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

$600/wk Unemployment Insurance cannot deliver the benefits of a $600/wk Job Guarantee. From the outset, I should say JG is not a replacement for UI, no matter what you may have heard. I’ll get to this later, but read this long 🧶 w/ that in mind.


Automatic stabilization: Both $600/wk UI and JG will provide counter cyclical spending. But UI will be weaker. Counter-cyclical stabilization is not just about the absence of income. It is also about the transmission and structure of economy

Firms don't like to hire the unemployed. Mass and long-term unemployment make the problem worse. JG would recover labor markets much faster than a UI of the same amount, both b/c of the higher direct, induced & tertiary employment effects & b/c of private firm hiring preferences.

JG stabilizes spending patterns better. Uncertain job prospects may mean more cautious spending from the unemployed compared to those w/ guaranteed jobs.
UI is temporary, which makes matters worse. Even if it were permanent, it still won't resolve the problem of job scarcity.

Nations who once achieved tight full employment through active labor market policies demonstrate that unemployment does NOT fluctuate the same way it does w/o them. Direct employment, ELR type policies diminish drastically/even eliminate these amplitudes (eg postwar Japan/Sweden)
I know I’ve been beating this redlining and wealth gap drum for 20+ years but here is a GREAT cliffs notes version.

But don’t take @ambermruffin’s word for it. You should get references...

A thread


How homes in Black neighborhoods are undervalued by $156

Every major bank in the US has been sued for mortgage discrimination and a study that included every mortgage in America found that Banks charge higher interest rates to nonblack customers



https://t.co/sx9tWWB98s

Baltimore redlined areas in 1935 vs Baltimore Drug arrests in 2016

You May Also Like