed by a reserve of physical Gold or the pooling or cross-ownership of other currencies that are backed by gold. That ended in 1971 when the Bretton Woods agreement was dissolved by president Richard Nixon in Ithaca NY.

Today, US currency is backed by “The good faith and credit of the American worker” (This is the government explanation of intrinsic value). But in truth its future value is loosely tied to one simple question: Does the typical vendor or consumer (for example, someone accepting a $20 bill in exchange for a movie ticket or 2 large pizzas) expect it to buy these same things in the next few months?

A considerable number of speculative components contribute to the answer. For example:

• What About the Big Picture? DEBT! Everyone knows that a house built on debt cannot thrive forever without a continuous stream of productivity and income. Is the money being printed without a commensurate added value to the nation’s capacity to repay debts?
• Public Trust: Good faith goes beyond debt. Can consumers and creditors be certain that a change of government won’t cause rampant inflation or a willful failure to retire future debt? Can they be assured that their fellow workers will continue to produce and export manufactured goods in ever increasing quantity?
• Guns & Tanks: Citizens are compelled by law to pay their taxes in official state currency. Even for those who attempt to fly under the wire or use alternate currencies during the tax year, this ultimately forces fiat currency to be recognized and honored.
• Geopolitical Stability: We have been a debtor nation for decades and we have significant political and economic disputes with our largest creditors (China and nations of oil-rich gulf states). What would be the effect of them (a) moving away from the dollar as their reserve currency, or (b) investing the trillions of dollars they have earned in some other country?

This list is not exhaustive, but all constituents boil down to two fundamental concepts: Supply-and-demand and How long will demand last?

The dollar is an invention of a transient government. Even with a long history and complex banking framework, it is no more real than Bitcoin. Supply and demand for any commodity is based on popular recognition, anti-counterfeit features, innate desire and public goodwill. The real question is what contributes to the desire to own or spend Bitcoin?

The answer is that Bitcoin is backed by something far more reliable and trustworthy than the transient whim of elected legislators. It is backed by something that carries more weight than the US government. What could possibly guaranty the value of a Bitcoin? After all, it does not convey ownership in gold, and it has no redemption guarantee. There is no engraving of Caesar on the coin. (In fact, there is no coin at all!)…

Answer: Bitcoin is backed by math, a firm cap, a completely transparent set of books, and the critical mass of a two-sided network. Although it can be taxed (like any asset), it can be owned and transferred with impunity and without recourse. These may not seem like critical components of intrinsic value, but they are. In fact, they define intrinsic value in the modern era.

Related:

• What gives Bitcoin value?
• * Calculate Bitcoin value (based on fundamentals)
• What fraction of Bitcoin value is driven by speculators?
• Can cash have value if it isn’t real? «—— _{My very first Bitcoin article}

Philip Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA, produces The Bitcoin Event, edits A Wild Duck and is keynote at this year’s Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg.

But I am asking Lifeboat readers to invest 37 minutes in the video linked below. Even if you give it just 5 minutes, it will provide sufficient motive for you to stick around until the end.       _{[continue below video]}

I want you view it because we are on the threshold of something bigger than many people realize. Bitcoin and the blockchain is not just a new currency or a way of distributing books among network users. We are becoming involved with a radical experiment in applied game theory that is shockingly simple, but nascent. Opportunities abound, and the individuals who recognize those opportunities or learn to exploit them will benefit themselves as they benefit the global community. Because it is so radical (and because it clashes with deeply ingrained beliefs about authority, control mechanisms, democracy and money), it seems complex and risky—but it’s really not.

I am a Bitcoin educator and columnist. I have taught college seminars in Bitcoin and I will be keynote speaker at the 2017 Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg. I design online courses for the most popular cryptocurrency self-learning groups. But Antonopolous runs circles around me. He is a Bitcoin evangelist extraordinaire. All of his presentations are superb, but this one provides context. It conveys an understanding that Bitcoin novices and professionals equally appreciate. It answers questions the viewer hadn’t asked, but would have.

There are hundreds of videos and PowerPoint presentations that explain how Bitcoin works. But they rarely provide context. Few of them convey why it is such an important development and why it has overtaken biotech & pharmaceuticals as the focus of VCs . Few can explain why an ethereal Bitcoin (a unit that you cannot hold) has just surpassed the value of a unit of gold. And few people realize that volatility has been abating as the increase in value and adoption is surging.

As you watch Antonopolous, you are certain to think about things that you did not previously know—or at least, that you did not reflect upon. My purpose in asking you to view it, is not to sell you on Bitcoin or the blockchain, but to provide the context that may help you to code, consult, write articles, teach, begin trading, start saving, and more.

^{Philip Raymond co-chairs Crypsa & Bitcoin Event, columnist & board member at Lifeboat, editor
at WildDuck and will deliver the keynote address at Digital Currency Summit in Johannesburg.}

According to Carson, “the more technical advances lower the capital outlays and overhead for production in the informal economy, the more the economic calculus is shifted” (p. 357). While this sums up the message of the book and its relevance to advocates of open existing and emerging technologies, the analysis Carson offers to reach his conclusions is extensive and sophisticated.

With the technology of individual creativity expanding constantly, the analysis goes, “increasing competition, easy diffusion of new technology and technique, and increasing transparency of cost structure will – between them – arbitrage the rate of profit to virtually zero and squeeze artificial scarcity rents” (p. 346).

An unrivalled champion of arguments against “intellectual property”, the author believes IP to be nothing more than a last-ditch attempt by talentless corporations to continue making profit at the expensive of true creators and scientists (p. 114–129). The view has significant merit.

“The worst nightmare of the corporate dinosaurs”, Carson writes of old-fashioned mass-production-based and propertied industries, is that “the imagination might take a walk” (p. 311). Skilled creators could find the courage to declare independence from big brands. If not now, in the near future, technology will be advanced and available enough that the creators and scientists don’t need to work as helpers for super-rich corporate executives. Nor will the future see such men and women kept at dystopian, centralized factories.

Pointing to the crises of overproduction and waste, together with seemingly inevitable technological unemployment, Carson believes corporate capitalism is at death’s door. Due to “terminal crisis”, not only are other worlds possible but “this world, increasingly, is becoming impossible” (p. 82). Corporations, the author persuades us, only survive because they live off the subsidies of the government.  But “as the system approaches its limits of sustainability”, “libertarian and decentralist technologies and organizational forms” are destined to “break out of their state capitalist integument and become the building blocks of a fundamentally different society” (p. 111–112).

Giant corporations are no longer some kind of necessary evil needed to ensure wide-scale manufacture and distribution of goods in our globalized world. Increasingly, they are only latching on to the talents of individuals to extract rents. They may even be neutering technological modernity and the raising of living standards, to extract as much profit as possible by allowing only slow improvements.

And why should corporations milk anyone, if those creators are equipped and talented enough to work for themselves?

The notion of creators declaring independence is not solely a question of things to come. While Kevin Carson links the works of Karl Hess, Jane Jacobs and others (p. 192–194) to imagine alternative friendly, localized community industries of a high-tech nature that will decrease the waste and dependency bred by highly centralized production and trade, he also points to recent technologies and their social impact.

“Computers have promised to be a decentralizing force on the same scale as electrical power a century earlier” (p. 197), the author asserts, referring to theories of the growth of electricity as a utility and its economic potential. From the subsequent growth of the internet, blogging is replacing centralized and costly news networks and publications to be the source of everyone’s information (p. 199). The decentralization brought by computers has meant “the minimum capital outlay for entering most of the entertainment and information industry has fallen to a few thousand dollars at most, and the marginal cost of reproduction is zero” (p. 199).

The vision made possible by books like Kevin Carson’s might be that one day, not only information products but physical products – everything – will be free. The phrase “knowledge is free”, a slogan of Anonymous hackers and their sympathizers, is true in two senses. Not only does “information want to be free”, the origin of the phrase explained by Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly in What Technology Wants (2010), but one can acquire knowledge at zero cost.

If the “transferrability” of individual creativity and peer production “to the realm of physical production” from the “immaterial realm” is a valid observation (p. 204–227), then the economic singularity means one thing clear. “Knowledge is free” shall become “everything is free”.

“Newly emerging forms of manufacturing”, the author indicated, “require far less capital to undertake production. The desktop revolution has reduced the capital outlays required for music, publishing and software by two orders of magnitude; and the newest open-source designs for computerized machine tools are being produced by hardware hackers for a few hundred dollars” (p. 84).

Open source hardware is of course also central to the advocacy in The Homebrew Industrial Revolution, especially as it relates to poorer peripheries of the world-economy. It is through open source hardware libraries of the kind advocated by Vinay Gupta that plans for alternative manufacture as the starting point in an alternative economy for the good of all become feasible.

As I argued in my 2013 Catalyst booklet, not only informational goods will face the scandals of being “leaked” or “pirated” in future. The right generation of 3D printers, robots, atomically-precise manufacturing devices, biotechnology-derived medicines and petrochemicals will all move “at the speed of light” as the father of synthetic biology J. Craig Venter predicted of his own synbio work.

The fuel of an economic singularity, those above creations should be of primary interest in the formation of an alternative economy. They would not only have zero cost and zero waiting times, but they would require zero effort.  Simply shared, they must be allowed to raise the living standards of humanity and allow poor countries to leapfrog several stages of development, breaking free of the bonds of exploitation.

One area to be criticized in the book could be a portion in which it reflects negatively on the very creation of railways or other state-imposed infrastructure and standards as a wrong turn in history, because these created an artificial niche for corporations to thrive (p. 5–23). It seems to undermine the book’s remaining thesis that the right turn in history consists of “libertarian and decentralist technologies and organizational forms”. “Network” technologies and organizational forms only exist due to that wave of prior mass production and imposed infrastructure the author claimed to be unnecessary. Without the satellites and thousands of kilometers of cable made in factories and installed by states, any type of “network” organizational form would be a weak proposition and the internet would never have existed.

Arguably, now the standards are set, future technological endeavors that connect and bridge society won’t need new standards imposed from above or vast physical infrastructure subsidized by states. The formation of effective networks itself now produces new mechanisms for devising and imposing standards, ensuring interconnectivity and high living standards should continue to flourish under the type of alternative economy advocated in Carson’s book.

Abolish artificial scarcity, intellectual property, mandatory high overhead and other measures used by states to enforce the privileges of monopoly capitalism, the author tells us (p. 168–170). This way, a more humane world-economy can be engineered, oriented to benefit people and local communities foremost. Everyone in the world may get to work fewer hours while enjoying an improved quality of life, and we can prevent a bleak future in which millions of people are sacrificed to technological unemployment on the altar of profit.

Okay, now — bear with me on this — and check it out:
For now and for better or worse, The United States is home to a plurality of the world’s techiest technology, investment capital, productive creativity, and cutting edge research. As such, hiccups in those technology-driven economies of real currency and ideas can ripple around the entire planet.

Amid considerable anti-intellectualism and various public & private R&D funding issues, American tech leadership and innovation is stuttering and sputtering and might be in danger of faltering. While we’re not at that point just yet, there is an interesting harbinger with a peculiar manifestation: New iPhone Anticipation Loopiness. As I said, bear with me.


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This is a repost & redux from an October 5, 2011 Anthrobotic.com piece — published a day before the suspected-to-be-iPhone 5 was released as the iPhone 4S. While the fanboy drool and mainstream gee-whiz was considerably dialed down this time around (in part due to lots of leaking), the sentiment of this piece remains relevant and largely unchanged. Now, we did have the Nuclear-Powered Science Robot Dune Buggy with Lasers (AKA the rover Curiosity) this year, and that was very big, but on a societal level we still have a sad hole in our technology heart.

Of course any hand-wringing about the underlying catalyst for weird iPhone fervor is a so-called first-world luxury, but to that I say “Shhhh, Trickle Down Technonomics©® is real.“
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The Great Want
I was half-seriously saying to my friend Jason last night that waiting for the iPhone 5’s release is like waiting for Christmas morning when we were 10. Except that the reveal of this present will be more like “Here’s what we got you, but you can’t actually have it for another two to four weeks.“ That part’s kinda cruel. He’s at 3G, I’m at 3GS — upgrade is ferociously justified (and cheap here in Japan). So, like lots and lots of Americans and other people around the world, we’ve been not so patiently waiting for Tuesday morning; we have also been part of this peculiar intensity.

Troubling Telecommunication Technolust
Now, is there any other product, across any and all areas of industry, for which a pending release has been the subject of such anticipation, such broad media coverage, and so much conjecture? And how is it that the key marketing strategy for a company’s flagship revenue source is their absolute refusal to talk about the product until after its launch? Do we consumers really want the new hotness that badly? How are all these strings being pulled? How can so many otherwise reasonable adults have so much longing for this device?

Even if one’s not an iPhone user and has no plans to convert, chances are one is at least curious about what Apple’s got. I mean, be honest, even if you’ve got only a very general interest in technology, you’re going to be paying attention to the announcement. And if you’re not actively following the story, you’ll hear about it passively — it will be everywhere for a few days or a week or so.

So… what’s this all about?
It’s just a pretty new phone, right?

No.
We know that a phone hasn’t been just a phone for several years now — a lot of us hardly use the telephone part of the device at all. And, they’ve become, well, you know — smart. This guy (Mike Elgan) and this woman (Amber Case) have developed theories suggesting that smartphones are actually highly personalized digital information prosthetics, and we users are already cybernetic organisms (Anthrobotic.com nods in agreement). Smartphones connect us as individuals to the vast stream of human communication; they non-invasively enable the RAM & ROM of all recorded human history into the palm of our hands, and devices’ elegantly rapid penetration into everyday life has been… (drama pause) profound. Ask organizers and participants in the Arab Spring. Ask villagers in developing countries who lack roads and electricity — but do have respectable data plans. And ask again, if you like.

Mobile phones have become much more than the name implies, and as a practical tool, the iPhone 5 in particular will be an exciting addition to comms and gaming and entertainment blah blah blah. As per usual, Apple will probably introduce hardware and software features that will shape mobile technology on a global scale — that’s what Apple does.

And all that’s awesome whoo-hoo way to go, but still, it’s #5, just the latest iteration.
Not really THAT big of a deal, so why the hell do we care so much?

Listen for the thud — here drops a cheesy armchaired macro-diagnosis:
Subconsciously — in my country — the rabid anticipation for the iPhone 5 is actually about hope, inasmuch as it’s about the American Dream. In a way.
Or, more accurately, the corpsification thereof. In a way.

And that is because we the people have almost nothing else to be excited about.
(except: The Nuclear-Powered Science Robot Dune Buggy with Lasers)

We of the Uninspiring Slump
Over at Anthrobotic.com, fundamental to my silly-ass take on tech is the primary tenet of the 51%+ Positive Technological Utopianism Movement (that I totally just invented), which is: 

Technology is the fundamental precursor to civilization and is therefore the most powerful social force in the universe, yo. Srsly.

Humanity is in the midst of a rapid upswing in almost all facets of human development. Things are just getting better, all across the board. BUT, there are still some crappy little downward notches in the larger upward curve. We’re in one of those — the American Dream has lost coherence - and we are desperate for something big, something to inspire and unite us, something more than, oh I don’t know, the impotent & mentally retarded discourse of America’s pathetic political charade, for example.

A leap too far? Overgeneralizing? Pandering to the Dumb? Just dumb?
Well, I suppose it’s possible that the population of the U.S. who find themselves anywhere on the mildly-curious-to-completely-rapt scale of interest in the iPhone 5’s pending release are a poor sample from which to gauge the attitude of a nation. But for that to be the case it would have to be in another universe with different rules. Because A: There are around 310 million people in the U.S., and about 100 million are smartphone users, and I’d guess (and read survey data reporting) that a strong percentage of them are pretty interested in learning about or buying the iPhone 5 — so if you think such a massive population block that is engaged and ready to take action on an issue provides a poor statistical sample, well then, you can’t count. And because B: those 100 million people have nothing else to give a shit about.

The iPhone 5, Insidiously Alluring in a Vacuum!
So what the hell am I saying here? Well, The iPhone is an incredible device that quite literally represents a truckload of previously impossible mobile functionality. Think about it — just 4.5 years ago it didn’t exist, and the App Store (which has been copied by, ummm… everyone) is barely over 3 years old. It’s a beautifully designed tool, elegantly powerful in so many ways. But, it’s no revelation, it’s just a very precedented technological creation of late 2011; it’s a consumer product — and in another year, we’ll want the next version, and the next, and so on.

Physical artifacts are usually outshined by big ideas, but the thing is this: while we’re lousy with the former, we’re fresh out of the latter.

Projecting
Now this isn’t about dorks like myself and those inhabiting this higher ranks of sciencyness and geekdom — we’ve got plenty to excite us. But everyday humans in the U.S., where traditional notions of culture are diffuse and diluted, tend to unite around ideas and ideals — and very often those drive and/or are a product of scientific or technological advancement of some kind — and sometimes, that can inspire others around the world. The mass-production of automobiles and human flight inspired notions of the freedom of movement, TV launched and inspired vast visual creativity, and following the Soviet advances, the Apollo missions united the nation, gave new appreciation for the Pale Blue Dot, ROI-ed ten$ of billion$, and inspired the rest of the world to continue pushing into the frontier of space. And, American computer technology, much of it pioneered by Apple, jumpstarted what will probably be the single largest paradigm shift in the history of our species. It’s become natural for us to see great positivity and opportunity in our technological achievements.

Americans fundamentally appreciate and embrace innovation, and we want look to the future with hope, longing for new ideas and new developments that create new economies and new possibilities. But for the time being now, our American Dream is stuck in neutral and we have no common rallying point. Our nation’s greatest point of unity and excitement and anticipation is for the release of another mobile telecommunications device — the best thing we have to look forward to is Tim Cook, 10:00am, PST.

Well That’s not so Uplifting Now, is it?
We desperately want good news, we desperately want a new great project stabbing toward some awesome goal — and there’s just… nothing there. The economy is crap, there is no great leader to inspire us, and there is no great undertaking for the betterment of all humankind. That’s where the iPhone 5 anticipation energy comes from. Americans want what is new, we want to push forward, we want profound ideas to inspire us now and for decades to come — it’s in the fabric of the nation. If we were about to launch a manned mission to Mars, or a Manhattan Project-style energy initiative, or building hotels on the moon, this announcement would be but a spark.

Myself and millions will soon have a state of the art, super cool new phone. And the Dream will stay on break. Such is life. But it’s not gone, and do check back later — we might have space tourism and near-infinite fusion energy pretty soon!

It’s Tuesday night here in Japan — going to sleep.
I’ll check the morning news straight away, and I’ll be excited about the phone I will own in a few short weeks. It’ll be awesome, I’m sure. And the world’s most valuable company will get more valuable, I’m sure.

Aside from the next-next iPhone and a new figurehead, will another year bring anything new? Not so sure.

(The Nuclear-Powered Science Robot Dune Buggy with Lasers came close, didn’t it?)

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Thanks for reading!

-Reno at Anthrobotic.com

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I got this tweet today, as a part of a larger conversation that technological breakthroughs could help predict disruptive economic times. During the past 10 days or so, the US and global financial markets have taken a deep plung, as a result of, well, according to the CIOs (chief investment officers) and politicians, we don’t know. The new industry pins the almost unanimous economic decisions of sell sell sell, to the latest new is geo-political interactions and/or financial specific news.

We see headlines like “Downgrade Ignites a Global Selloff” at the Wall Street Journal, referring to the Standard & Poor’s downgraded credit rating of US treasuries, which by the way soared during the selloff of equities, because of their relative strength.

More importantly than what to buy, none of the headlines, nor the vague analysis captures the actual root-cause of this regular, or rather, irregular economic downturn occurring over the past decade. The general ideal that one should be able to buy low and sell high that once held true in the 20^th century no longer exists. The root of the problem is in our use of technologies to error-proof redundant problems in the modern work world. Further, we know that mostly all errors exist by the hands of humans. Thus, error-proofing can be synonymous with human-proofing. We usually think of technologies that replace human activity as a device or software…”the robots”, and those do exist, but they are less of a threat than the methodological technologies.

We rarely think of a routine as a technology, but they are. Benchmarking is a technology. With all of the methodological expertise being poured into corporations over the past 30 years, we’ve finally got somewhere, efficient. How many times have you heard that word at the office? Since the late 1960s and the creation of Poka Yoke by Dr. Shigeo Shingo, and on to Lean-Manufacturing, and Six-Sigma, and most recently the 3^rd version of IT Infrastructure Library (ITILv3), we are actively depleting the work force to ensure our qualitative (effectiveness) and quantitative (efficiency) superiority to the competition.

Its a difficult dialogue to have, because a valid argument is: what’s wrong with business being efficient? My answer would be: Nothing at all. The problem comes into play when human-kind has rendered its ability to distribute value, obsolete. In the past we’ve distributed value through a currency of some sort, and that currency (in primitive times and modern day) is backed by more than gold or bonds, it is also backed by faith in a philosophical system that a woman/man get paid for an “honest days work”, quite the primitive slogan. In a knowledge economy where people aren’t performing back-breaking work at the volumes that they used to, and 10 knowledge workers of the 1980’s can be performed by 1 Project Manager using 30 years of benchmarked data with soft/hardware help, it’s difficult to spread the wealth that we once did.

When the markets sell off equities into cash, they are saying that the economy is inflated and weak. There are no buyers for the products being produced, because there are no jobs. There are no jobs, because of all of the error-proofing that proceeded them; and finally, it is exceedingly difficult to quantify what people’s knowledge, experience, existence is worth in the old paradigm. While it feels better to point the finger at the CEOs and Politicians today, of which I’d likely get a finger or two, the problem is that we are trying to distribute the wealth that still exists using an antiquated model.

If one looks at the M1&M2 numbers at the US Federal Reserve, they’ll notice that all of the money we need to fix/build anything still exists. This is the same across the globe. When the news says that money supply is lower, what they actually mean is that money distribution is lower, because the money supply, as the link shows is rarely diminished. As an economy retracts, funds return to its originator. The wealthiest of our species cannot justify how to spread a trillion dollars around, at the moment, because there fewer and fewer tasks to assign a wage and a human resource. I’ve got a few solutions to recommend in my next book project, Integrationalism: Essays on ownership and distributing value in the 21^st century.