The Path of Wealth Throughout History
Mankind is a community-oriented species, and the economy has evolved accordingly.
Economies have always evolved around human communities and the source of wealth has switched hands throughout history.
In 550 BC King Croesus of Lydia (Turkey area) invented gold coins as an official store of value, and by doing so, he enabled local community economies to evolve.
This most significant event suddenly allowed people to gain wealth.
Ever since this occurred, community economies have evolved, and the source of wealth had moved to different groups type.
Let’s go through the six phases of the community economic evolution and the transition of wealth throughout history:
1st phase: Central value storage
King Croesus’s invention of gold coins as an official store of value in 550 BC, stated the economic evolution and the wealth gain by people.
The one that controlled the value storage, controlled the entire economy. And because the kings of those ages stored their community’s (kingdom) treasury gold, they were the sole controller of the community’s economy.
The kings and their family controlled all the wealth in their kingdom.
2nd phase: The agriculture economy
In this phase, agriculture technologies evolved.
Those that owned land were called Lords and they controlled much of the wealth back then. The more land you owned, the more ‘wealthy’ you were.
Lords owned everything on their land. Including the residents that lived on their land. As a result of this, much of the king’s kingdom economic powers had transferred to the lords. Lords had also raised small armies to protect their lands. Kings had to sign treaties with the lords at their kingdom in order to maintain rule.
3rd phase: The commercial economy
As agriculture economies evolved, commercial trading between the kingdoms became necessary. Smart commercial traders had found out that money can be made.
Thus, commercial marketplaces were created. Agriculture started to be imported and exported along with other merchandises.
Commercial trading had now become a source of wealth.
Banks evolved in order to supply credit and liquidity to those markets.
4th phase: The industrial revolution
In 1712, Thomas Newcomen had created the steam engine that was used for the first commercial use of pumping in a mine. And by doing so, he set the path for the industrial revolution that started almost 40 years later, in 1760.
The era of mass manufacturing had begun. Plenty of people had moved from the villages to the cities. Trains were built to effectively transfer merchandises.
The source of wealth had moved to the industrialists and the manufacturers.
Lots of factories were built and the moving assembly lines appeared to be extremely effective in mass manufacturing.
5th phase: The technology revolution
In April 1977, at West Coast Computer Fair Convention, a small startup called Apple released the first personal computer in the world, called the Apple II.
This small, but significant event, had started the economic technology revolution and the age of the empowerment of personal knowledge.
The personal computer had switched the source of knowledge from the corporations to the individuals. Suddenly three talented entrepreneurs could create a new life-changing product from their garage, and by doing so, change the world with the power of knowledge and innovation.
Workforce productivity had sharply increased using new hardware and software technologies.
The source of wealth had moved to the ones with knowledge, innovation, and the courage to exercise their dreams.
The technology revolution had started before April 1977, but the invention of the personal computer had by far the largest impact on the transfer of wealth from large corporations to the individuals with knowledge and a sense of innovation.
To show the impact of the technology revolution on the economy, we just have to look at the stock exchanges.
The highest market valuation companies nowadays are technologies companies. Companies such as Apple, Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft are the most valuable companies, in terms of market value, on the stock markets.
6th phase: Shared economies
On February 4th, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg had released his Harvard campus initiative called Facebook. And by doing so, he started the social technology revolution.
On 2009, Uber and Airbnb were founded and set the tone for the new financial evolution, the shared economies.
Shared economies have grown rapidly. Applications like Uber, Airbnb, Gett, Lyft, Juno, WeWork, Etsy, and others, have taken over while cutting out the middlemen and creating new economy markets. These companies are lowering operating costs and enabling a direct communication between service providers and their end customers.
Thus, new markets are created. Think about it this way — most of the places now rented on Airbnb would probably not have been rented otherwise.
Shared economies aim to divide wealth more equally among the economy’s small service providers.
But hang on a second. Aren’t shared economies supposed to empower their users?
This is where companies like Airbnb and Uber come up short.
Shared economies grow rapidly, but they don’t empower their users. Not really. The end users don’t really get to benefit from its growth.
The first users of Uber or Airbnb didn’t get their fair share. They made the shared economy flourish and grow but ultimately, once the economy grew, they were left behind.
The only ones that enjoyed the growth of the shared economies where the companies that operated it.
Knowing this imbalance between shared economy purpose and reality had driven me with my two partners, Amos Meiri and Mark Smargon, to found Colu.
Because we believe it can make a true difference.
Colu, a Tel-Aviv based startup, developed a digital wallet that makes it easy to pay and support local independent businesses. We believe that money should stay in your local economy.
What makes Colu truly special though, is that it really embodies the notion of a shared economy. Instead of subjecting consumers and businesses to superfluous fees as part of their payment process, the Colu network will use cryptocurrencies to distribute the savings back to the network’s stakeholders. This could drive people to have an actual stake in their local economy. Not a theoretical one.
This is the essence of a shared economy. Colu seeks to empower the people that enable the shared economy and to allow them to potentially benefit from their economy’s economic growth.
I believe that Colu is the model of a fair and just economic evolution of the shared economies. It empowers the people and divides the wealth in a more equal and just way.
Colu empowers the economy’s people.
