17. Authority Is The New Currency
“It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”
Surprisingly enough, this quote does not belong to Charles Darwin, as you were probably inclined to think. But to a guy named Leon C. Megginson, who was a professor of Management in Louisiana. He simply misquoted Darwin - the author of “The Evolution of Species” never wrote that, as you can see on this site.
But the fake quote picked up and, to a large extent, became an accepted truth.
As a matter of fact, even if this was not said by Darwin himself, I consider it to be very true.
What Is Authority?
Simply put, authority is the perceived ability of someone to exert some sort of power in a certain area. Probably many of you are hinting at “political” power when you hear about authority.
But in this context I’m talking more about the authority you acquire as an expert in a certain area. Probably a more descriptive word would be “expertise”, but I want to stay away from it, because it doesn’t describe completely what I’m talking about.
In the sense of this article, authority is the power you get in a certain niche by consistently proving yourself capable of solving the challenges of that niche. It's more complex than just expertise, because it requires a certain dynamic, a certain involvement, whereas expertise can just be a static thing, never used and hardly useful. Like somebody who is an expert in latin, but works a programmer - his expertise is not part of his actual activity.
For instance, a miner - in cryptocurrency parlance - has a certain authority, because it can actively solve a challenge, validate transactions, broadcast them consistently and keep a reliable copy of the blockchain.
Another example of authority will be a good doctor. He proves himself worthy of solving health issue for his patients, hence, he’s an authority.
Why am I rambling about this thing? And why do I try to go in so many details?
Because I truly believe that we’re shifting towards a business environment when the real currency is not money, in the form that we’re used to, but authority.
The Unexpected Lesson Of Cryptocurrency Era
Until 7 years ago, when bitcoin was created, we used to have a very limited set of choices when it came to money. Every major economy (or country) had its own currency. It was simple.
But once bitcoin - and the underlying protocol, the blockchain - started to get adoption, we witnessed an unprecedented rise of different currencies, all existing in a virtual space.
They’re not fake money. They’re living in a virtual world, but, given the fact that they’re falling under the general definition of money (a convention that a certain thing stands for a certain amount of value) they are real money. You can exchange dogecoin for bitcoin and then you can exchange that for dollars and then for euros. The first two steps of this chain are completely virtual, the last two are “real” (or, how the crypto community loves to call them, they are “fiat” money).
At this moment, bitcoin has a market cap of more than 10 billion USD. That’s an enormous amount of fiat currency.
How this happened? How this shift from fiat to virtual was possible?
Because of the authority of the protocol.
Simply put, bitcoin (and I’m referring basically to the protocol here) was able to consistently solve some of the problems related to the transfer of value between two parts. It consistently solved them better than other, traditional ways of transferring money (I’m not going into technical details like decentralization, mining and so on) and as a direct result, it became more authoritative.
The unexpected lesson of crypto is not that we live an unprecedented technological revolution, although this is certainly true.
The lesson is that the real value behind money is authority.
The means through which value gets transferred are always evolving, from gold, to paper money, to crypto nowadays. But the underlying principle of all these means is remaining unchanged: the more authority you have in your filed, the more value you get.
What’s in it for you, as an entrepreneur?
Simply put: it doesn’t matter how many ounces of gold, thousands of dollars or dozens of bitcoins you have, because these are just means to an end.
Your real value is how consistently you can solve challenges in a specific niche.
This post is part of a 30 days challenge on business, you can find the entire list of articles here.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
Very good and very true. I like the way you write and the point you make. As someone who hasn't had a steady paycheck for ten years, yet still, earns money, I can attest that being an authority in your niche is where all true value originates. Steem on.
Thanks for the comment and congrats for keeping it steady :)
True, yet not actually new.
The same mechanism worked in ancient egypt as it does today on Steemit.
Mutually agreed trust in someone (e.g. the pope) or something (e.g. gold).
Which then turns into a tradition of trust, which Bitcoin yet lags.
And as we have seen in heated discussions on blocksizes, Bitcoin has but started to evolve into a trusted plattform, let alone tradition.
Trust and tradition are not necessarily based on rational considerations. Many Bitcoin evangelists simply ignore this point.
Bitcoin's authority can be undermined at any point by authorities like the European Central Bank, which would love to see all virtual currencies "regulated".
At the moment, I do not think that they will actively make Blockchain-based currencies illegal, as this would send a lot of activities underground.
I think you're mixing the exact two meanings of the word which I was trying to make clear: political power and expertise. My point was the authority as form of "active expertise", if you want, is underneath the entire concept of money. Or, in economical terms, it's "more liquid" than money, hence, it's a much better currency.
A thorough discussion about political authority, regulations and the future of crypto is, I have no doubt about it, much more interesting, but also hard to contain within the boundaries of only one post. Maybe I will write abut it in this 30 days challenge, if time will allow me.
Thanks for the contribution, appreciated :)
I do not think that the two can be separated.
Political power is often based on perceived expertise.
In political economics, I came to meet this phenomenon as the problem of information dissymetry, which usually messes up market mechanisms:
If you can not judge your opponents qualification or proposed service, you have to make a deal more or less based on faith.
The same thing happens with Bitcoin.
A blockchain may be an authority, but as most people do not have slightest clue of how it actually works (including to some extent me), any trust in the Bitcoin and authority subscribed to it is not objective.
OK, one COULD find out about it.
Thats a big difference to a more or less complete information dissymetry like between an undeducated, patient in a serious, acute condition and a medic in an emergency room somewhere in the US.
Here is what we need to do, here is what it will cost. Perhaps. Perhaps more. We will find out.
You may be dead by the time you reach the next hospital.
Sign.
How much of that power is political and how much is expertise?
Innovation is the fuel of the human species... good write up @dragosroua
Thanks :)