User:JoeEdelman/21st Century Economics and Ecology

A future that works for 12B ppl

 * reputation & sharing & experience economies - high-density low-stuff living
 * mission-related investments & other use-regimes
 * reputation/algorithm-based easements & trusts
 * point of sale vs point of experience vs point of long-term benefit evaluation (& google ads; & internet incentivization)
 * from wallet and keys (pairwise) notions of use to (reputation / auction / larger assessment) social smartphone negotiated use
 * goods become services; services become social & reputation-based rather than market exchanged; (later) land, minerals, and infra become group-managed

Factors that drive us away from legacy, ownership-based capitalism

 * social & rep currencies leverage transaction cost efficiencies (see Benkler, "Sharing Nicely")
 * also, human motivation efficiencies (see Foursquare, Couchsurfing, McGonigal)
 * also, market commoditization interferes with addressing people's true desires (DeBord)

Factors (going away) that kept us tied to legacy, ownership-based capitalism

 * pre-smartphone coordination costs for group transactions
 * legal structures for group use slow
 * lack of reputation information about strangers
 * insuffienct socially-motivated capital to buy out owners
 * before limits to growth, etc, plain old short-sighted modernism

Might be good to mention

 * capitalism is NOT dominant. 4 markets (reputation, favor-exchange, caring, and cash) change their relative dominance over time as technology and living conditions change.  See economist Nancy Folbre
 * billionaires and CEOs and VCs are NOT evil. see my investors (Kickstarter, Google Earth, ...), see Fred Wilson (#hackedu, Khan Academy, MeetUp), see Danon Yogurt (CEO issued a new kind of green stock and moved 1MM stockholders over to new stock so he could go eco)
 * sharing/algo-collective approaches DON'T have to be vulnerable to free-riders and safety concerns (see CouchSurfing)
 * low-tech back to the land and transition town approaches are NOT sustainable (see Steffen's peice: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009499.html)

Top Thinkers

 * Alex Steffen
 * Yochai Benkler
 * Jane McGonigal

Top investors

 * Craig Shapiro
 * Knight Foundation

Best careers to build this future

 * Lawyers (e.g., http://sf.streetsblog.org/2010/06/04/california-assembly-passes-personal-car-sharing-insurance-bill/, CLTs, etc)
 * Internet entrepreneurs & social designers (e.g., Zipcar, NeighborGoods)
 * Sharing economy lifestyle marketers & collab. community builders (e.g. GOOD Magizine, Rick Warren) (is there one in China?) (how to reach the ranch states?)
 * Urban planners
 * Experience designers of all kinds
 * Group-asset managers (land trusts, foundation grant funders, etc)

Three Steffen articles to start with:

 * http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009499.html
 * http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008064.html
 * http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010672.html