Blockchain as the post-Capitalism entrepreneurship?
Eleven years since the very first appearance of Blockchain, decentralized distributed ledgers and cryptocurrencies, the impact of this technologies can finally be seen. Technological advancements in the world of everyday finance provided by decentralized tech such as transparent payments, settlement technology, smart contracts-based mechanisms’ and distributed autonomous organizations (DAOs) have irretrievably impacted how societies perceive capitalism. This article seeks to briefly explain how this shift of interest challenges today’s financial schemes and trading policies since Satoshi’s paper.
Blockchain is ultimately identified as an institutional technology, meaning that its economic effects can be further analyzed based on transaction costs instead of production costs. Blockchain technology affects the transaction costs of economic coordination (or simply put of the synchronization of decision-making processes among firms in a particular industry [1]), and thus, has to capacity to disrupt entire economies of interlinked production and consumption models. Employing Blockchain technology as an alternative basically equals with disintermediation effects in markets, dehierachicalization effects on organizations and in some cases, with transition from public provision to private.
So how this works within capitalism?
Capitalism, as a political system, is mainly understood as the condition that legitimizes and reinforces property rights and therefore enables exchange and economic coordination in whatever constitutes capital. Blockchain, on the other hand, has been embraced by supporters of cooperativism and sharing economy.
SocialPolis Coin (SPL Coin), one of the first cryptocurrencies acting as a solution for the development of Social Economy, is directly linked with its market instead of being driven by value speculations. SPL Coin will be distributed by Blockchain Coop, a social economy cooperative, also responsible for the tech support of all transactions between the SPL Coin holders and the software applications that will be provided. The Blockchain era — marked by Satoshi’s innovation- signals a technological evolution that balances the access to the means of production and increases open access opportunities. What is more, it might also mark an evolution of another kind — a social movement questioning the bargaining power of coordinated factors of production.
Additionally, a ‘trust-less’ technology such as Blockchain basically expands the role of markets (horizontal networks) and contracts the role of hierarchy (vertical networks), providing a new governance model suggestion. In the presence of lower transactions costs, the number of profitable spot markets increase. Institutional economics predict that the adoption of Blockchain technology will increase all economic activity coordinated with markets and reduce the demand for hierarchical lines of communication and command, including firms and possibly governmental bodies. A series of different sectors of modern economy is expected to by massively affected while new market forms are already emerging, such as data markets and direct P2P exchanges for newly ‘tokenized’ assets and services. By inducing disintermediation and dehierachicalization, Blockchain technology unpicks the rationale for modern economic policy. In effect, industrial innovation induces innovation policy, a co-evolutionary process that can be observed throughout the 20th century.
Summing up, future generations, and more specifically Μillennials and Gen Xers, whose cultural temperament shifts away from traditional governance and hierarchic models, seem to willingly embrace Blockchain advancements when it comes to both their transactions and their workplaces. SocialPolis vision expands beyond supporting Blockchain employment — SPL aspires to act as a pillar within the Social and Sustainable Development Economy and a solid point of reference for the future generations of sustainability supporters.
Find out more about SocialPolis Coin Project here and stay tuned at SocialPolis Coin media
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.20851/j.ctt1sq5w73.27?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
