RESHARED POST FROM MICHAEL CHUI

I wrote the following rant in +Michael Chui‘s thread.
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There is nothing wrong with the entrepreneurial spirit. In the biological world they call entrepreneuralism “opportunism”, and being opportunistic is vital for evolutionary for success. The problem is that entrepreneurialism must exist within an incentive structure that encourages and incentivizes deplorable and inhumane acts, which has rapidly led to an overwhelming correlation between entrepreneurs and the most vile excess of capitalism.

The article you post here is suggesting we discourage opportunism; I think this is a losing suggestion; it’s not the kind of thing that can will catch on. The far more promising solution is to change the incentive structure to stop encouraging inhumanity, instead of trying to force ourselves to make up for the deficiencies of our organizational schema. We can’t do it; it’s pretty clear by now that even our best efforts are promptly quashed by the crushing inertia of the existing order of things.

I’ve seen at least a few posts over the last few days clearly describing the transition to a “cashless” economy. The universal presumption of all these articles is that the basic inventive of money will stay the same, and that the only change will be at the interface: instead of handling little pieces of paper, the flow of cash will all be digital. The small-mindedness of these articles frustrates me to no end. Obviously the transactions will be increasingly digital; they already are largely digital, and it isn’t hard to imagine the pieces of paper going away. Such a change would be about as interesting as announcing that they are painting all the money pink; its a completely superficial difference.

But seriously, everyone, if we are going to make such a transition anyway, why not redesign the thing from scratch? With a little bit of hard work, we can all undoubtedly design an organizational system that is open, inclusive, stable, and sustainable, and that can incentivze the global labor force without all the nasty, evil consequences that money has wrought. It is absolutely apparent to me that money as a fundamental organizational structure is rapidly becoming obsolete, yet I see very little serious discussion of how to engineer the kind of reorganizational project this obsolescence demands. This conversational void persists despite the equally persistent cry from the people for fundamental change.

The suggestion that we can reorganize without money is usually met with objection that such changes are “unrealistic”. The delusions inherent in this response continue to baffle me. Our existing system is wholly and completely unrealistic, and money is clearly at its root. Given the severity of our situation, doesn’t the possibility of a moneyless, and not merely cashless, this warrant least some critical consideration and intellectual discussion?

Heh, sorry for the rant.?
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The above rant is basically what I am trying to do with the #attentioneconomy ; in fact, my sights are set just slightly higher, since I want to say that attention models can function as a measure of consensus and therefore serve not only economic but also civic and governmental purposes.

But seriously, this is just one model, and I’m sure there are plenty of other nearby models that would work just as good or better for accomplishing the same basic goals. I’m absolutely convinced that the good solutions lie somewhere in the neighborhood of where I’m looking, and every morning I come to my G+ stream expecting to see an announcement of a discovery of some other similar stable model of social organization that rests on basic digital infrastructure. I’m positive that someone else must be working on these issues; a lot of people are working on the right pieces of the puzzle, but I haven’t seen anyone fit them together into a coherent story, at least not much better than the incredibly compelling handwaving of #jasonsilva . That’s really why I feel confident pushing the attention economy pretty hard, because it is a unified model that helps bring a lot of those pieces together.

Anyway, rant over.

Michael Chui originally shared this post:

“Entrepreneurship is a phenomenal career choice, but we need to better equip our youth for its challenges rather than blindly encouraging them. Collectively, we need to do better.”

Could say that about, well, everything. Gleeson is essentially right; entrepreneurship is definitely not for everyone. But I actually think that most people should give it a spin.

It’s a basic principle of civic education: by understanding what goes on at the top, you rebalance the knowledge-driven power distribution. You can empathize with your managers and leadership. If you know exactly why you’re not doing their job, it helps with knowing exactly why you’re doing yours.

Entrepreneurship’s dirty little secret – Alan Gleeson – The Kernel

Entrepreneurship is not a panacea for all employment ills, writes Alan Gleeson. We need to discourage those who aren’t fit to start their own business.