Reflections 17th October
On my mind this week.
A notion of the power of "de-monetisation" as a philosophy for these times. The arc of monetisation was well underway when I was born in the middle of the last century. Powered by the industrial revolution and amplified by two world wars, America and Europe had been transformed by governments and organisations turning natural resources into money. By the end of the century in which I was born, that trend was global, and the entire planet was being monetised.
In the two decades of this century, enabled by technology, we have monetised society. In a global workplace, the competition for jobs dissolved any idea of local economies. Anything that could be reduced to a process and a specification could be made anywhere where costs benefits existed - from cheap labour to automation to tax environments. The result has been threefold - a "race to the bottom" on cost…
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