In the previous chapter, we set the context w.r.t. building a better economy as a thought series.
Today we are gonna look at the current state of the world as any future projection requires a baselining. #TheInternetOfValue
An ideal futures projection is in the sweet spot of something preferrable, probable, and plausible.
The common lens used to look at the systemic baselining of a system (current state) are Economic, Political, Social, Tech & Legal.
1. Political Lens:
The sight at the end of this barrel is unpleasant. It's an endless pit of greed, pain, suffering, & surveillance. Leaders across the globe are taking advantage of these circumstances by peddling hope to the gullible while colluding with the powerhouses.
Good resources to delve deeper. The Rise of Authoritarian State by John Oliver
Democracy under siege by FreedomHouse
As the economic and physical insecurities, violence ravaged the world, democracy's defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian counterparts. Beleaguered activists, lacking adequate international support, faced heavy jail sentences & tortured. These blows marked the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The countries experiencing deterioration outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006.
2. The Social Lens:
Here's the International Labour Org 2021 report - an estimated 8.8 percent of total working hours were lost - the equivalent of the hours worked in one year by 255 million full-time workers
Around half of the losses were due to reduced hours of those employed ( shorter to zero working hours,) while the remaining half was due to outright employment losses, which directly translates to a drop in labor income and an increase in poverty.
While certain economies are inching back the hybrid work has had a toll on the employees. And this is a leading indicator to the great attrition.
3.Economic Lens
Economic prospects have diverged further across countries since the April 2021 World Economic Outlook (WEO) forecast. Vaccine access has emerged as the principal fault line along which the global recovery splits into two blocks:
- Those that can look forward to further normalization of activity later this year ~ all advanced economies.
- Those that'll still face resurgent infections and rising COVID death tolls. The recovery, however, is not assured even in countries where infections are currently low
4.Technology Lens
4. Technology Lens - Bitcoin and hence DeFi has made frictionless movement of possible and now with #web3 and #DAO the allocation of resources are being re-imagined. People like @nntaleb who were public supporters of #bitcoin is now questioning its inherent value. While torchbearers such as @VitalikButerin @balajis and @naval are batting for it.
The #Web3 world is divided into segments even within the tech community.@elonmusk @jack questioning the capital inflow of #web3 and vc / media firms @a16z @cdixonand a whole army supporting
Whilst Tech is the leading indicator the narratives of the future are still broken. The usual narrative is to blame the economic system. Capitalism is evil. That's first-order thinking. If you go deeper, it's not capitalism that seems like the culprit but crony capitalism,
Economists @Mazzucato 's mission economy is a moonshot guide to fixing capitalism and supports the labor theory of value. Donut Economicsby @KateRaworth are worthy experiments to look at. #web3 is much more than just a technology. what websites were to web1, platforms to web2, tokens will be to #web3 i.e building new economic systems
which leads to reimagining organizations hence #DAO
Summary: In this thread, we looked at the current state of the world and the future predictions based on technological and economic innovations happening in the world.
What Next? Tomorrow we shall delve deeper into the Problem Definition and Causal Analysis of the same.