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