The Foundation of Prosperity Is Inclusion

I've stolen that sentiment from a book I'm currently reading called 'Blockchain Revolution' by Don & Alex Tapscott, but I really like it!

This post is a distraction from my note-taking about my token-sale project, but really it's all connected. Blockchain is going to change the world & I want to do my little bit to ensure that it's pushed in the right direction, and not just another tool co-opted by repressive governments.

The rate of entrepreneurship has been declining in the UK & US for 30 years (I'm not sure about other countries, though it's probably a similar pattern). This is a big problem ... in more & more markets we are left with fewer & fewer big companies that dominate leading to MASSIVE concentrations of wealth, falling wages, falling job satisfaction & happiness, and our towns and cities looking increasingly impoverished. A high street full of independent shops for the local community brings far more benefits to people than the single out-of-town 24-hour hypermarket that replaces it.

Instead of 500 self-employed/empowered/confident/skilled business owners & a 1000 employees that can be learning the trade to start out on their own, we have a small fraction of this number employed in the hypermarket on low wages with no job satisfaction, no autonomy, no growth in skills & absolutely no way of setting up on their own. The perverse thing is that although the high street now looks very run-down & is full of charity, betting, and fried chicken shops, it is now VERY expensive to rent one of the shops. Somehow as the high street died, it costs MORE to open a business there than when it was thriving! This is messed up.

In the olden days a car mechanic would have started out as an apprentice to a master mechanic & learned his trade in return for his labour. Eventually he'd end up a valued staff member & either inherit the business, or if he was ambitious, start his own small concern. This no longer happens in most areas. Why? Because property prices have reached such absurd levels that he'd never be able to afford to even try. When you're earning £10-an-hour & a small garage to work from costs £3000-a-month (and rising at twice the rate of inflation every year)...before you've bought a single tool or piece of equipment, then it's an impossible task... without a MASSIVE loan from a bank (probably secured on your parents house). This is before the local government taxes which perversely seem designed to cripple small businesses further. Put like this, it's a wonder anyone bothers trying to start businesses any more! No-one wins in this scenario (apart from big business).

Meanwhile, large amounts of commercial property sits idle, probably owned by large developers waiting to get permission to turn it into more 'luxury' flats for people on £10-an-hour at the local supermarket. I'm depressed just writing that!

What I'd like to see: Local government owned commercial units that people can rent very cheaply as long as they need. Low (or zero) local taxes to stop government 'milking' these small businesses dry month after month, denying them the capital needed to expand & grow & take risks. The aim should be to get these businesses prosperous & growing so they have to move out due to their own success!

Absurd thing number 657: Anyone can walk into a betting shop & gamble £150 on a horse race. But the same person CANNOT invest £150 in a start-up business they find promising. Instead we 'have to' invest our money by going through the VERY WELL PAID sharks in the finance industry who will do their best to bled us dry while remaining within the law (that they helped write). The result: small businesses & entrepreneurs find it very difficult to find financing for their ideas. They are forced to turn to the same financial sharks that will 'milk' them dry. The rules are (apparently) to protect us from ourselves, to save us from being exploited. Much like the way that little shops used to pay the mafia 'protection' money so they didn't come back & smash their windows (or legs).

Thank goodness for the internet. It allows us to dispense with so many of the governmental controls & regulations. And now thanks to token sales, we CAN invest that £150 in a promising little business. I hope that this type of thing EXPLODES (in a good way) over the next few years. People have had a decade of their savings losing money every year (thanks to inflation + low interest rates), imagine that instead of thousands of people putting £500-a-month into rip-off 'pension schemes' (that will take 60%+ of the growth over the few decades as 'management fees'), they instead start investing in small start-ups all over the place? Imagine the prosperity, the explosion (again in a good way!) of innovation. Distributed inclusion.

Vive la révolution!