We rarely think about what it means to participate in an economy where the meta is profit-maximization based on scarcity. Because what it means, at a basic level, is that the relations between people are adversarial; you can think about media, pharma, the food industry, and so on – can you trust that companies in any industry have your interests in mind?
Can you trust that the news you’re reading or watching are meant to inform you, and not to keep you glued to the screen to sell you ads?
Can you trust that the drugs you’re being encouraged to take are meant to heal you, and not make you dependent so the corp can sell you more drugs?
Can you trust that the food you’re eating is nutritious, and not just empty calories that are cheap to produce and addictive?
When that is the meta in the economy, you have to do your own research on every product, service, & source of info, because you cannot rely on others to provide you with credible info when you don’t know if they have your best interests in mind.
But what does it mean to “do your own research” in an environment where you can’t trust the credibility of any piece of data – where people are just as likely to post reliable info as they are to distort data for personal gain? It means that you have to invest an inordinate amount of time and energy to research any news event, or investigate the claims about any product you use.
So let’s say you DYOR and now you want to share your findings with others. But how do they know that they can trust your findings? How do they know that you’re not just making false claims for personal gain? As long as the financial incentive is there – as long as that’s the meta in the economy – there is no way for them to know, and they too will need to (individually) do their own research about your claims.
It means that we have a trilemma in our economy between knowledge, trust, and financial incentives. We can have any two but not all three. In other words we can do our own research within the current economic meta but then we don’t trust others’ claims. We can also choose to blindly trust others’ claims within the current meta, but then we won’t really know the facts. Or, if we didn’t have an adversarial economic environment, we could trust others’ claims and have a high degree of certainty that they are factual.
This situation is clearly unsustainable, but how can we solve this trilemma? Obviously what we want is an environment where we can trust the products we use and the source of info we consume. By simply having reliable media sources we can make more informed decisions about what products we consume. And if we’re more informed, producers will have the incentive to create products that align with the interests of consumers, instead of solely focusing on profits.
So how do we change the meta for our information environment?
Changing the meta starts with changing the economic incentives; if journalists are paid based on the value of their reporting to the public interest, and not based on the engagement their content generates, they’d have an incentive to report the facts.
Then, if the incentive structure itself is transparent to everyone – if it’s built on the blockchain (so anyone can review the code) and the mechanism is easy to understand, then you can have a completely different meta.
Because anyone can “DYOR” on the incentives, and then have a lot more trust that the information is credible and independent of hidden interests.
Once you have credible information you can have news that’s meant to inform you, pharma companies that are focused on making drugs that actually help people, a food industry that’s focused on nutritious produce and so on.
But it all must start from an information economy where the meta is aligning profit with value for the public interest.
