The Big Mac Index is published by The Economist as an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies and provides a test of the extent to which market exchange rates result in goods costing the same in different countries. UBS Wealth Management Research has expanded the idea of the Big Mac index to include the amount of time that an average worker in a given country must work to earn enough to buy a Big Mac.
Time is the true scarcity
Everyone is allotted a certain amount of time before they must leave the game and how they choose to allocate their time defines how they stand in the economy playing out before us. People may store, exchange, borrow and give their time to others. People can also steal, exploit, and waste the time of others. Likewise, the greatest innovations are those that create time and the greatest scourges of our civilization are those that kill time.
Social Value Index
There are many indices that help us to track comparative values. These include the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500, etc. People track them over time to help define productivity. Productivity (you and I going to work everyday) is what gives the dollar it’s value, not the other way around. Likewise, the Social Value Index will compare the financial profit (or loss) of a product or service with the social profit (or loss) of that product with respect to time.
Future of Money
The future of money will most likely arise from entrepreneurs influencing the social value index with thousands of new business models rather than the creation of some new independent currency. The ratio between financial currency and social currency may in fact become that “new currency” standard. As the dollar loses it’s steam, the social currency will gain steam and the Social Value Index will rise (not unlike like the S&P 500 index since 1945) to reflect a measure of social economic growth; i.e., abundant social factors of production will define productivity instead of scarcity of land, Labor, and Capital.
The trick is to cure the cancer without killing the patient
A new social currency will be born from the slow and steady evaporation of the old debt as the dollar atrophies, rather than the wholesale demise of Capitalism. As such, the Social Currency will become increasingly biased toward social priorities instead of Wall Street priorities and the pesky little flaw in Market Capitalism will correct itself. This is the primordial soup from which ideals such as the environment, renewable energy, wealth disparity, education, etc., will become highly profitable social enterprise. This can be achieved quickly and cheaply with existing technology if we index the data correctly; that is, with respect to time.
