This post by Betty Lim is reposted from Medium.com

“The
role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to
diminish in the same way that the role of horses … was first diminished
and then eliminated.” Nobel Prize–winning economist Wassily Leontief, 1983

Very
broadly, a paradigm is about the way you perceive, interpret and live
your life. In one where there are so many of us but money is scarce and
you need money to survive, doesn’t money (and status) motivate and
reward people to do things?

Since
this signals you to be a money-chasing machine — to constantly (and
blindly) battle anyone/anything that gets in your way — have the world
wars really ended? Or have they evolved into Business-as-usual where
common sense goes out the window as your livelihood depends on not
understanding anything beyond your self-preservation?

Based
on artificial Scarcity, has the incumbent paradigm experientially
“groomed” you to be ‘a clock thinker’ in your respective survival
silo/bubble (and to be systemically blind)?

So,
although a transition is underway, do you see how we are being
self-organized to shove each other from the world’s dumbest idea into
the world’s most dangerous idea?

This
is similar to the late 1960’s, when private sector firms in the US were
starting to feel the initial pressures of global competition. Like many
today, people had desperately wanted quick fixes.

That’s when Milton Friedman published a very confusing New York Times article
in 1970, titled ‘The social responsibility of business is to increase
its profits.’ After he retired from GE, Jack Welch even admitted the
concept of shareholder value focusing on consistent quarterly results
was “the dumbest idea of the world.”

However, that idea has infiltrated and shaped all our lives as we are like fish in the water.

In between physical and digital Scarcity

Until
2004, the Internet was decentralized, and a startup could go public
with a business plan written on a single sheet of paper (single sided).
But that year, Google IPOed and Facebook was launched.

Surveillance capitalism has since flipped us from customers being served to products being sold. Based on more of the same thinking and doing, doesn’t surveillance capitalism really mean ‘post capitalism’ and in a ‘post-monetary’ world, isn’t the future of money the data we generate?

Google and Apple have embraced open source. In 2014, TechRepublic recognized Facebook as the world’s biggest open source actor and Tesla also made available all its patents for other manufacturers to copy. Microsoft recently open sourced 60,000 patents while Amazon has opened its ‘Machine Learning University’ to all developers.

On 21 June 2018, Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, spoke about how “Data is the new oil” and called for “a new world order.”
Was he signaling technocrats to self-organize, to build and to champion
the new ‘smart’ infrastructure and to eventually replace money with our
data (and all our assets)?

Self-organizing to perpetuate the Age of Nonsense

As
you join the race for recognition, convenience, speed and bargains,
here’s Tom Goodwin on how we self-organized to create the initial
digital Business-as-usual model:

“Uber,
the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the
world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most
valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest
accommodation provider, owns no real estate.”

In 2018, he opined how three years had flipped the above scenario:

“The
world’s largest taxi firm, Uber, is buying cars. The world’s most
popular media company, Facebook, now commissions content. The world’s
most valuable retailer is now Amazon, and has more than 350 stores. And
the world’s largest hospitality provider, Airbnb, increasingly owns
real estate.”

Because instead of Big Business paying most of us a decent salary to buy the goods and services we produce, this digital trend
revolves around us creating the value and buying their services and
products while all the key benefits (wealth) end up in the pockets of
the Big Business and their owners.

Automation, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) have (gradually, initially) been replacing humans.

Meanwhile, the gig/freelance economy has emerged as the 21st century’s global factory on demand — marketed as your having freedom, autonomy, and self-determination but where ‘employees’ have no benefits.

According to a 2016Spera report:

• In the next five years, half of the United Kingdom’s working population may be self-employed.
• Independent workers comprise the fastest growing group in the European Union labor market: A 45% rise from 2012 to 2013.
• India’s
  15 million independent workforce is the world’s second largest, filling
  about 40% of the world’s freelance jobs, and their ranks continue to
  grow.

The
so-called sharing economy has many renting out their spare
capacities — whether that’s themselves, their homes, cars or whatever
else they have. We even volunteer our time, ideas and intellect for free
on social media platforms, oblivious to how algorithms are learning
about us from what we share to create value for the digital oligarchs.

Of the two trend-setting countries? Zero-hours contracts prevail in many parts of the UK economy as it grapples with Brexit while the US is regressing into a third world country. Check this out.

With
better, faster, cheaper as their mantra, what profit-maximizing
businesses will want to keep shelling out money to humans they no longer
need to employ?

As
the cost of living shots up and money scarcity addicts you to surviving
only for yourself (and your loved ones), we are now being lured to DIY
(with our time, efforts and money) a very different reality from what we
know today. This latest transition may even standardize what it means
to be a sustainable human.

Because
as we continue to think and live ‘I win, you lose,’ wouldn’t our
individual data all be aggregated and turned into Big Data — the future
of money — for absolute control?

Why?
Because the Business-as-usual function of extracting our value based on
‘I win, you lose’ to maximize profits has not changed one iota. Based
on artificial Scarcity, wouldn’t the new digital tools simply accelerate
the extraction of the rest of our value from cradle to grave?

Do these social movements have the answer?

To explore, get your copy of Social movements powering the future of money, the first of two or three books to try to explain why we need a paradigm shift from artificial Scarcity to True Abundance.

Our future depends on you!!

About twenty or so years ago, Prince perhaps said it best: “Don’t be fooled by the Internet.”
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