Capitalism is dead. Long live capitalism

[Music]

[Music]

have you ever wondered

if the last financial crisis of 2008

has changed something fundamental in our

societies

have you ever wondered if one of these

consequences

could be the overhaul of our economical

system and our government structures

in order to understand the conclusion i

have barely

hinted that i want to kick off the

discussion by briefly talking about

disruptions disruption such an

overused word everyone talks about

disruptions but truth is

there’s only been three major

disruptions

in our modern human economy the first

one

was the steam machine in the second half

of the 19th century

which led to trains and disrupted global

trade and global transportation

by decreasing the cost of transport and

increasing the speed of delivery

the second one was electricity and

automation

which disrupted manufacturing and led to

mass production mass consumerism and our

modern urbanized societies

and the last one not the least one was

internet and mobile communication

which led to the disruption of the flow

and access

to information and ended up monetized in

social media

participative knowledge global

cross-border

collaboration with websites like

wikipedia

open source university etc etc

today you don’t need to be a molecular

engineer

to know what a ribonuclease is nor

do you need to have the past to the

library of a biology university to find

a book that tells you what a

ribonuclease is

all you need to do is go on the internet

google it spend a couple of hours and

here you go you’re a specialist

on ribonuclease today you don’t need

to wait for a journalist to go to iraq

to tell you what’s going on there

you can just go on the internet and

watch the videos and the talks that the

iraqis have

uploaded themselves

and we are now on the verge of a fourth

disruption

which is blockchain and ai and is going

to disrupt intermediation among other

things

intermediation in various sectors and

various

industries it is

what the internet and mobile

communication has done was

to disrupt the exchange of information

by collapsing the pyramid of knowledge

and leading to the democratization of

information of data of knowledge what

blockchain and ai

are going to do is disrupt the exchange

of value by collapsing

the money pyramid leading to the

democratization

of the access to capital

however this disruption is starting

in quite an unusual peculiar period

of our human history of our human social

history

usually disruptions occur in very

healthy

environment economically healthy

environments

the financial crisis of 2008 have we

really ever

recovered the data tells us we did

global national income per capita is at

the highest it has ever been

corporate profit record high

unemployment at least in the us

is at a record low

but don’t you feel a melees in our

western societies

a malays that is translating into

trumpism in the us

brexit and in the uk in france

the rise of extreme politics all around

the world

why because the data can be misleading

a very interesting shot that digs into

the data and it’s true household wealth

has increased

is at the top that it was but if you

look in the strata

you see that the bottom 50 percent has

still not recovered its level of wealth

pre-2008 they are actually now

at the level of wealth that is similar

to 1971.

however the top 10 percent have

recovered

to levels of pre-2008 they’ve actually

multiplied the wealth

threefold since 1971.

truth is our generation is poorer than

that of our parents

and thanks to the third disruption

internet mobile communication we see it

on a daily basis

and it creates anger

because it’s an injustice right

so why is this

dangerous why is this social and rest

dangerous

because the end goal of a society is to

reach a state of equilibrium

the state of equilibrium is a function

of stability

itself a distribution function of wealth

when the majority of the population sits

in the middle range of well

they want to maintain the status quo

they don’t need to change anything

because if something changes

they will have more to lose than to win

but when the distribution is skewed

suddenly you get to a certain point

where

you don’t want to maintain the status

quo anymore because a change however it

is

whatever it is can be more beneficiary

than the statue school

so this is leading to obvious social

unrest and social instability

social unrest and social instability

is dangerous because it can lead

to revolutions and revolutions

are a painful thing so how can we fix

this without going through a bloody

revolution

because the problem is a wealth problem

we should first look at our economical

system

which is based on capitalism

i don’t want to bore you with the theory

but in my view any viable and

sustainable

economical model should take into

account

individualism meaning that every human

being

is an individualistic creature

and i will quote i want to highlight the

code of an

unlikely source

who said in the future

which is now individualism

ought to be the efficient utilization of

the whole individual

for the absolute benefit of the

collectivity

indeed as human beings we are not equal

it doesn’t mean we are unequal it means

we are different

we are different in our origins in our

religion in our age in our geographies

in our

jobs in our education and we should be

able

to accept respect and leverage on these

differences

to be able to extract the unique

insights

that each individual can have and can

add to the collective society

so i want to highlight a situation where

individualism

actually didn’t wasn’t applied correctly

and led to the failure

of state we have argentina and the

united states

few people know that in the 19th century

argentina was actually the most powerful

economically nation on earth

when immigrants had the choice between

buenos aires

and new york they would pick buenos

aires

so what happened to argentina the united

states now is a number one power

of the world argentina is a failed state

history books will tell you it’s the

election of juan peron and peronism

but the election of juan peron was years

if not at least a century

in the making why

because of a lack of individualism in

the argentinian society

so what happened in argentina is that

you would get there

you would be working for a land owner

you were an employee of a land owner

argentina was very rich

and the richer it got the more this

disconnect

between the 10 percent and the 90

increased

look at the united states when you were

an immigrant

the government would give you a piece of

land

and they will tell you work it so every

immigrant

was actually the ceo of a small

enterprise and this allowed for wealth

maybe not to move to the extreme of

argentina but in the middle range

to be distributed almost equally

so argentinians landowners

russian serfdom some of them in other

countries in the world has

have created this disconnecting wealth

which led

to communism and we all agree

that communism is not really a viable

solution

however right now capitalism also

doesn’t seem like a really viable

solution

we shouldn’t be ashamed to look at

capitalism

and try to fine tune it

because capitalism today is skewed

towards money begets money

it’s a backward looking formula

meaning if you’re a wealthy man but a

crappy businessman

you go to a bank you still get your loan

if you’re a cash rich

corporate you have access to capital

markets

if you’re a wealthy nation you can emit

bonds at a very low interest rate

but capitalism shouldn’t go to

short-term

gain gains only capitalism capital

should flow to those who can provide

the most sustainable long-term

capital but

in this new form of capitalism that

we’re trying to build

capital is not only about money

remember the third disruption capital is

also

should also be linked to knowledge

a wise man once said give a man a fish

you’ll feed him for a day teach a man

how to fish

you’ll feed him for a lifetime but what

he forgot to mention is that

not only do you do you need to teach the

man how to fish

but you need to give him the money to

buy a boat because a man who knows how

to fish

and doesn’t have a boat is going to

starve and a man who has a boat and

doesn’t know how to fish

is useless as well and this is extremely

important

for smes small and medium enterprises

small and medium enterprises are the

heart are the power

engine of an economy

all of the economical successes like the

asian nations

japan korea taiwan all of them have a

very strong dynamic

sme sector in the united states

sme generate more than 50 percent of the

gdp

99 of businesses in china

are smes but the problem with smes

is that their failure rate is humongous

in a five-year period 50 percent of fme

smes fail on a 10-year period

90 percent fail and it’s not because of

a lack in capital

it is mainly of a lack of expertise

and knowledge and experience large

corporation

have access to the best employees

have access to the largest bank to the

largest consultancy firms

i.e they have access to an ecosystem

that is here to nurture them

smes don’t really have access to this

because maybe there’s two they’re too

small

to be for the economy to invest in them

so in order to bring back the wealth to

the middle range

we should be focusing on our smes

but how can we do this in the current

model

so the current model is a very

centralized model

the bigger you are the more decision

making power

you have what we should be doing

is shifting the decision-making power

from the individual to the collective

and when i say the individual i don’t

mean necessarily a person but

a corporate an entity it shouldn’t be

one or two or three

players and the economy that takes

decision

it should be all of the actors

all of the actors so how do you do that

let me give you an illustration

meet orn so on is a character

of a video game called league of legend

or lol

for those who knows it it’s my favorite

character

i’m not introducing him to you um to

discuss whether he’s health goat

health dog or health goat he’ll fly and

though i’m quite sure it’s an

interesting debate

no i’m introducing on because of this

in this game own and other characters

have different statistics

these statistics are variables with

different

values these values move

up and down throughout your progress in

the game

now imagine an economical model

where all of the actors again not the

players

the actors where all the actors have

that sort of profile

with various variables that could be

quantitative or qualitative

that comes into an equation to give you

a reputation score the higher

your reputation is the more input

and influence you have on the economy on

the ecosystem

so now imagine an sme

that is looking for funding or is

looking for advice

or is looking for any type of

information coming into the ecosystem

you will have all of the actors that

want

to interact with this sme giving their

opinion or voting

on whether to finance this company or

not finance it and at

what level but their vote

is going to be weighted by their

reputation score so the better actors

they are in the economy

the higher input the higher influence

they will have and this is what is

called participative capitalism

so now we can take this idea a little

bit further

and apply this concept to government

structures

particularly parliamentary systems

so i want to introduce what i call

calibracy

calibrocracy derives from the word

caliber

which is the standard of a person

the quality of the ability of a person

and it’s a form of government where it’s

not parliament that votes on laws

but it is the citizens very similar to a

referendum right

but no because in a referendum every

vote is equal to one

in a calibracy every vote is weighted by

your caliber

and your caliber which is made up of

multiple variables

can take in qualitative variable like

your age

your location quantitative variable what

type of

what type of returns do you have in your

job et cetera et cetera

and most importantly when it’s time to

vote it will take into account

how whether this law is affecting you

yes or no

an easy example would be brexit if we

voted on brexit within a caliber

calibrocratic system

and this is just one variable yeah don’t

get upset at me

if you were 80 years old the weight of

your vote

would have been lower than someone who’s

30 years old

well because it’s very unfortunate but

the lifespan of human being is

limited but it’s on the other side of

the spectrum it works as well if we’re

talking about law on health care if

you’re 80 years old

your vote will have a weight that is

more important than someone who’s

30 years old because you used you use

the health care system

more often and again it is true

humans are not equal it’s even written

in our genetic code

yeah some are bone told some are bone

shock like me

salma bone very good looking some are

born

so so good looking some are born good at

math some are born

very eloquent and some are born neither

good looking

neither very eloquent neither very smart

it’s very complicated for them

but we should accept respect and

leverage on our differences

because it is through our differences

that we can

extract unique insights

that can build up a collective

a collective society in 1992 after the

fall

of the soviet union francis fukuyama

in his very famous book the end of

history and the last man

argued that with the global spread

of free market capitalism and liberal

democracy

human society arrived at the end of its

social cultural

evolution and that the last form of

government

is a liberal democracy with free market

capitalism

but history doesn’t end and it’s time

for you for me for us to make history

again

thank you

you