by A couple of years, I started collecting and posting concepts or names for the next economy as part of my scanning (which admittedly “ain’t what it used to be). I didn’t seek them out, but rather have been noting them when they appear. It’s been a while since my last addition to the list, which left us at 35 concepts. Three new additions bring us to 38: Commons, Creative Molecular, and EM/Singularity.
| 1. Attention 2. Automated 3. Betterness 4. Blockchain 5. Capitalism 2.0 6. Circular 7. Co-creation 8. Collaborative 9. Commons 10. Conscious 11. Creative Molecular 12. Eco-economy 13. Em/Singularity 14. Experience 15. Frugal 16. Gift 17. Gig 18. Green 19. Knowledge |
20. Leisure 21. Local living 22. Metaspace 23. Open source 24. Post-capitalist 25. Post-Growth 26. Post-industrial 27. Purpose 28. Regenerative 29. Relationship 30. Resilient 31. Second 32. Sharing 33. Slack 34. Soft Path 35. Steady-state 36. Sustainable 37. Wisdom 38. Zero Marginal Cost |
The commons economy came to me through an excellent article by Jose Ramos on “The Future of Work.” He likened the current economic system to a game of musical chairs: “Most of us are so busy playing this game, we hardly realise that we must step away to play a different game altogether. This new game we can call the ‘commons economy’, in which one person’s gain is not to the exclusion of the other, but rather considers and nourishes a whole social community and whole ecological system.
The creative molecular economy is a concept shared by APF member Neil Richardson from his work with the Communities of the Future network. In its exploration of what’s next, the group recognizes that the industrial and knowledge economies are transitioning as a new era based on biological principles. emerges. Some of these points are further developed in the book, Preparing for a World that Doesn’t Exist.
The Em/Singularity economy explores the concept of uploading human consciousness – what he calls whole-brain emulations, or ems. The models could be copied and stored in robots, or in android bodes in virtual reality. The short story is these super-intelligent and super-productive ems go to work. The concept comes from Robin Hanson, AI researcher now an economics professor at George Mason University in his book: The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life When Robots Rule the Earth.
Readers of this blog are likely familiar with the Singularity concept, and while I suppose you could position it as a sorta new economy idea, I really liked the “em” concept as fresh and provocative. There is a nice review by Randall Mayes in the September 2016 issue of AAI’s Foresight Signals.
A shout out to the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) listserve for discussions which surfaced all three of these interesting and provocative concepts for me – two from the listserve and the third from the Compass newsletter masterfully edited by Andrew Curry. — Andy Hines
Hi Andy,
The Commons Economy has picked up a lot of advocates in Barcelona. I find it facinating, but a bit incomplete. Creative molecular economy sounds very interesting. I’ll pick up the book and give it a read.
I have my own ideas of a “Distributive Economy”, I can share more with you on that later.
Your post has inspired me. I think I should write or do a SlideShare covering all of the alt. economies out there.
Talk to you in class.
Daniel
Let’s talk about what we might do, Daniel. I have wanted to do more than just track the mentions.
Sure, let’s do it! I just saw your MISC posting, very much what I want do as well.
I’m also thinking about how to initiate a wider discussion, such as using social media, infographics etc on this. I want to do this for my own research, compiling my thoughts, and also share with people that there’s more to economics then the vague “left”, “right” and “libertarian” views of it.
I’ve been looking at Commons economy most closely, since it seems to have supporters in Barcelonia.
Long term, I’d like to do something like ITFT’s reimagine governance and their toolkit:
http://reconcon.govfutures.org/
Daniel