Prince of good times

A time to workout, a time to reach out (to loved ones), a time for work and a time for leisure. 

That’s exactly how we plan our time ahead. Its that simple, we work to make money and in turn use that money for leisure. Its also those times where we use that money to get a good workout and also make our loved ones feel special.

What money are we talking about?

The money that landed in our bank account for taking part in a service, accounted by the time and energy involved. From a person driving an airplane to a person driving a rickshaw, a person running an industry to a person working for the industrialist, a person painting an art form to a person undertaking a regular paint job - each person is compensated based on their skill and effort.

A person then should use his time and skills where he gets paid the most.

With that being the case, most people get into the rat race of wanting to take home the fattest paycheck. The curious case of wanting to become a ‘professional’ (doctor, engineer, lawyer etc ) sets here, since practicing ‘the profession’ is respected in the society and well compensated for, which lures the working class into its stability.

On the other end are the job creators who venture on their own, with some exploring their creative side while others engaged in anything that mints money (figuratively). Minting money and circulating it is the government’s job, with the financial undertakings handled through the banking system.

Where does the money originate from?

Money has evolved, from increasingly abstracted, emerging as a basis in the tangible value of goods and services to becoming a framework of the market allocative pricing system.

It all started with direct bartering of objects at the time of cavemen, gradually standardizing with metal becoming more practical as the medium of exchange, further refined into coins and then the huge leap to paper money, all the way to paperless money in our times.

What is interesting to note is how ‘gold’ a metal, one that is tangible and used in monetary transactions is in complete contrast to electronic money which virtually has no tangible properties whatsoever.

Gold still continues to be the preferred standard owing its attractiveness from an aesthetic point of view and its resistance to corrosion, which keep the transactions going for thousands of years. After gold got its start as primitive money, it was not until the1600s that the concept of paper money started to gain acceptance. The transition came in the form of goldsmiths who did safekeeping of gold deposited by merchants, offering receipts for the deposits. These receipts were traded for goods and services.

Later the goldsmiths began to lend their depositor’s gold and only kept a tiny percentage of the metal in stock at any moment. If all the depositors came in with their deposit slips, the goldsmith would have been unable to comply. However, the slips could be used as the goldsmith’s promise to redeem the deposits at any point of time.

This principle of fractional reserves is the foundation of modern-day banking.

Eventually leading to paper money that got started to be printed by the governments, and even by certain individuals who were entitled to print them.

This method of incorporating money into the system without any tangible backing, known by ‘fiat’ currency saw its downfall due to inflation, as the money had no basis in real value.

Post the US Civil War around 1880, the US government went back to the gold standard for a stable economy, by backing its currency with gold.

During the gold standard, governments also minted gold and silver coins, until the World Wars disrupted the monetary system altogether. Many national governments who were supplementing their holdings with US dollars felt insecure as the dollar lost its gold backing, crippled by the inflation of the wartime economy.

Thus reached a state of affairs where the dollars overseas became more than the gold in the US Treasury. With the metal content in the gold and silver coins becoming worth than the coins themselves, minting these coins were stopped.

In order to bring back stability to the dollar after the rising gold value in world market, the US government in 1971 announced that dollar could no longer be redeemed for gold. From this point of time, the whole system is based more or less on confidence in the stability and economic strength of US and their Treasury’s ability to come up with cash.

Those countries which are dollar based economies, could have their economy tumbling anytime based on the bearish/bullish monetary state of affairs indirectly linked to the US Federal Reserves, and in turn plunging the world into recession.

Money, money, on the wall, who’s the richest of them all?

If that was the inception of money, a thought perhaps into figuring the wealthiest individual in all time history. Not really sure that Forbes has come up with such a list of all time richest, as their research is more focussed on modern times (leaning onto billionaire individuals as such).

There seems to be a Wiki page List of Weathiest historical figures and a Time magazine article The 10 Richest People of all time that gives some insight into the richest of them all.

This Wiki page discusses the wealthiest people after broadly dividing them into 3 separate historical periods, due to the different definitions of wealth and the ways of measuring it.

1. Early modern to modern period :

- John D Rockefeller (320 billion) : American entrepreneur who amassed his fortune from the Standard Oil company he founded.

- Andrew Carnegie (310 billion) : American entrepreneur who founded Carnegie Steel Company which was sold to J.P.Morgan who merged it into US Steel

- Jakob Fugger (277 billion) : German mining entrepreneur and banker

- Nicholas of Russia (250 billion) : Emperor of all Russia

- Mir Osman (210 billion) : Last Nizam of Hyderabad

- Muammar Gaddafi (200 billion) : Autocrat of Libya, was secretly the wealthiest person in modern world, revealed after his death in 2011

- Henry Ford (188 billion) : American entrepreneur who founded the Ford Motor Company

The Time magazine article has Microsoft founder Bill Gates as the richest living person in its list along with Russian dictator Joseph Stalin who had complete control of a nation with 9.6% Global GDP.

2. Middle Ages :

- Musa Mali (400 billion estimate) : Emperor of Mali Empire of Africa, largest producer of gold at that time

- William the Conqueror (209 billion) : Fortune made from the spoils of war made in the Conquest of England

The Time magazine article has Genghis Khan leader of the Mongol Empire and Akbar, emperor of India’s Mughal dynasty in its list.

3. Antiquity :

- Augustus Caesar (4.6 trillion) : Personally owned all of Egypt

These individuals might have built their mountains of money through business ventures such as oil, gold, copper, innovations of their respective era, as well as through inheritance, through the crown or just violent means.

Being the wealthiest means one has greater authority and freedom, which the money provides. From building their own empires to controlling governments and indirectly ruling the people are part of their profile.

Pyramid of Power

If money gives you the power to rule, the question is ‘Who are the rulers of modern era?’

To understand that, one has to think outside the concept of richest individuals that the Forbes list has been feeding us and into the lives of the richest families in business.

Before getting onto it, its best to clear your mind of the thought that money is always backed by a certain gold standard or a tangible entity, which makes all money real. That was the case until the World Wars crippled the economies and the banking system had to be reestablished.

After the dollar lost its sheen against gold, new rules were flouted around 1970s which favored the rise of US and purporters of the dollar based economy. It was the rise of stock markets in New York City and London around 80s that further triggered economic growth with the concept of fictional money.

The rich obliged, as their money would rise faster than in a standard economy, making them even more richer and happier. In fact, the real rich left the economy when this had all started.

The wealth of the world today is nothing more fictional that the global market for Financial assets (stocks, bonds and various securities that money can be invested in). Fictional money is best understood by let’s say a story:

In Felix Martin’s book Money, there is a wonderful story about the pre-colonial monetary system of the people of the island of Yap. The Yapese used stone money for their transactions, stones varying in size from a foot to 12 foot were used. But these stones (known as feis) were rarely moved about. On one occasion, a feis ended up in the bottom of the sea after a boating accident. But the memory of the stone was enough to sustain its value and continue transacting with it.

Martin quoted William Henry Furness III, an American adventurer at the dawn of the 20th century:

“It was universally conceded … that the mere accident of its loss overboard was too trifling to mention, and that a few hundred feet of water off shore ought not to affect its marketable value … The purchasing power of that stone remains, therefore, as valid as if it were leaning visibly against the side oft the owner’s house, and represents wealth as potentially as the hoarded inactive gold of a miser in the Middle Ages, or as our silver dollars stacked in the Treasury in Washington, which we never see or touch, but trade with on the strength of a printed certificate that they are.”

That unseen stone at the bottom of the sea was more real than much of the money that the rich of our day claim to have. Money that, by the way, can never be realized and whose fiction can only be maintained politically.

The world population is governed by a small group of elitist families who seem to have brilliantly strategized the formation of this unseen stone politically.

The one family at the top of this pyramid is none other than Rothschild. The Rothschild dynasty is unquestionably the most powerful bloodline on Earth, with their estimated wealth around $ 500 trillion. They exercise their power through the world banking empire, which is almost entirely owned by them.

- The City of London (finance, controlled by the Rothchilds), which is not part of the UK

- The US Federal Reserve (finance - private bank owned by the Rothchilds), which again is not part of the US

Essentially when such powerful families come together, they pull the strings of major world events, indirectly influencing the makeshift lives of 7.4 billion people on this planet.

With the world’s GDP at $ 75 trillion and the assets controlled by the Rothschilds at $ 500 trillion, which is like 5 times the economy of planet Earth. What kind of wealth is this?

If you have heard of MoonExpress, a privately funded space exploration startup founded by billionaire entrepreneur Navin Jain. His concept of mining the resources of the Moon for platinum-grade material, rare earth materials, is based around extending human economy over the stratosphere.

With Earth having such an inflated wealth around existing fiscal policy, that is many times the actual economy, it might actually be projects such as these that would compensate for the hedging!

Past is history, future is a mystery, today is a gift - that why they call it ‘the present’

The present economy that got back up after the 2008 recession, yet again was built by the US government injecting liquidity through bond purchases into financial institutions. This was done not so that banks could give loans for potential business ventures, but to reflate the value of financial assets that went down with the 2008 market crash.

The US successfully added $ 3.5 trillion to the Fed’s balance sheets.

Digging deeper into the gift that is the present:

Once upon a time, there lived a king who was so rich that all the lands, gold and wealth belonged to him. He kept the people happy by providing them with work, while the ministers aided the governance.

Is something missing?

Yes, the king. We, the people have never seen the king, but have been blessed by his superficial presence.

Our lives have been impacted by his kindness in the form of human development, built around technological advancement. The king seems to have his kingmakers come together and built a circle of trust, in which the wealth which was pooled can be used to enhance the quality of lives of people of the kingdom.

Enter few people from the younger generation, with skills to execute their vision that match the school of thoughts of the kingmakers.

Free spirited, youthful abundance, flowing energy and with a strong desire to succeed, they stop at nothing less than creating the biggest impact of their times.

Prince of good times

From visionary entrepreneurs to certain kingmakers who have stepped into the scene of action themselves - highlighting certain people whose contributions are directly impacting our lives.

- Jack Ma : Founder of Alibaba group, this man has led the digital revolution of retail B2B business that today we are so used to. It was not just about creating confidence in people to transact online through service quality, but creating a marketplace for sellers to experience the benefits of digital era and bringing the world of Chinese manufacturing to everyones fingertip.

What is more impressive is this man’s acknowledgement that superfluous wealth so created does not belong to him, it just allows him to act as an agent of change in areas where governments hesitate to step into. Truly surprising us with his humility.

- Jeff Bezos : Founder of Amazon.com, this man has complemented Jack Ma in online retailing - only that while Ma enhanced seller experience, Bezos excelled in creating unique buyer experience.

The visionary that Bezos is, he always stood by the concept of customers and growth first, profits can wait. His successful investment in Cloud business through AWS is another feather in his cap.

- Mark Zuckerberg : Founder of Facebook, this man stumbled into legend hood through his startup connecting people over the internet. It was magical connecting people around the Newsfeed through the ‘Like’ button. It supplemented growth of the internet era which had evolved from a series of networked computers that people had started to interact with, but always preferred to keep a distance from when it came to sharing personal content.

Facebook changed all that and successfully led Peer to Peer (P2P) reviews from a viability to reality by democratizing social networking.

- Travis Kalanick : Founder of Uber, this man revolutionized the concept of transportation, by deviating from the idea of owning a vehicle and in turn its overhead expenses to a more logical, universal access when required. Radio taxis had been there for quite sometime, but Uber just changed the business scenario to favor the taxi owners, drivers and riders - all in a meaningful manner.

- Brian Chesky : Founder of AirBnB, this man revolutionized the concept of affordable stay while traveling. For those traveling on a shoestring budget, accommodation seemed to eat away the budget and in turn became the deterrent from exploring. Growth hacking its way into the hearts of people and making use of unused individual real estate through a trustworthy network.

- Elon Musk : Founder of Tesla, is the man who would trigger the shift away from an oil based economy towards a cleaner alternate fuel, with his concept of Tesla Electric cars. Cars that are luxurious and faster than petrol based cars have been on the cards for a really long time.

Musk used his entrepreneurial wizardry to achieve just that, by competing head on with established automobile giants after introducing Tesla Model 3, intelligently using the pre-booking system to also fund the manufacturing process with an assured delivery.

Getting into the legendary list of the likes of Steve Jobs is Musk with ventures like PayPal and SpaceX also to his credit.

- Dirk Ahlborn / Bibop Gresta : Cofounders of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), a project envisioned by Elon Musk, taken up by these entrepreneurs, seeks to disrupt high speed travel with its innovative technology. The project is to develop a high speed intercity transporter using a low pressure tube train that can reach top speed of 1300 km/hr. The project is one of a kind in that it has crowdsourced the world’s brilliant minds. In its initial R&D stages, around 100 engineers and scientists from across 20 countries had expressed interest to make this project a reality.

- Jan Koum / Brian Acton : Cofounders of Whatsapp, a messaging mobile application used by over a billion people. A clean and minimal User Interface (UI) made using Whatsapp so simple, that it got people irrespective of their age into the new age of chatting and sharing content using their smartphones.

- Evan Spiegel : Founder of Snapchat, another messaging mobile application, which has found huge popularity among young users.

- Elizabeth Holmes : Founder of Theranos, is a lady who very nearly disrupted clinical laboratory business with her patented blood-testing innovation. Recently banned from commercializing the technology, Holmes hopes to fight her way back into achieving her vision of providing access to high-integrity, affordable and actionable health care information.

- Mohammed bin Salman : Crown prince of Saudi Arabia and holding position of Minister of Defence, is best described as the power behind the throne of his father Salman, the King of Saudi Arabia. Young, well educated, well read and living in the present, this prince sees the reality of Saudi needing to get the economy off oil. For a country whose economy is mainly dependent on oil, it badly needs to make investments into newer sources of revenue apart from oil.

Riding on the oil infused wealth, Saudi got the money power to enforce strict religious rules that Islamics have to adhere to. Rules that seemed barbaric for its times is still enforced through religious police in the kingdom and globally funded by them under the pretext of religion, known as Wahabism.

Too many idiosyncrasies, based on the literal interpretation of Quran, the world had to cope with, which includes women’s rights in Islam and a resulting rise of Islamophobia.

With declining money power, the royalty is contemplating its options and under the leadership of the visionary Crown prince will slowly shift away from enforcing its idiosyncrasies in the name of religion. As the young Salman remarked in an interview, they look forward to confront the conservative religious establishment, which dominate social and religious life.

- Justin Trudeau : The young, charming Canadian Prime Minister is much more than the eye candy that he is. A versatile PM with degrees in Literature and Engineering, he snowboards, hikes, surfs, boxes, does yoga, supports gender equality and calls himself a feminist.

From personally going and distributing food and other supplies to Syrian refugees, taking part in a gay pride parade march, supporting legalizing marijuana and even shaking a leg grooving to Punjabi songs, this PM is redefining the notion of a world leader.

These are few people whose work continue to be a source of inspiration as they along with many others support the entrepreneurial ecosystem that tackle bigger problems and build deeper technology products.

Business of living

In the near future a stage will be reached when the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine learning, Robotics and over-automation will solve most of our trivial problems, but will create a new problem.

The lack of work in society.

Prediction of robots killing jobs and causing mass unemployment have always been debated.

“Work is one of society’s most important institutions. It is the main mechanism through which spending power is allocated. It provides people with meaning, structure and identity. Yet work is a less generous, and less certain provider of these benefits than it once was.”

The biggest threat causing the lack of work comes from automation. A recent McKinsey study estimated that automation in the US threatened 73% of the jobs in food service and accommodation, 66% in finance and insurance, 53% in retailing, and 59% in manufacturing.

The future of work could divide the world into two school of thoughts: Utopian and Dystopian

The Utopians believe the society will become incredibly productive and rich without human beings having to do very much. With infinite leisure time available, humans can explore their inner state of consciousness through spiritual practice which earlier they had neglected or simply live a carefree, highly enhanced quality of life.

A negative aspect of this is that people who are not used to exploring their creative side and rather mechanically following a structured routine could end up becoming zombies, and they would have been in a much healthier mental state while doing mechanical work.

While the Dystopians believe that without work, fortune will be further concentrated at the tip of the power pyramid, with inequality wreaking havoc in the society. Without a means of sustaining a minimum Welfare budget, government would be grappling to solve the needs of the have-nots creating social unrest and possibly a Darwinian conclusion.

As the world economy expanded 37 times during the period of computing and Internet revolution to reach $ 75 trillion, we are now staring at a hyper-connected age, ‘the age of man-machine continuum’.

For the next decade or so, we would see the transformation in banking, healthcare, energy, retail, government and security as signs of stepping into the machine-assisted era.

Starting with using AI based bots as first level interaction in healthcare, retail, banking etc to people being able to completely customize a product to their preferences by designing it and having it 3-D printed.

The Google founders disrupted the web and continued their efforts beyond algorithmic search into many verticals within the digital domain. Their success is truly remarkable. They now focus their efforts into healthcare technology, as they look at increasing the life expectancy by using advanced data analytics in predictive or preventive healthcare.

Soon enough there might be personalization in drugs, with a shift from one-drug-fits all situation to analyzing the human genome data to prescribe a person-specific drug.

All this enhances the business of living, without a clear perspective on the purpose of life.

You see, money is the purpose of life and so to think beyond money is not an option. Not in the near future, so why bother about it?

Its the financial system, that was explained earlier which has steadily enslaved us and pawned as currency slaves. Our 9-5 work has been designed in boring environments, not stimulated by anything creative or constructive. With the sole motivation being the next paycheck.

Ever wondered why Multinational Corporations (MNCs) pay millions of dollars to the CEOs and top officials, while only close to minimum wages to other employees?

A reason other than the skill set is to keep the person constantly “on the edge”, without giving him time for self-education, introspection and eventually spiritual awakening.

The system has created ‘obedient robots’ just intelligent enough to operate the machines and keep the system running. And in the distant future, with over-automation when even that is not an option, its a real tricky situation to be in.

The solution

There are brilliant minds coming up with concepts around resource based economy, moving away from the existing financial system in place. With technological development to extract natural resources without having to pay for it, then why would there be a rat race if the resources are in abundance.

Industrial designer and social engineer Jacque Fresco is one such person who has spent most of his life designing the future. He has designed cities that can be constructed by autonomous construction robots and will be eco-friendly, self sustainable, earthquake and fire proof.

Similar minds have come together and conceptualized the Free World Charter.

As pointed earlier, we live in the present and that certainly is a gift. For the time being, all people need to do is upgrade their skill sets and learn to interact with intelligent machines and make themselves more productive in the society.

It will continue being a financial asset based economy, one that will slowly wane.

Its important to keep an open mind on the purpose of life. In the meanwhile we could always enjoy a bit of Virtual Reality based entertainment and other technological advancement, adding value to our existence and inducing the Happiness hormone.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are personal and influenced from various articles referenced. I stand to be corrected based on varying world views.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures

http://time.com/money/3977798/the-10-richest-people-of-all-time/

http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2016/01/18/23441405/why-its-misleading-to-say-the-62-richest-people-have-the-same-wealth-as-half-the-world

http://www.theorderoftime.com/politics/cemetery/stout/h/pbb-24.htm (History of bartering and money)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-04-21/the-2-trillion-project-to-get-saudi-arabia-s-economy-off-oil

http://www.sramanamitra.com/2016/06/16/future-of-work-utopia-or-dystopia/

http://theusualroutine.com/2016/08/13/finally-exposed-13-families-secretly-ruling-world/