Status, Wealth, & Power: Network Effects Demand A New Social Contract

Governments and other traditional forms of hierarchical power are ill-equipped to understand the network economy and evolve the new social contract...they live in a hierarchical world of scale, and we live in the networked world. Different technologies lead to different mental models, different languages, different tools for making positive outcome... See more

Society’s Social Contract with Its Citizens

1. You will give up your privacy.


2. If you’re willing and able, you will have a job.

What the Network Economy Changes

1. Transparency in two forms: Money Transparency, Ranking Transparency 


2. Power laws now create even more unequal money outcomes.

A Company’s Social Contract With Its Labor Supply

For the company:The labor/ creator lets themselves be tracked, measured, and optimized, and the company gets to keep a copy of that data to run its business and maintain the relationship with the laborer for the long term. This is giving up some privacy for the laborer.

Citizens will embrace the network economy and not cling to the scale effect economy of the industrial world, so our governments shouldn’t either. The scale economy will not go away, but it’s going to become a smaller part of life and the economy, like agriculture did in the industrial era.