Community Capitalism

I wanted to wrap up the year by writing about something I have been thinking about for the last few months:

Who owns the best businesses in the world?

I am trying to draw a line from inherited wealth of feudal lords to community-owned services with tokens.

The last 1,000 years can be roughly split into two 500-year chunks: feudalism & capitalism. Feudal lords controlled all of the land, farms, buildings and capital. This was passed down inside families and never distributed to the workers.

Capitalism totally changed that.
Risk, reward and ruin were separated when joint-stock companies became more common. The prerequisite for successful entrepreneurship shifted from inheritance to initiative.

People without wealth could access it and start new ventures.

Founders started founding new companies.
Equity compensation kicked off in the 1950s but it really went into overdrive when it was mixed with high-growth technology companies backed with high-risk equity bets. Silicon Valley perfected the art. Employees at many of the most successful technology companies became owners.
The SEC did two huge things this year. They raised the crowdfunding limit to $5m and introduced a proposal to allow gig workers to receive stock.

I predict that we will see competitors to Airbnb, Uber and DoorDash all take advantage of this rule.
https://t.co/ptLHUJyUbQ
What was the greatest technology investment of the 2010s that was available to the general public? Answer: The Ether Sale in 2014

Initial investors in that event who held on to $1,000+ Ether made 3,000x their money. There has never been an event like it.

https://t.co/4S7maTq6As
Every month, a bunch of new ways to earn tokens pops up: mining, staking, liquidating, curating, slashing, contributing, securing, managing.

Protocols are rewarding the participants with a share of the capital.
https://t.co/C93K1H4HD7
This year, the stock market was pushed to new heights during a pandemic while millions of people lost their jobs. The wealth gap is becoming a wealth gulf.

I do not have all the answers to this problem, but my gut tells me that we need more people to become owners of technology.
Owning public stock in the digital services is not enough. We need to own the services themselves. Big technology companies have become more powerful than nation states. The community capital of the 21st century must be distributed as far as possible.

https://t.co/b3HYOzuLIu
I hope we will look back on the digital services of today in the same way we view the feudal lords of yore. These tyrants that controlled the digital land and forced us to till their soil.

There is so much amazing stuff to be built. Community capitalism is coming.
Note: These thoughts are extremely loose and have only a smattering of historical depth. I welcome all corrections, clarifications and criticism.

I just wanted to get this idea out.

If you would like to read the full post, I just sent it out on Substack: https://t.co/3c9N31W31Y

More from Economy

On Jan 6, 2021, the always stellar Mr @deepakshenoy tweeted, this:

https://t.co/fa3GX9VnW0

Innocuous 1 sentence, but its a full economic theory at play.
Let me break it down for you. (1/n)


On September 30, 2020, I wrote an article for @CFASocietyIndia where I explained that RBI is all set to lose its ability to set interest rates if it continues to fiddle with the exchange rate (2/n)

What do I mean, "fiddle with the exchange rate"?

In essence, if RBI opts and continues to manage exchange rate, then that is "fiddling with the exchange rate"

RBI has done that in the past and has restarted it in 2020 - very explicitly. (3/n)

First in March 2020, it opened a Dollar/INR swap of $2B with far leg to be unwound in September 2020.

Implying INR will be bought from the open markets in order to prevent INR from falling vis a vis USD (4/n)

The Second aspect is now, that dollar inflow is happening, and the forex reserves swelled -> implying the rupee is appreciating, RBI again intervened from September, by selling INR in spot markets. (5/n)
https://t.co/9kpWP7ovyM
Let's discuss how little you actually understand about economics and energy.

The first thing to understand is that energy is not globally fungible. Electricity decays as it leaves its point of origin; it’s expensive to transport. There is a huge excess (hydro) in many areas.


In other words, it can also be variable. It's estimated that in Sichuan there is twice as much electricity produced as is needed during the rainy season. Indeed, there is seasonality to how Bitcoin mining works. You can see here:

Bitcoin EXPORTS energy in this scenario. Fun fact, most industrial nations would steer this excess capacity towards refining aluminum by melting bauxite ore, which is very energy intensive.

You wouldn't argue that we are producing *too much* electricity from renewables, right?

"But what about the carbon footprint! ITS HUGE!"

Many previous estimates have quite faulty methods and don't take into account the actual energy sources. Is it fair to put a GHG equivalent on hydro or solar power? That would seem a bit disingenuous, no?

Well that's exactly what some have done.

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I think a plausible explanation is that whatever Corbyn says or does, his critics will denounce - no matter how much hypocrisy it necessitates.


Corbyn opposes the exploitation of foreign sweatshop-workers - Labour MPs complain he's like Nigel

He speaks up in defence of migrants - Labour MPs whinge that he's not listening to the public's very real concerns about immigration:

He's wrong to prioritise Labour Party members over the public:

He's wrong to prioritise the public over Labour Party