Albert Wenger is currently in the process of writing a book called World After Capital. The book isn’t finished yet. It still exists in a crude rough draft form. But already he has made it freely available online. You’re also welcome to comment and contribute to the book as he works on it.
Why has he done it this way?
Because this format of publishing is in line with where he believes the world is heading. He believes we are headed towards a world where new forms of surplus – brought about by technological innovation – will create greater levels of freedom: economic freedom, informational freedom, and psychological freedom.
His overall thesis is that the world has been moving through a series of scarcities. As hunter and gathers, the scarcity was food. In our agricultural period, we learned how to create food surpluses (which freed up more of our time), but it then produced land scarcity. Once the industrial revolution hit we once again freed up more of our time through surpluses, but then the scarcity became centered around capital. We also started to negatively impact the environment. Today, as we clearly move away from the industrial economy towards a knowledge and information economy, Albert believes the new scarcity is attention. (I wrote a related post about a month ago.)
If you’re interested in this topic and don’t feel like diving into his book, I suggest you watch this 23 minute presentation by Albert Wenger. I watched it this morning and he talks about everything I mention above.
Here’s one of his slides that I felt was important to share:
Why it’s interesting to think about this shift is because there will inevitably be positive and negative outcomes associated with it; there will inevitably be groups who, probably because of self-interest, would rather cling to the past; and because there are pressing global issues that we need to be focusing our attention on – issues such as climate change.
I can’t help but wonder about all the ways this shift could reverberate through the economy and our cities. Earlier this week I wrote a post about architecture as a tool for capital. But with our current fixation on “starchitecture”, one could argue that we have already transformed architecture into a new tool – a tool for grabbing attention. If you believe that attention is the new scarcity, then this makes perfect sense.
I’m listening to The Foreign Desk this morning while I have my coffee. Steve Bloomfield is interviewing two different politicians: one who believes Britain should remain in the EU and one who believes Britain should leave the EU.
Earlier in the week, I came across this post (via Fred Wilson), arguing that rapid technological progress is causing systemic deflation in the broader economy.
Here’s a chart that illustrates the author’s point:
What is happening here is that despite advances in technology and increases in productivity, real wages have been stagnant for decades. (This chart is for the US, but it likely applies to many other countries.)
This is an interesting paradox. For a long time, increases in productivity were met with corresponding increases in income. So why the divergence?
The author believes that it’s because the gains brought about by “extreme technological progress” are being unequally applied to the economy. In other words, they do not benefit the majority of people. He then goes on to argue that we could be entering an entirely new macroeconomic era:
Albert Wenger is currently in the process of writing a book called World After Capital. The book isn’t finished yet. It still exists in a crude rough draft form. But already he has made it freely available online. You’re also welcome to comment and contribute to the book as he works on it.
Why has he done it this way?
Because this format of publishing is in line with where he believes the world is heading. He believes we are headed towards a world where new forms of surplus – brought about by technological innovation – will create greater levels of freedom: economic freedom, informational freedom, and psychological freedom.
His overall thesis is that the world has been moving through a series of scarcities. As hunter and gathers, the scarcity was food. In our agricultural period, we learned how to create food surpluses (which freed up more of our time), but it then produced land scarcity. Once the industrial revolution hit we once again freed up more of our time through surpluses, but then the scarcity became centered around capital. We also started to negatively impact the environment. Today, as we clearly move away from the industrial economy towards a knowledge and information economy, Albert believes the new scarcity is attention. (I wrote a related post about a month ago.)
If you’re interested in this topic and don’t feel like diving into his book, I suggest you watch this 23 minute presentation by Albert Wenger. I watched it this morning and he talks about everything I mention above.
Here’s one of his slides that I felt was important to share:
Why it’s interesting to think about this shift is because there will inevitably be positive and negative outcomes associated with it; there will inevitably be groups who, probably because of self-interest, would rather cling to the past; and because there are pressing global issues that we need to be focusing our attention on – issues such as climate change.
I can’t help but wonder about all the ways this shift could reverberate through the economy and our cities. Earlier this week I wrote a post about architecture as a tool for capital. But with our current fixation on “starchitecture”, one could argue that we have already transformed architecture into a new tool – a tool for grabbing attention. If you believe that attention is the new scarcity, then this makes perfect sense.
I’m listening to The Foreign Desk this morning while I have my coffee. Steve Bloomfield is interviewing two different politicians: one who believes Britain should remain in the EU and one who believes Britain should leave the EU.
Earlier in the week, I came across this post (via Fred Wilson), arguing that rapid technological progress is causing systemic deflation in the broader economy.
Here’s a chart that illustrates the author’s point:
What is happening here is that despite advances in technology and increases in productivity, real wages have been stagnant for decades. (This chart is for the US, but it likely applies to many other countries.)
This is an interesting paradox. For a long time, increases in productivity were met with corresponding increases in income. So why the divergence?
The author believes that it’s because the gains brought about by “extreme technological progress” are being unequally applied to the economy. In other words, they do not benefit the majority of people. He then goes on to argue that we could be entering an entirely new macroeconomic era:
(Each interview is about 15 minutes short.)
The back and forth is largely centered around two things: the economy and immigration. Will the British economy be better off in or out of the EU? And on the immigration front, will “in” translate into millions of Turks flooding into Britain should Turkey join the EU?
For those of you who haven’t been following, Britain will be holding a referendum on June 23rd (2016) to decide whether they stay or go.
My general view is that a strong economy should trump concerns over foreigners. But I don’t feel as if I know enough about this precise topic to take a firm position.
Regardless, I very much enjoyed The Foreign Desk episode this morning and I would be open to discussing this issue in the comments below if any of you are also interested.
“Economic growth may be over soon, at least in absolute terms. On the other hand that will be at least partially offset by the technological deflation. So instead of the decline of the innovation it will be just the opposite, the explosion of the innovation that will turn the economy to the decline. And moreover, it will not be a tragedy since we will be able to produce higher standard of living with fraction of the GDP today. Few adjustments needs to be done into our economic system to cope with the change for sure.”
When you read things like this it makes the idea of a “basic income guarantee” seem far more palatable.
The other chart that stood out to me was this one below, which shows the declining cost of solar panels and the rise of global solar panel installations.
It’s a great reminder that it’s only a matter of time before we wean ourselves off of oil. And, that we could be headed towards some sort of third industrial revolution where the marginal cost of energy is almost zero. Already about 25% of Germany’s electricity comes from renewables.
On that note, I am going to end with a fantastic interactive chart from The Economist (screenshot below) that outlines oil reserves around the world by country. If you click through to their website, you can then toggle the price of oil (per barrel) to see how much of those reserves are actually viable.
With the price of oil where it is today ($27.88 per barrel as of January 20, 2016), there are only a handful of countries with profitable oil. I am sure you could have guessed which ones.
What will happen if, or should I say when, that oil is no longer needed?
(Each interview is about 15 minutes short.)
The back and forth is largely centered around two things: the economy and immigration. Will the British economy be better off in or out of the EU? And on the immigration front, will “in” translate into millions of Turks flooding into Britain should Turkey join the EU?
For those of you who haven’t been following, Britain will be holding a referendum on June 23rd (2016) to decide whether they stay or go.
My general view is that a strong economy should trump concerns over foreigners. But I don’t feel as if I know enough about this precise topic to take a firm position.
Regardless, I very much enjoyed The Foreign Desk episode this morning and I would be open to discussing this issue in the comments below if any of you are also interested.
“Economic growth may be over soon, at least in absolute terms. On the other hand that will be at least partially offset by the technological deflation. So instead of the decline of the innovation it will be just the opposite, the explosion of the innovation that will turn the economy to the decline. And moreover, it will not be a tragedy since we will be able to produce higher standard of living with fraction of the GDP today. Few adjustments needs to be done into our economic system to cope with the change for sure.”
When you read things like this it makes the idea of a “basic income guarantee” seem far more palatable.
The other chart that stood out to me was this one below, which shows the declining cost of solar panels and the rise of global solar panel installations.
It’s a great reminder that it’s only a matter of time before we wean ourselves off of oil. And, that we could be headed towards some sort of third industrial revolution where the marginal cost of energy is almost zero. Already about 25% of Germany’s electricity comes from renewables.
On that note, I am going to end with a fantastic interactive chart from The Economist (screenshot below) that outlines oil reserves around the world by country. If you click through to their website, you can then toggle the price of oil (per barrel) to see how much of those reserves are actually viable.
With the price of oil where it is today ($27.88 per barrel as of January 20, 2016), there are only a handful of countries with profitable oil. I am sure you could have guessed which ones.
What will happen if, or should I say when, that oil is no longer needed?
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