Hacking The Financial System is not about some doomsday scenario for the end times, it represents the natural ability for humans to adapt to constraints in their environment. Right now, the financial system is vulnerable to many new systems and technologies that are reorganizing society. This series hopes to describe the meta dynamics behind these trends and offer ways for all people and institutions to adapt.
The financial System is made up of 5 components; they act as a system. If any of these components falters or is corrupted, the whole system becomes unstable.
These 5 components are:
- Markets (demand)
- Entrepreneurs (supply)
- Accounting System (inventory)
- Institutions (to keep the game fair)
- Currency (storage and exchange of value)
For example:
The dot.com crash was a problem with the accounting system failure. The 2008 crisis was a vetting mechanism failure. Devaluations across the globe are currency failures. Poverty is a market failure. Corruption is an entrepreneurial failure. All of these forces are interrelated and any one will have an impact on all of the others.
Curiosumé, The Value Game, and The WIKiD Tools Algorithm are specifically designed to replicate major functions of these 5 components – but in a different way. Since Finance and Economics are mathematical, and natural systems are also mathematical, we cannot escape the math – our hack needs to be true to the math. For this reason, the work may seem fairly technical.
On the other hand, we have an incredible opportunity to correct many flaws of the old economy. Anything that has no direct impact on the math also has no impact on performance and function of the 5 components – and can be easily designed OUT of the system.
For example:
- We have an opportunity to swap out competition for collaboration
- We have an opportunity to swap out scarcity for abundance
- We have an opportunity to swap out mass consumption for mass sustainability
- We also have the opportunity to eliminate a wide range of biases such as gender bias, racial bias, physical bias, social class bias, political bias, and many many more factors that may be irrelevant.
Where’s the Hack?
Every time there is an economic instability of any magnitude, black market currencies tend to form. We have all heard stories of Levis, cigarettes, or even tulip bulbs being used as currency. Black market currencies can also be quite subtle, yet no less tradable.
With 21st Century technology and social media, we are witnessing the emergence of what we can only now call “social currency”; such as reputation, referrals, vouches, influence, SEO, community, groups, and various other domains. These are all black market currencies because they are used for the storage and exchange of the value that people create…what they lack is the rest of the “system”.
The difference now – and perhaps this is the first time in human history – should the so-called black market currency become systemized to the same extent and actually perform better than the currency that it hedges, “a flip” will occur and the old system will fail to re-boot back to it’s current form as it has after every preceding economic crisis.
