Trillions of dollars in play:
Trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of value that once coursed through the veins of Market Capitalism is being transferred to social media from the legacy economy now stifled by insurmountable debt. These numbers are indeed spectacular because they account for the invisible value “lost”, and most importantly, the calculations provides clues on how to “find” it again.
What is a Social Contract worth?
According to Legacy Economics, the term “social contract” describes a broad class of theories that try to explain the ways in which people maintain social order. The notion of the social contract implies that people give up some rights to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order. Otherwise, we would each have unlimited natural freedoms, including the “right to all things” and thus the freedom to harm all who threaten our own self-preservation; there would be an endless “war of all against all”.
Take me to your leader
By contrast, Social Media begs the questions: who or what exactly is that authority? Isn’t the greatness of the Internet the lack of an all powerful authority? So why aren’t we at a war of all against all? What keeps social media at peace instead of an endless flame war? Whatever this alien is, it is capturing and storing trillions upon trillions of dollars of value away from the legacy economy, but where?
Separating facts from fiction
According to the old economy, it is a “fact” that human knowledge is an “intangible asset” of which there are only two types defined:
1. Legal intangibles such as trade secrets, copyrights, patents, and goodwill (brands).
2. Competitive intangibles such as knowledge activities, collaboration activities, leverage activities, and structural activities.
However, when we consider social media;
1. There is no law governing the phenomenon – so there are no legal intangibles.
2. Collaboration, leveraging and structural activities are not being conducted in a competitive environment (the context of one “Company” against another).
So, the definition fails to account for knowledge assets in social media. The Ingenesist Project discovers the lost trillions simply by treating the social contract like a legal contract.
Tangible assets are managed by contracts
Technically, any oral agreement between two parties can constitute a binding legal contract. The legacy economy limitation, however, is that only parties to a written agreement have material evidence (the written contract itself) to prove the actual terms uttered at the time the agreement was struck.
But social media, email, and blog posts, etc., all constitute vast “written” agreements and material evidence as far as most people are concerned. So what is missing? Are we waiting for permission from government, Wall Street, corporations, attorneys, or the Federal Reserve to say it is OK for people to stop competing with each other or to renegotiate the terms of the social contract (and currency of exchange)?
The mystery is no mystery
Guess what, there is nothing there. Absolutely nothing except philosophical barriers carried over from legacy economics built upon political division. The mystery is that there is no mystery except using social media to unite people. After all, the biggest Brand in the world is a Community Organizer. Such calculation provides clues on how to “find” value again.
