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mk  ·  3177 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Refragmentation

This is one of his best essays. However, PG is making an assumption here that is incorrect:

    The form of fragmentation people worry most about lately is economic inequality, and if you want to eliminate that you're up against a truly formidable headwind—one that has been in operation since the stone age: technology. Technology is a lever. It magnifies work. And the lever not only grows increasingly long, but the rate at which it grows is itself increasing.

    Which in turn means the variation in the amount of wealth people can create has not only been increasing, but accelerating.

The assumption that he is making is that wealth is something that has to do with work. If anything, to date, wealth has little to do with work, and more to do with organization. For example, technology did not enable Mark Zuckerberg to do enormous amounts of work. It enabled him to organize communication and to create an efficient organization to execute it. Same with Uber. Same with Ford. Those performing work get little wealth, whereas those performing organization get a lot.

Decentralization of organization is going to upend this ecosystem. In time, the ability to drive a stranger across town for money will be a matter of leveraging a decentralized network. It will be a public resource, not administered by government, but simple there, like air. Furthermore, money is a poor proxy for value, and it does not have a reputation component. Reputation is going to become part of wealth.