SYSTEMS: The techonomic society
Systems, which are the institutional dimension of Techonomy, have the least to do with pure technology, but the most to do with economics. We must create human institutions to marshal capital and other resources and organize productive activity. Capital is an abstract, synthetic resource, but is a resource nonetheless, just as water and air and energy are. Complex human systems have evolved to manage it. Markets and finance exist to help us accumulate capital, and it gives business an objective way to measure its value. It also helps prompt entrepreneurship.
Capital is distributed for more altruistic, philanthropic purposes with generally less efficiency. It can be badly mismanaged by governments and financial institutions. The systems designed to manage human effort and capital need examination and further innovation as much as any other components of the techonomy.
In recent years, the value of human capital has become plainer to see, and in the technomic environment, ideas and innovation itself become a new, inexhaustible resource to be developed and traded.
Systems Techonomic Multipliers:
- The advent of guilds
- The U.S. Constitution and subsequent models for representative government and democracy
- The rise of modern capitalism after Adam Smith
- The global corporation
- Public financing of basic education, and universal access to it
Industries: Capital, Markets, and the Economy Itself, Entrepreneurship and the Corporation, Politics and Government, Stimulus and Regulation, Universal Education and Social Engineering, NGOs and Philanthropy. Techonomic activity couldn’t proceed without social organization. These institutional entities and forces are shaped primarily by the social and quantitative sciences.