In one of his talks, Guy Standing talks about how he noticed a trend of increasingly flexible work markets and increasingly precarious social conditions. Those observations would be nothing extraordinary, except he made them twenty years ago. The meme received little attention, and life went on.
Fast forward into the digital age, now two years ago. The increased access to information is increasingly disrupting old social norms. Rick Falkvinge blogs about how the swarm economy is disrupting the old system, and that society's inability to value non-monetized work is insane. Again, the media/memetic network did not amplify the meme and life was christmas as usual.
Fast forward: Two months ago, Stanislas Jourdan wrote an article on the same topic, about how Guy Standing´s predictions had come true, and how people began to realize that the changes might affect their quality of life. The number of articles began to increase exponentially and suddenly, buzz words such as 'accelerating change' and 'basic income' were in everyones mind.
It seems now like the media narrative is catching up. The trends of accelerating socio-technological evolution are becoming mainstream and a solution to the resulting problems is not far away. This should come as a relief to the millions who suffer precariousness from obsolete socio-economics, those stuck in the stigma and poverty of obsolete social contracts. Increased connectivity and increased productivity displaces the old norms and out of the disruption comes a new narrative.
This narrative for our cultural identity will be founded on something like a 'basic income economy', in wich common wealth is invested in universal basic incomes that free everyone to develop themselves and contribute to society as they choose, commercially and/or non-commercially. This will be established quite soon. Just google it to read about the progress. You, the media, can make it happen even sooner. Think about it, talk about it, tweet about it, broadcast it, share it, establish it.
"society's inability to value non-monetized work is insane."
ReplyDeleteI have many friends in London who work a full week of volunteer work, sometimes more than a full work week, making the community a more vibrant and beautiful place.
The area, due to these wonderful people, is quickly becoming gentrified. All the community building projects that were initiated without profit in mind are resulting in huge profits for property developers.
You would think that the unwaged and precarious who worked so hard to build up the community into a livable space would at least get some recognition, however a basic income (again they earn NOTHING) would be even better.
Hello Bezdomny
ReplyDeleteI also began searching the web for better systems only just some months ago, and I´ve found there´s a growing number of us participating in the global conversation online, 100 of millions of people from around the world, who feel that it´s about time economics evolved from it´s pseudo-science past and moved into the digital age.
Today’s monetary and banking system is, in essence, still based on the 500 year old fractional reserve system suited to metal money. It’s absurd for us to think that as we move further into the digital age that our most important information system, money will not change. Network society needs networked currencies.
2012 was a great year for science, and also for economics, more people joined the conversation, and it looks like we might have some breakthroughs already this year.
I think it´s important to remember that it´s is essentially just science, it´s really not more revolutionary then the sequencing of the genome in 2001, it´s really not more revolutionary then any other scientific or technological revolution, but still people have a hard time grasping this transition since economics has such an intimate connection with our everyday lives.
Like with all cultural change, this conversation will spiral organically between junctures of society, first between internet-natives like you and me, and then out to the less connected.
Again, this conversation is making exponential progress, it´s slowly entering the main stream media (about time... ;) and it looks like the entire world soon will be well into discussing how to design networked economic systems for the networked society.
There´s a facebook group for the european network, just poke me or anyone in the group if u want to join that conversation @http://www.facebook.com/bipedaljoe
@http://www.facebook.com/groups/basicincomeeurope/
Well met :)