The Next Economic Paradigm

Tag: message

Trading Money in for Value

Money is a convenient way to store and exchange value. Unless the world enters into a free trade agreement with Martians, Earth is the physical boundary of all existing value.

No matter what a monetary currency is called or how it behaves in the financial system, by definition, it can never represent any more than the value that exists on Earth.

Value is reflected by  “Market Capitalization” of corporation, Roads, Bridges, infrastructure, armies, education, food, real estate, and all so-called tangible things. Intangibles such as human resources, public assets, and shared natural resources are only valuable to the extent that people depend on those resources for survival. Not surprisingly, “tangible” means all things that can be controlled and “intangible” means everything else.

However, if you look at how all value is created, it all eventually boils down to human knowledge.  All control and influence over human knowledge boils down to the individual. All Value on Earth is stored between our collective ears.  In order to fully assess the global financial system, there must be a corresponding global inventory of human knowledge.  There is no body of any influence in the world proposing this as a means of defining solvency.

Meanwhile, the social media revolution is slowly introducing a global knowledge inventory to financial markets with effects that are becoming increasingly profound. In case you have not noticed, money no longer represents value, it represents the control of value.  Social media is disrupting who, what, when, where, and how all the value can or cannot be controlled.

With every new exotic financial maneuver, the monetary currency becomes increasingly divorced from the value of human productivity.  With every new advancement in social media applications, human productivity is becoming less controlled by money.  Watch the news – the battle fields are all about who what when where and how someone can control what is between your ears.

Not surprisingly, governments, marketers, advertisers and even academia are the first and most public victims of losing control of their message.  Their message is being re-written by forces outside their control.

This is serious – Don’t let anyone try to convince you that the value of social currency is not hedging the value of financial currency.

Today, we are on the cusp of the greatest revolution that the world has ever known. The control of money may go to the banks but the control of value will not.  It will happen when people decide it will happen.  Perhaps they already have…2012 anyone?

Share this:

Critical Value of Conversational Currency

Can the value of conversation fluctuate when compared to a “basket of conversational currencies”?  The translation is as follows;  If several conversations are taking place at the same time, does yours hold more or less value depending on the value of the others?

Same as a Lie?

If you ask a newspaper whose lead story was trumped by an unexpected celebrity death, the answer is yes.  If you tell a political activist whose rational message is lost to  more radical activists, the answer is yes.  If your speech is interrupted by a heckler, the answer is yes.  If you are caught lying about your Nuke Plant, the outcome is unintentionally the same – a loss of credibility, value, equity, and associated increase in risk, volatility, etc.

In today’s world of floating currencies, almost every currency rises and falls against other currencies at one time or another. But a currency that is persistently weak or continually falling relative to others presents a problem. If the dollar’s value were to continue to fall to new lows, eventually this would trigger rising inflation pressures. That’s because inflation can be defined as the loss of purchasing power of a unit of currency.

Inflationary Pressure on Conversational Currency?

Likewise, weak and falling conversational currencies are also bad for growth, since they scare away investment by another conversant. Who wants to invest time and knowledge in a conversation if there exists the real possibility that one’s investment will be eroded by a falling currency? At the very least investors require special incentives (i.e., premiums) to invest in an conversation with a weak currency.

Incentives Packages of Social Media Space

Weak conversational currencies are symptomatic of a variety of factors: cheap talk, lack of references, weak economic growth prospects, lack of confidence in the other participants, weak currency demand, and bad fiscal policies (e.g., wasteful discussion, high cost of participation, low quality venue or presentation). Strong conversational currencies, on the other hand, typically reflect tight topic control, vetting policy, strong growth prospects, confidence among participants, strong currency demand, and good fiscal policies.

The Critical Breath Mint

For better or worse, in order to “mint” conversational Currency, a discussion must be made accessible to largest audience possible.  The discussion must also be directed to those most “qualified” to engage in the discussion. When the value of the conversational currency reaches a low level threshold in either factor, the discussion ends with no resolution to continue and no tangential discussions taking place.  This can often be attributed to disruptive innovation making old conversations obsolete.  But it can also happen to worthy conversations infected by a parasite such as spam, hecklers, radicalization, flame wars, and emotional versus rational articulation, vendetta, sabotage, etc.

Critical Level of Conversational Currency

The critical level of conversational currency is where supply and demand cross.  The value of conversational currency will be determined by the ability to match the most worthy knowledge surplus with the most worthy knowledge deficit.  We use the financial analogy because the idea is the same – a currency is a currency.  Many of the same rules, methods, and calculus hold.  What is missing in Social Media are an inventory and accounting system for knowledge assets. While such systems are emerging on FaceBook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.  Some intervention is needed to integrate a social media system we can bank on, literally and figuratively.

Share this:

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén

css.php