The financial system is not the problem. The Innovation System is the problem – or did you notice that we do not have an “innovation system”? Finance and Innovation in the US has engaged in the dangerous dance of tail wagging dog. Innovation is as Wall Street does; not the other way around. This is wrong, this is very wrong.
Doers, not shakers
[Our economic strength is derived from the doers, the makers of things, the innovators who create and expand enterprises, the workers who provide life to companies and, with their earnings, support families and invest in their future… This is what drives economic growth.] – Barack Obama
These are sobering words. It make one wonder how everyone else makes a living; the brokers, the agents, the middlemen, the gatekeepers, the spinners, the flippers, the money managers, and everyone else in the game with their hands “in the flow of money” dragging the system into a tailspin. Many of these people publicly criticize the working class, who have finally run out of steam, for gumming up their game.
It is also amazing that the engineers, educators, technologists, medical professionals, and public servants could produce so much for so long; enough to feed everyone else – except, as of recently, themselves.
[The financial system is central to this process, transforming the earnings and savings of American workers into the loans that finance a first home, a new car or a college education, the credit necessary to build a company around a new idea.] – Tim Geithner
Meet the Master:
The financial system is supposed to be the servant, not the master. Innovation takes time, effort and resources before the payback can be realized. For this reason only, the financial system bridges that time gap to allow for increased future productivity to generate new wealth for use by all. That is the only reason why the financial system should exists. But somehow we have gotten it backwards.
We got it backwards:
Technological change must precede economic growth. We are going about the process of globalization as if economic growth can precede technological change. The invention of the wheel, wedge and the pulley came before the invention of the Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) – there is no excuse for this oversight. This is clearly unsustainable and the process must be reversed.
An easy fix, almost:
The Ingenesist project specifies 3 web applications that will allow social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital to become tangible outside of the bloated and failing financial system. These applications will make innovation success predictable. If success is predictable, then cash flows are predictable. Using the same calculus as Wall Street, the cash flows can be combined, diversified, and split up into innovation bonds with superior returns that can be issued to fund new and sustainable innovation enterprise. Problem solved.
3 steps away from a quantum leap:
This can be done today playing by the rules and using existing technology – 3 simple applications. That is how close we are to achieving the most important evolutionary step in human history. The Government needs to empower the people to release themselves from the shackles of debt created by those who create little else. For this reason, Obama is on the only correct path – buying time so that this important social media technology can mature.
