[p2p-research] Building Alliances (basic income and entrepreneurship)

[Michel Bauwens]

I think Andrew states his position very clear, and this is really what the
political and social battles in the future will be about.

One view is the scarcity view, that only very few people in the world are
talented, and that concentrations of capital and power are needed, and
winner take all systems that motivate the privileged few, and this is
getting worse and worse, so we need more and more of it.

Another view is that talent is distributed in many ways, and so our systems
need to be more distributed to capture that innovation and contribution, as
that is not sufficiently done at present.

So to challenge Andrew's very clear metaphysics:

1) people can get smarter, and in many ways are getting smarter, through
smart educational and social policies

2) the intelligence we have is increasing in value, the more so if we
interconnected people and their contributions in collective intelligence
systems; there is a network effect to human intelligence deployed in this
social and distributed way

3) intelligence is incredibly addictive, all human knowledge builds on
previous one, and recombines in myriad ways to create more and more
additional intelligence

So, shall we evolve even more into a winner take all world, devoted to the
privileged few, or develop policies that enhance and empower the
contribution of more and more people. My take on history is that those who
have chosen scarcity over abundance in the field of knowledge and
innovation, have not fared well.

The magic of Silicon Valley is not just VC money, but a dense network of
highly intelligent people who have learned to network together and
cross-fertilize each other and they rely on an excellent educational
infrastructure (which the effects of the neoliberal meltdown are now
unfortunately deconstructing).

I also note that in a world where myriad social problems are showing up and
increasing, the system you propose, in your own words, is incapable of
investing in it.

Time to move on then perhaps, and let others take over the work of investing
in the common good? The good news is that for people who are willing to
invest in the social good, it is not actually a hard problem, and
opportunities abound. This is why there is now a thriving field of social
enterpreneurship, blended capital, and social venture investing, while the
VC world is in crisis.

Michel

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 11:37 AM, J. Andrew Rogers
<reality.miner at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 7:51 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Now you are on the key point.  There are few economic investments to be
> > made.  Here's the rub: Why is that?
>
>
> The really short answer:  the amount of well-applied intelligence
> required to do something that creates significant value has been
> increasing every year for a long time.  People aren't getting smarter,
> the intelligence we have is decreasing in value, and intelligence is
> not meaningfully additive.
>
> If you are an investor trying to get a certain return on investment,
> that means the pool of people that can deliver the required value is
> shrinking.
>
> It is a very hard problem.
>
> --
> J. Andrew Rogers
> realityminer.blogspot.com
>
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