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How To Be a 21st Century Capitalist - Umair Haque

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Saved by 5 people (0 private), first by anonymouse user on 2008-12-09


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It's more accurate to say that what's being destroyed never really existed in the first place. If my car's a Ford - but I call it a Ferrari - capital hasn't been formed, and value hasn't been created. I've simply created a fiction - like those we belatedly discovered Wall St was peddling.

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So here's what 21st century capitalism looks like.

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20th century capitalism, in other words, marginally valued pure financial capital too highly, while marginally valuing human, natural, social, and cultural capital at zero - or, at the limit, negatively.

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20th century capitalism, in other words, marginally valued pure financial capital too highly, while marginally valuing human, natural, social, and cultural capital at zero - or, at the limit, negatively.

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Reigniting global growth depends on deepening the global capital base.

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Capital deepening is the foundation of next-generation value creation.

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The reason that capitalism can destroy the world is that most of the world doesn't exist in an economic sense. And so when we capitalize rainforests, endangered species, community, the foregone opportunities of the poor, our own well-being - then they will finally have value: they can finally be priced, and so the fatcats of the world won't be free to destroy them with impunity.

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Once they're capitalized, they become next-gen assets: assets that can be traded, hedged, remixed, tweaked, open-sourced, or shared. The difference is that they're assets with intrinsic, durable, human value - not the lemons Wall St was in the business of hawking. It is only by capitalizing the things we really value that the spark of value creation can be lit again.

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Next-generation businesses are built on next-generation assets.

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Next-generation businesses are built on next-generation assets. Yesterday's businesses were built on cash, factories, and IP - financial, physical, and intellectual capital. Next-generation businesses are built, instead, on human, social, natural, and cultural capital - to name just a few.

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Next-generation businesses are critical because next-generation assets are the key to rebalancing capitalism's toxic value equation. Bailing out the same old assets, building roads to nowhere, or subsidizing overconsumption - none of those are necessary or sufficient to reignite global growth. Ultimately, only next-generation assets can redefine how productive capitalism can be in the 21st century.

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Capitalize something. Here's one of the commandments of next-generation business: capitalize something. That's how a new generation of entrepreneurs will kickstart next-gen businesses and make their fortunes.

Today's so-called capitalists are anything but: mostly, they're charlatans, impostors, and poseurs. But today's most radical innovators are revolutionary, ironically enough, because they are learning to be genuine capitalists once again - capitalists in the 21st century sense of the word. They are discovering how to create value by growing new resources composed of social, natural, human, and cultural capital. By doing so, they are pumping new blood into capitalism's failing heart.

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Capital is a consensus.

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Want to capitalize something? Start a movement and build a consensus. Capital is formed when people are willing to agree that something has value. And the miracle of the 21st century is that in a hyperconnected world, millions of people can debate, discuss, and decide in the blink of an eye. It's never been easier to capitalize something - so what are you waiting for?

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Want to capitalize something? Start a movement and build a consensus. Capital is formed when people are willing to agree that something has value.

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