New terms. New ideologies. New structures.
I write this on the day the news broke that Klaus Schwab stepped down as chair of the World Economic Forum (WEF). History might not be kind to this individual nor his organization.
The WEF is the centerpiece for globalism. It was one of the major forces pushing the 2030 Agenda, something that led to ideas such as "You will own nothing and you'll be happy". This stemmed from an article written back in 2016 that laid out a vision for the future.
Schwab and his crew presented an image of the future; one where they were in control of the direction of things. The challenge they ran into is two-fold:
This means they were operating backwards. It is why failure is inevitable.
Technology is one of the basic components that changes society. It alters the path of humanity. We do not create technology to cater to us. We adapt, through adoption, to what technology offers us.
Gitcoin Founder Kevin Owocki emphasized this point in response to an April Fool's post by Vitalik Buterin.
A tongue-in-cheek post from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin—“Make Communism Great Again”—sparked a deeper debate on social media: What political ideology, if any, should guide Web3?
For Gitcoin and Allo.Capital co-founder Kevin Owocki, the answer is simple—none of them.
We have discussed the economic future of humanity at length. Things such as the economic singularity are becoming, in my view, legitimate conversation pieces.
What does the economic future look like when the labor component of the economic equation is basically severed? How does a society operate when capital is the driver of output?
In a world where the basis component is jobs, how are things structured?
A problem arises when we try to answer this through the communism, socialism, capitalism prism. None of them fit. As Owocki alluded to above, they all are moving to being outdated.
This not only applies to ideology. I long espoused how GDP is a metric that has lost its value. For the moment, it is the best we have and does allow, to some degree, for historical analysis. However, in a technological world where things are deflationary by default, this tells very little about what is actually taking place.
For example, let us say there is a gene therapy that cures a certain type of cancer. This solution, for argument sake, costs $1,000. Any individual who gets this cancer spends that amount to get cured.
The GDP would be the number of therapies given.
Here is where the problem arises. Think of all the GDP lost due to oncology centers losing the business. Cancer treatment is much more than $1,000. The impact on GDP is negative since cancer treatments run in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Of course, the benefit to society is incalculable.
Klaus Schwab's vision of the future, one where a few elites controlled the direction of things such as health, science, energy, politics, and commerce is rapidly dying. He failed to learn from history.
This has to be a massive awakening. The idea that everything would be a service falls by the wayside when we have a situation where Software-as-a-Service is potentially threatened. If this is the case, everything could be targeted.
Blockchain and AI can reformulate so many facets of society. Of course, for this to happen, innovation is required. Here is where the application of 20th century ideas could be hindering the progress.
This was the case Owocki was making.
Owocki agreed that the space is still early, but urged critics to take a longer view. He likened today’s DAOs to corporations in their infancy.
“LLCs are 60 years old. Corporations are 300. When DAOs are 50, they’re going to be good,” he said.
If we look at things through this lens, we can see how there is potential.
What will DAOs look like after 50 or 60 years? How will they incorporation newer technologies with regards to governance?
The answers to these questions are impossible to come up with. What we can say is things will be much different.
One area that I think worthy of focus is the fact that the top-down structure is showing some cracks. Schwab and the WEF epitomized this. Of course, he did not act alone. His two primary vehicles were governments and corporations (or corporations disguised as non-profits).
The corporate world can be described as "Web 2.0". This isn't exact but it is close enough especially as more of the global economy is driven by (or at least tied to) the digital world.
Web 3.0 is a completely new structure. The design is horizontal, i.e. decentralized. Open source and distributed are common terms utilized. We can even look at the basic structure of blockchain and see how it shifts away from the traditional client-server architecture.
DOAs are the anti-thesis of Schwab's top-down approach. Instead of owning nothing and everything being a service, DAOs distribute ownership. For the moment, we still have the imagery of the corporation in our heads. However, over the next couple decades, this could change as innovation is applied.
In an era where networks become abundant, what is governing these? Here is where a radical shift occurs, moving away from a society that is structured based upon geographic location. If one is unhappy with the present governance system, moving to another is difficult. However, in the digital world, it means simply switching networks.
What we are talking about here is the unpinning of society. Complete societal transformation is underway. How this evolves is going to depend upon the innovation and adaptation of people around the world.
As Schwab found out, the idea of a few at the top running everything is a fallacy. If anything technology is only making this more difficult.
