1. Why Black Market Entrepreneurs Matter to the World Economy →

    Not many people think of shantytowns, illegal street vendors, and unlicensed roadside hawkers as major economic players. But according to journalist Robert Neuwirth, that’s exactly what they’ve become. In his new book, Stealth of Nations: The Global Rise of the Informal Economy, Neuwirth points out that small, illegal, off-the-books businesses collectively account for trillions of dollars in commerce and employ fully half the world’s workers. Further, he says, these enterprises are critical sources of entrepreneurialism, innovation, and self-reliance. And the globe’s gray and black markets have grown during the international recession, adding jobs, increasing sales, and improving the lives of hundreds of millions. It’s time, Neuwirth says, for the developed world to wake up to what those who are working in the shadows of globalization have to offer.

  2. Bitcoin Reborn: As a Financial Wire Service for the $10 Trillion System D? →

    A P2P (person to person) transaction system can be used to for many different things, least of all as a currency for retail transactions.  One of the more interesting of these uses is it growing use as a wire transfer system like Western Union for the $10 Trillion and rapidly growing System D, the world’s shadow/black economy.  Why is a P2P transaction system perfect for this?  It isn’t reliant on trusted third parties to run/operate the network (which is good, since in today’s environment, they are impossible to find in government or finance).

  3. LittleSis: a free database of who-knows-who at the heights of business and government →

    LittleSis is a free database detailing the connections between powerful people and organizations. We bring transparency to influential social networks by tracking the key relationships of politicians, business leaders, lobbyists, financiers, and their affiliated institutions.

  4. The Rise of Developernomics →

    The one absolutely solid place to store your capital today — if you know how to do it –  is in software developers’ wallets. If the world survives looming financial apocalypse dangers at all, this is the one investment that will weather the storms. It doesn’t matter whether you are an individual or a corporation, or what corner of the world you inhabit. You need to find a way to invest in software developers.

  5. The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis →

    This short theoretical paper elucidates a plausible theory about the Global Financial Crisis and the role of senior financial corporate directors in that crisis. The paper presents a theory of the Global Financial Crisis which argues that psychopaths working in corporations and in financial corporations, in particular, have had a major part in causing the crisis. This paper is thus a very short theoretical paper but is one that may be very important to the future of capitalism because it discusses significant ways in which Corporate Psychopaths may have acted recently, to the detriment of many. Further research into this theory is called for.

  6. Doulas Rushkoff nails OWS' past and future in an essay written for the human microphone at Zucotti Park →

    I am humbled and honored to be amplified by your voices.

    You are not fighting against people, but against a machine.
    It was put in place over 500 years ago.
    By a wealthy elite – trying to repress a booming peer to peer economy.
    Those people are all dead, but their program lives on.

    They invented an operating system called central currency.
    People who used to trade directly,
    were now forced to borrow money from the king’s bank.
    At interest.

    Read the rest! 

  7. Cognitive Biases in Times of Uncertainty →

    We live in a world of increasing pressure and uncertainty, driven in large part by digital technology infrastructures. These marvelous infrastructures bring us unprecedented connectivity and opportunities to better ourselves.

    That is a core paradox of our life in the 21st century: our new infrastructures create both opportunity and pressure. The pressure comes from intensifying competition as people previously marginalized in our global economy master these infrastructures and compete for jobs and markets that were previously secure franchises. More importantly, the pressure also comes as those in the core of our economy cling to practices and institutions that were designed for another world and struggle to remain successful in a world that requires new practices and institutions. The turmoil we see around the world today is a vivid illustration of this paradox.

    - John Hagel III

  8. Air Guitars and Bitcoin Regulation →

    Bitcoin was designed from the outset to route around centralized, authoritarian interference. Bitcoin’s designer(s) anticipated regulatory termination and asset confiscation because bitcoin itself is a direct challenge to the privileged money monopoly of the sovereign. The issue is not whether bitcoin as a digital currency embodies libertarian political and economic beliefs – it was simply designed to survive. However, it is supremely naive and daft to think that a government will not soon erect laws and regulations to prevent anonymous and untraceable transactions. Additionally, government tends to tax that which it regulates and a sanctioned bitcoin will soon be transformed into an ‘approved’ and useless digital currency.

    Bitcoin exchanges are constantly under attack in various parts around the globe and even with partially-regulated exchanges, laws can always be modified to accomplish the aims of the State. The solution is to create decentralized exchanges and to promote business models and closed-loop paradigms that make fitting into the current institutional structure irrelevant. It is a perpetually losing battle to seek minor legal victories within the confines of an arbitrary, subjective court system.

  9. The Evolution of the American Dream →

    “Remember the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm and their sloganeering? In the beginning of the story, when they overthrow the humans, they lead with the chant, “four legs good, two legs bad!” By the end, they’ve  become human-corrupt, and lead the chant, “four legs good, two legs better!”

    Just one word changed, and the new and old words both begin with b, bolstering the illusion of continuity and natural evolution.

    Let’s call such a slowly shifting narrative, simple enough to be captured in a slogan, and designed to help a small predatory class dominate a larger prey class, a Pig Narrative.  The American Dream is a Pig Narrative.”

    -Venkatesh Rao

  10. Understanding McDonald's as a commodities broker with a restaurant sideline: the McRib →

    Willy Staley’s “A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage,” is a lyrical, insightful conspiracy theory about the appearance and disappearance of McDonalds’s McRib sandwich. Staley argues that the McRib’s appearance correlates with falls in the pork futures market, and represents a way for McD’s to cash in on cheap pork, representing a kind of triumph of restaurant automation, logistical acumen, and financial engineering. In Staley’s view, McDonald’s is only secondarily a restaurant, and primarily conducts the business of a commodities brokerage.