Who Wants to be a Socialist?

Last week Jeff and I were talking about Watson (the IBM supercomputer) as a result of a visit by a friend from France who works for a large telecom company. He is a corporate IT guy, a socialist AND believes super computers will make huge inroads within the next few years. (including medicine--his example was oncology--and investments, and law, and engineering.)

The picture attached is a slide from a program I presented in San Diego about 10 years ago now. The "Time Compactor" concept came from Bernard Lietaer's book (1999) called ""The Future of Money".

Just last week the unemployment rate went down due to 374,000 people leaving the workplace NOT because a bunch of new jobs were created. What Mr Lietaer is fond of saying is "there are many things money doesn't do very well".

My guess is that guys like me will be the first to utilize this kind of technology and improve the outcome for clients in ways even better than either humans or computers could do on their own. Like the sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton said--"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." This is why we refer to what we do as Integral Financial Planning.

This "creative destruction" transition we are in the midst of is fascinating to consider especially with the rate of change underway presently. I can imagine giant winners (say healthcare costs for society) and losers (say insurance company employees or certain medical device companies.) Mr Lietaer has added a 5th component to the time compactor--The Growing Global Wealth Gap. I think for him this represents the outcome of the winners and losers dynamic as a result of creative destruction.

As current jobs continue to get crushed by technology then maybe we all become inclined to be a little more socialistic like my friend from France. (never thought I would say that;-) He thinks Girard Depardieu the famous French actor is successful because he is French. Depardieu renounced his French citizenship (claiming taxes were too high) and now resides in Russia.

It seems we have 3 players in the equation--
The Individual (70% of GDP is personal consumption) creates wealth through labor
The Company (sells products and services to individuals) creates wealth through sale of products and services

Society (made up of individuals who work for companies) takes capital from individuals and companies to foster a political and economic environment for them to create wealth

(Society used to be your country of residence but now Society is more of a global dynamic as with Depardieu.)

We do have local issues like water, energy and food but even those are significantly impacted by global and national competition.

Troy
 

PS--neuromorphic chips (Google this for fun) are out there now and will be deployed this year. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects by 2022 that 67% of job openings will NOT require a college degree.