The "new" economy is actually one we already had, which has simply become more powerful with the advent of the internet, and should have been present in the sli

The "new" economy is actually one we already had, which has simply become more powerful with the advent of the internet, and should have been present in the slides at each step along economic progression. It's a gift economy where capital is based on reputation and ability to share. This is the same economy you use in local situations - with neighbors, friends, co-workers - to exchange favors. It has the power to get you a job, or to make a deal, or to elect a president, or any number of other things that determine how the work is done and how the goods are dealt out. The agricultural through industrial economies downplayed this form of economic activity because property, ownership and employment proved more suitable for creating an efficient market, but sharing has always been present and has always been taught as a moral ideal. If we didn't participate in that economy, we'd be quite a stand-offish, non-collaborative bunch. Nobody would trust each other. What we have now is the ability to make gift economies based on information global in scale. The capital and labor necessary to start your (scarcity economy oriented) startup are potentially sitting right here on HN, if you know what to say and who to say it to. And PG and co. aren't making money off of the site, but I'm sure they've benefited from it. It's this kind of value that is really what's at stake in a successful info-business venture - the ability of companies to monetize on top of the info or info infrastructures ultimately isn't as important to the economy as the benefits accruing to all of society from just having it around and operating smoothly; finding a reasonable doorway from abundance currency to scarcity currency is what has led to the variety of monetization concepts tried over the last decade(ads, freemium, subscription, paywall, patronage...). This problem of monetization is pervasive throughout information products and is at the root of the whole IP debate: If there weren't money in trading information, would the incentives to create still be there? But the question that isn't answered by these slides is the big one: how to balance ownership-based markets with gift-based ones. While the gift economy is endlessly abundant, how will we distribute the work for the older markets as they grow more efficient? Are there enough jobs to go around now, or do we need to rearrange ourselves to sustain heightened unemployment? How do we make everyone materially wealthy enough to be happy, and not destroy the planet in doing so?