In case you have not noticed, it is largely in the best interest of one group of people to keep another group of people poor, weak, and disorganized. I’ll let the reader connect these dots as they see fit, however, the fact is that is how capitalism works – there must be a merchant class and there must be a working class. And even after all the inequality that this arrangement implies, capitalism is still the only game in town for creating and distributing wealth.
As the burden of supporting the capitalist system is increasing with interest on debt that can never be funded, the pressures on the working class will enter a phase of rapidly diminishing returns.
The Poor:
The inherent conflict is that the working class will always seek to maximize their wages and the merchant class will seek to minimize those wages. Inadvertently, there is a suppression of information, and therefore education, to the working class. The result is a net loss of intellectual capital.
The Weak:
The inherent conflict is that the working class is assigned the tasks of carrying out the wishes of the merchant class even if it is not in their own best interest. Inadvertently, conformity becomes a survival strategy for the working class. The result is a net loss of creative capital.
The Disorganized:
The inherent conflict is that the working class will organize themselves into collectives as a means to match the relative power of the merchant class. Again, inadvertently, if people are held below a certain economic threshold, they will fail to organize because their concern is greater for simply feeding their family. The net result is a loss of social capital.
Diminishing returns
The result of the net loss of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital is the inability to create new wealth. While these conditions were once the exclusive domain of less developed countries especially under communism, similar conditions are now arising in the United States under capitalism. That is, before Social Media was used to enrich, empower, and organize.
I am a capitalist:
The tools of the old merchant class trade are eroding. As the financial crisis envelopes the United States, more and more people are turning to Social media. Traditional media is over commercialized, polarized, and gentrified while the audience can now control their bandwidth, seek multiple opinions, and become highly diversified. The draw to social media is nothing less than extraordinary even among those who still have jobs. When people are released from the clutches of the merchant class, they wake up, look around and inspire each other. The innovation economy is upon us.
Innovation Economics
The paradigm shift is really quite subtle. It behaves as a function of the human embodiment of innovation. For example; most of us do not wake up every day aspiring to improve the Ipod, the Wii platform, the better mousetrap, or any other inanimate object for that matter– instead, we seek to improve ourselves, and by extension, those around us. This is the self embodiment of innovation – something improved with an economic outcome. To improve one self is to innovate; social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital are the factors of production and social media is the corporate structure. I am Capitalist and if you have read this far, so are you.
