A recent TED Talk was interesting. I recommend it to those interested in economic ideas. The guy has a book out, too. I've not read the book, but the ideas in his talk resonate with many parts of my understanding. I expect a flurry of discussion should several of you listen...

Here is the source page with description and link to the MP3 (21 minutes, 10 megs).

above page wrote:

One myth is that corporations promote free market capitalism, but they were originally monopolies granted by royalty to prolong and fund monarchy. The other myth is that currency is money, but national currency has prevented thriving trade among peers that existed in ancient times.

- NonE

My reaction to this was amusing. I expected to thoroughly agree with the speaker. Instead I spent the first 10-12 minutes disagreeing with almost everything, but then agreed with most everything for the last 8-10 minutes.

I have problems with his premises and implications. Mainly with regard to the value of corporations. There is a mountain of research on the corporate structure, where it adds value, where it will tend to fail, etc. The corporate structure is certainly becoming less necessary for certain types of production (those that can be "crowd sourced") but it isn't disappearing any time soon. What will change is the purpose of the corporation as productive activities continue to demand less physical capital and more intellectual capital. John Hagel (http://edgeperspectives.typepad.com/edge_perspectives/) has written extensively about how corporation, in order to survive, will have to become collaborative training institutions that provide opportunities for employees to develop their skills more quickly than they would be able to otherwise.

I do very much agree with the speakers conclusions, particularly with regard to currency. I have posted to a similar affect several times, including recently here (http://liberatingminds.forumotion.com/economics-f6/the-universal-currency-wars-are-coming-t1768.htm#25559). What the speaker suggests paypal tried and craigslist should try, is the same that I suggest Facebook will evolve its system into.

In the long run I think we could call this demonetization. As it becomes easier to track social capital, reputation, contributions to non-monetized projects or communities, it will also become easier to redeem these assets, thereby lessening the need for sovereign currency.

I think of corporations as I do fiat money. There's no "there" there. There is no reason for a corporation aside from escaping responsibility, just as there is no reason for fiat money aside from theft.

At least dem's is my thoughts. Fraud is fraud is fraud, even if you call it by another name.

- NonE