Many thanks
for your interest and for taking the time to read this letter. I hope that the
thoughts expressed within resonate with your own perspective and help to
provide compelling ideas on how to make our world a better place.
Why are so many countries retreating
from their liberal beliefs?
If you
listen to the media there is a lot of discussion and theories about what has
caused so many countries to shift away from Liberalism. The most prevalent explanation is that there is a large percentage of working class people that feel
disenfranchised, believing that globalization and immigration have had negative
impacts on their well-being. While on
the surface this might be a plausible explanation, I believe that there is a
much deeper reason that has caused this apparent decline of middle class incomes
and unemployment.
Globalization
and increased trade have been largely facilitated by modern communication
systems. These systems enable instant
communication between companies and their supply chains irrespective of
location. Without this communication infrastructure it would be impossible to
subcontract out manufacturing processes to the current degree. Picture Apple trying
to design and manufacture their next iPhone using traditional mail, it would
take years to coordinate. All of the
back and forth communication would make the requirement for various
subcontractors’ components to seamlessly integrate together extremely difficult
to manage. In this hypothetical scenario,
the more practical solution would be for companies such as Apple to manufacture
their products locally as this would substantially decrease product development
times and costs.
Many countries
are choosing to confront the issue of reduced incomes and unemployment by
conveniently blaming globalization. While
blaming others might provide temporary gratification, it does little to address
the root cause that’s creating this widespread disenfranchisement.
I think it’s important to note that technology is a facilitator; it enables
both the potential for good and bad. History has shown us that the survival of
our species, nations and clans is often dependent upon applying new
technologies in ways that allow us to amplify our capability, enabling greater
control over our surroundings. For lack
of a better analogy, Pandora’s Box is open. Most people want to expand their influence
on the world; once methods to achieve this become known it’s almost impossible
to place this knowledge back in the “Box”.
Moving forward with our current situation involves accepting this
reality. Technology has allowed us to
achieve many great things such as curing disease, improving crop yields and
giving us the ability to express ourselves in new ways. In the hands of the
wrong people it can also be used to forcibly exert control over free will. The
solution to the dilemma of technology lies within understanding how we can
apply technology in ways that benefit our society without compromising our
freedom.
What is the root cause of our
disenfranchisement?
We live in
an exciting time as technological advancement is reshaping our world at an unprecedented
rate. Regulatory bodies such as Governments contain several layers of checks
and balances that often inhibit them from adapting to technological change
quickly enough. It is easy to become despondent at the inability of these
organizations to adapt with the times.
What’s important to realize is that often simple changes can unravel a
complex web. The secret to enacting consequential change lies within
identifying the key or root cause of the situation. Once this has been identified the element of
this change can often be easily applied causing the entire complex regulatory system
to reshape around it. As citizens of this nation, I believe that it’s our
responsibility to constantly look out for these key elements of change. Furthermore,
it’s irresponsible to question our system as a whole as major foundational
changes will result in needless suffering.
The key to
the current disenfranchisement lies within the value of knowledge. Since the creation of the computer we have
been moving away from a manufacturing based society towards a
knowledge based one. The
difficult thing about knowledge is that it isn’t tangible. Unlike shoes, bricks or cars it isn’t
something that can be easily traded as it doesn’t physically exist. Furthermore, it’s extremely easy to transfer
knowledge once the initial discovery or idea has been identified.
The
difficulties of representing the value of knowledge are best described with a
thought problem: imagine if you discovered a magic wand that could easily
replicate any product or item. Think of
all of the amazing things that you could provide for your friends and family, exotic
cars, luxury jewelry and the latest fashion items are a couple of things that
come to mind. Think about how much these individuals would appreciate your newfound
ability, needless to say you would be a huge hit.
The thought
provoking part of this hypothetical problem occurs once the fictitious version
of you decided to replicate the wand.
After a while there would inevitably be a desperate situation or
insurmountable pressure from your loved ones that would likely cause you to do
this. Now, imagine if this process was
repeated several hundreds of times. Eventually the value and uniqueness of your
wand would greatly lessen as everyone else would also have one. If this
situation were to play out as described; hopefully you would feel a deep
satisfaction about the profound benefit that you provided to others by
replicating your wand. At the same time,
you would likely feel a bit resentful about giving up this unique ability,
especially if your actions weren’t recognized by others or fully
appreciated.
Knowledge is much like this magic wand; it can provide many
benefits to society. At the same time it
can also be discouraging for the discoverer of a new idea to freely share it
with others. The reason for this is that
the act of freely sharing knowledge often goes unrecognized and as a result doesn’t
provide a clear identifiable benefit to the discoverer. Without a clear benefit, people that have
shared knowledge in the past become discouraged about doing so again in the
future. This lack of incentive restrains
society from unlocking the many potential benefits that could be realized from
freely sharing knowledge.
In order to significantly capitalize
on knowledge one must presently:
-
Uncover a unique
idea.
-
Find a way to use
this idea to create a product that is valued by others.
-
Convince capital
holders to provide the founder with the necessary resources to produce &
market this product. While trying to
convince capital holders to invest in this idea, it’s important not to share
too many of the details as they might be tempted to steal this idea for
themselves.
-
Produce and
distribute the product in an effective manner.
There are
very few people within our society that are capable of conducting all of these
activities successfully. In addition,
even for these unique individuals a lot of things outside of their control must
go right. Think about all of the
amazingly talented people that have started down this path only to hit a snag
of unfortunate circumstances. In
addition, think of all the incredibly talented people that are very capable of
uncovering knowledge but lack the other necessary skills required to productize
it. This knowledge reward process is
extremely daunting to complete. As a result most people quickly become
discouraged often giving up on their dreams.
It has often been said that there is great power in
knowledge. This power exists because knowledge
can be leveraged to gain influence, ensuring the survival of those who withhold
it. In summary, the advent of modern
communication systems has greatly increased the transfer speed and accessibility
of information. This increased
accessibility has provided countless benefits and has also caused most advanced
societies to become predominately knowledge based. Unfortunately, the rate that information can
be shared at within advanced societies creates an extremely competitive marketplace. This marketplace only rewards select
individuals that possess a complex and broad array of skills that are required
to capitalize on knowledge. In turn,
these select individuals exert a disproportionate influence over the rest of
the populace. This overly complex reward
mechanism for freely distributing knowledge is the root cause of widespread
disenfranchisement. It makes it very
hard for most ordinary individuals to receive compensation for their ideas and
to positively contribute to society.
The Simple Solution
Uncovering new ideas and freely sharing information with
others needs to be a more recognized practice in our society. As previously mentioned,
our monetary system is currently structured to primarily reward productization (integrating knowledge into a good or
service). Raw knowledge isn’t directly
valued as it has historically been very challenging to measure the transfer and
value of information. Imagine, trying to
compensate all of the people that provided Albert Einstein with the fragments
of knowledge that were utilized in the creation of his General Theory of
Relativity. Without an automated
mechanism it would be an extremely daunting task to determine everyone who
helped influence his work. Furthermore,
it would be almost impossible to assign a monetary value to these individual
contributors. For this reason, societies
have determined that it is much easier to reward individuals and companies that
applied knowledge through productization.
My educational background
has opened many doors for me and I feel very fortunate to hold an Advanced
Engineering Degree. I have a lot of friends
who didn’t receive much educational support and have had tougher time finding work. Without the right educational background or
the array of skills necessary to productize knowledge, it’s very difficult for
young people to receive well-paying jobs.
On the other hand, there are also a lot of talented retirees that wish
that they could contribute more to society.
Many of these individuals would like to work a couple of hours a week.
Unfortunately there are not many skilled positions that will facilitate this
type of part time arrangement.
The simple solution to a lot of the societal issues that we
are presently experiencing is to create a mechanism that effectively
compensates individuals that freely share knowledge with others. We live in a knowledge based economy but
utilize a monetary system that was designed to promote manufacturing and
consumption. Imagine how great it would
be if the video game genius that lives next door could create a useful computer
program that helps thousands of others.
In return for this free software, this developer would be recognized and
receive fair compensation for his or her efforts. Think about the incentive that this developer
would then have to create more useful programs to be shared with others. Most people have some unique knowledge or
creative element that isn’t being fully utilized. Developing a simple mechanism to incentivise
people to share this knowledge and their creativity would unlock a massive
amount of untapped potential.
This sounds great, but how do we create such a
mechanism. The good news is internet
companies such as Google and Facebook have already done a lot of the hard work
for us. These companies have created
effective mechanisms that can be used to compensate individuals for content
generation and knowledge transfer. These
mechanisms are automated and work by gathering statistics on how often information
is accessed. In addition, the quality of
this information is determined by analyzing how this content was utilized. Unfortunately there are a couple of shortcomings
with the current approach.
Google and Facebook receive compensation by productizing the
content, data and the knowledge of others.
This productization occurs by offering advertisements
alongside information that is presented by these websites. When advertisements are clicked on, a
percentage of the revenue generated by Facebook or Google is sometimes then
provided to the person that created the content. Unfortunately, this compensation is minimal
and often not reflective of the underlying value contributed by the person.
The reason for this
minimal amount of compensation becomes evident when thinking through a
hypothetical example. Imagine a big
sports brand that wants to advertise their new 3D printed running shoe. Let’s assume that they are planning on selling
this shoe for $100. Of this amount, the
manufacturer might decide to set aside $2 from every shoe sale for internet
marketing. This $2 represents the amount
of money that can be captured by Google or Facebook. After paying their expenses and profit to
shareholders, these internet companies might pass along 25% of this $2 to
individual content creators. This
hypothetical 50 cent end result represents the current value of knowledge using
this type of system. Unfortunately,
Google and Facebook have extremely competitive market places for content. As a result, only the most famous content
providers are able re rely on this form their primary income. Thinking about it in another way, it would
likely be a lot easier to work one hour at a minimum wage job then it would be
to create a YouTube video that was watched by 10,000 people.
The bizarre thing about this shoe example is that the manufacturer
like most companies would utilize lots of internal software to develop, manage
and produce their product. Most of this
software likely contains large amounts of open source elements. Open source elements are software routines
that are developed and freely shared by individual computer enthusiasts. The people that write this free software
understand that they will receive no direct compensation for their work. Without these software routines, the internet
could not exist in its present form.
Furthermore, these software routines form a lot of the backbone for our
modern communication systems. Without
present day internet and communication systems the manufacturing cost of this hypothetical
shoe would increase exponentially. Although it’s impossible to measure (as
there is no current method to evaluate the value of knowledge), I am fairly
confident that this shoe would end up costing more than double the original suggested
selling price.
Taking this analysis one step further, there is clearly a
large benefit that this shoe company receives from the open source software
community. Let’s be ultra conservative
in the example above by evaluating this benefit at $30 per shoe. In addition this company must also see a
return on its internet advertising investments.
Let’s again be very conservative and value this benefit at the break-even
point of $2. In addition, this company
has likely also received a lot of free benefits from the academic
community. For simplicity, let’s not
include this in our calculation. It is
evident from this simple tally that this company is a significant beneficiary of
knowledge and content. In this example,
the total value of content and knowledge received by the company is $32. For this amount, content providers in this
hypothetical situation received $0.50. In
other words there are a lot of private individuals that are helping out this
company while receiving little or no compensation. This example highlights how internet
advertising firms are helping to compensate some individuals for their
work. Unfortunately, the scope of these
services is only capable of rewarding a very small percentage of the overall
benefit.
The mechanisms that Google and Facebook have created are
truly revolutionary as they are able to directly compensate people for
knowledge and content generation.
Unfortunately these systems are advertising based. This means that they are only effective at
compensating individuals that produce content which captures our short term
attention. Sadly, content that which
more time to absorb is not well suited to this mechanism as it’s far less
interesting to advertisers. In addition,
more in depth content takes much more time to produce. As a result, useful societal
contributions such as open source software and educational videos are rarely
financially recognized by internet advertising firms. Without a mechanism to reward freely sharing
knowledge, two things will continue to happen:
1. Products will be arbitrarily cheap as
companies are significant benefices of individuals that choose to help our
society by freely sharing their knowledge.
2. It will continue to be more difficult
for individuals to contribute to society as the necessary skills to productize
knowledge will become ever more challenging to gain. This inability to contribute will foster even
more disenfranchisement as only a select number of individuals will be
successful in this type of environment.
The simple solution is to introduce a new
mechanism that values freely sharing knowledge.
Think about how amazing it would be if high school kids could easily
contribute to our society by writing new software routines that could be used
by industry. Or if retirees documented
and shared the considerable knowledge on a specific skill set that they have accumulated
over years of hard work and experience. The possibilities and benefit of increased
knowledge transfer are exciting and endless!
Simply put, there is a massive untapped resource that exists within our
society. Directly compensating individuals
for sharing knowledge incentivizes ordinary people and makes it much easier for
everyone to be a part of something bigger then ourselves.
The Details:
As
previously mentioned, internet companies such as Google and Facebook have given
considerable thought on ways to incentivise individuals to create and share
content. After years of implementation
and optimization, these firms have created a very effective mechanism that monetizes
knowledge transfer. Unfortunately, these
techniques have been applied in a very narrow way that only rewards knowledge
transfer for advertising based purposes. My proposal, is that
we apply this same proven knowledge based reward system in a much broader way
that benefits our entire society.
In order for
this type of system to have a positive benefit to society, a couple of
fundamental principles need to be followed:
· The value of knowledge should be
based on its overall benefit to society.
· Individuals need to be fairly
compensated for their contributions. In
addition, the system that is put in place needs to be sufficiently simple so
that ordinary people can easily share their knowledge and receive their reward
or recognition.
· Only individuals and corporations
that partake in this system should have access to this free information (i.e.
other countries should not have access to this knowledge unless they join our
program and accept the governing mechanism that we put forth).
· The governing mechanism should be
heavily automated and should take very low overhead to run. In addition the governing body should
encourage thoughts and contributions that support the values of our Liberal Democracy.
There are
many ways to finance this type of knowledge based reward system. I am very open to ideas and hope that readers
will share their own input on how to best accomplish this. One idea that I have is to finance this type of
system using a Goods and Services Tax (GST).
Financing the system using a sales tax certainly comes with
drawbacks. That being said a GST could
be compelling as sellers of goods and services are currently significant
beneficiaries of the free knowledge provided by uncompensated individuals. If this type of system was used, it’s
important that the revenue collected from any increased GST be reallocated
directly back to the people that share useful knowledge.
Usefulness
of knowledge should be determined based on a couple of factors:
1. Usability by companies that sell
goods and services. An automated
mechanism would record when digital knowledge is utilized in a product or
service. It’s important to note that
this mechanism needs to compensate all forms of shared knowledge or content (art,
writing, blogs, etc.). That being said, usability
by companies is an especially important metric.
2. Consumption rates. How many times the content is viewed or
accessed.
3. Feedback from individual users. This is similar to Facebook Likes and Amazon
Reviews.
Over time
the overall sales and effectiveness of companies that utilize this freely
accessible knowledge would be recorded.
The ensuing growth of these companies would then be compared to the broader
marketplace to determine the overall value of this knowledge. If a GST was used to finance the system, the
sales tax rate should be constantly readjusted over time to ensure that individuals
are continually compensated for some portion of this knowledge transfer.
One
important question is why Canada? The answer to this is that we are in a truly
unique position. I believe that Canada
is one of very few countries that could effectively implement this type of
system. We have a very progressive
government that is still interested in perpetuating Liberal beliefs and ideals.
As a result, it would be in our
Government’s best interest to ensure that this knowledge based reward system
was structured in a way that rewards contributions in a fair and healthy manner.
In addition, several other large democracies are choosing to turn their backs
on freedom. This change in social
direction has resulted in a leadership vacuum.
Simply put, the world will be looking for a new forward thinking leader
that has their best interests in mind. Who better then Canada to instill the
trust necessary for this type of leadership and support.
I truly
believe that the information based reward mechanism outlined above could usher
in a new knowledge based era. So many
people are disenfranchised, as it has become increasingly difficult to make a
living and positively impact the world around us. The root cause of this difficulty lies within
the inability of our current system to financially recognize freely sharing knowledge. The good news is that internet companies like
Google and Facebook have developed a simple mechanism to reward individual
content creators. This mechanism could
be easily adopted in a way that incentivises ordinary citizens to openly create
content and share knowledge. The
resulting abundance of untapped knowledge that would ensue would be used to
strengthen our economy for years to come.
In addition, if access to this knowledge was based on accepting our
Liberal beliefs, other countries would be compelled to join and adopt similar
ideals. I hope that I have effectively conveyed the critical necessity of a
system that adequately compensates knowledge.
I believe that this type of system could be easily implemented and would
have many profound societal benefits.
Furthermore, Canada is in a very unique position to effectively
implement this type of system. Wouldn’t it be exciting to be a part of
creating a mechanism that has so many positive benefits and that revolutionizes
the role of individuals in our society.
Next Steps:
I have many
more detailed ideas on how to effectively implement the knowledge reward
mechanism that has been outlined in this letter. I would love to share these ideas, especially
if others express interest in the concepts outlined.
My pledge to
you: if I receive enough interest from this letter that I will dedicate 1 day a
week and 10% of my income into making videos and media that helps to outline
the concepts described above in a more entertaining and easy to understand
format. Ultimately, it would be great to
attract Canadians that are heavily involved with technology and regulations to
create a volunteer based committee. This
committee would be tasked with creating a detailed framework outlining how to best
implement this type of knowledge based reward system.
My pledge
for you: it’s easy to take a back seat
in life and let others concern themselves with the details. The unfortunate thing is that the people that
are interested in making decisions often have a vested interest in the
outcome. If we are going to solve this
issue of disenfranchisement in a way that we are all proud of, I am going to
need your help. An easy and hugely
helpful way of doing this, would be if you could take 30
seconds to follow the link below and digitally sign this document. In addition, this link contains an option to
be sent more details on how I believe this knowledge reward system should be
structured. Signing this document will
also show your support to my idea, indicating that I should continue along this
path. In addition, it would also be very
helpful if you could forward this email onto other Canadians that might be
interested in the content of this letter.
Thank you
very much for reading this letter. I
hope that the concepts contained within resonate with outers. Please feel free to write to me, especially
if you input that could help.
Sincerely,
David
Stelzer