Shared Living-Intangibles

How the rebirth of the humble story will transform society.

Early in our civilisation, we built our communities around storytelling. This formed the fundamental basis of what connects us with each other and makes us social animals. Telling our story and being heard lifts our spirit. The desire to be heard is stronger than the desire to be loved. It is the simplest and most crucial way to participate in democracy. We tell our stories but we also listen to the stories of others and we feel empathy for them. When we reshare those stories we feel compassion. As we develop and improve the ways stories connect with each other and their utility to teach lessons that will improve the quality of life we develop the nurturing capacity of our people. As we develop stories to help teach the next generation to recognise, avoid and overcome treachery and trickery we create a more honest culture and society.

Technology continuously transforms the way we tell these stories and in doing so it has fueled the fire of civilisation. The power-hungry and ruthless have exploited information asymmetry in order to gain more power and become more ruthless.

In modern society, we hear the stories of the rich and powerful, the privileged, the celebrities, politicians, leaders in business or even crime lords far more than we hear the story of those in our communities. And when we hear those stories they are separate from production. We hear them on the coffee or smoke break and not use them as direct inspiration in meaningful work and production.

Television and radio have told us stories that are interrupted by adverts telling us what to buy. We developed a kind of social cohesion in that we all had something in common that we watched the same shows and could recite the same jingles.

Social media has now given us back our voice but in return, we gave up control of our emotions. Now an algorithm tells us when to rage, when to be inspired and when to cry. We have formed so many connections with like-minded people but in doing so have created bubbles and echo-chambers where no social progress is made. We have also lost intimate connection with others and the production on social media is a distraction from and completely unrelated to much of the work we do in everyday life. The lucky few that have been able to synergize the two have experienced tremendous benefits but this cannot scale to be inclusive for all society. For millions, the social media has become an addiction that they access feverously like addicts unable to leave for any significant length of time as they crave that dopamine fix.

Throughout history changes in material conditions, hierarchies, religious influence, technology has transformed the way we tell stories. The bondage of people into serfdom was only possible through the rule of Church and King whereby stories, moral code and law was monopolized and controlled by an ideology enforced by the ruling elite. Those that could read and write had far more power and privilege. The more copies of story or scripture you could reproduce the more you could control the consensus and make your scripture the official version. The printing process was very resource and labor intensive and created a natural centralisation towards those with wealth and power namely the church.

Now forgive me for my sins of rushing through and oversimplifying the mass complexities of human history. I am trying to give a bit of background to explain how social development comes full circle. I have largely avoided talking about money and capitalism even though today most of the world lives under its mighty grip. Shared Living-Intangibles is built from the infrastructure of the system we have today to overcome the system's failings and put power back in the hands of the people. It returns humanity to the natural state of communities without rigid and opposing class or caste structures. The phoenix that rises from the ashes.

So what are “shared living-intangibles”? in a word stories but why have I given it such a technical name? because it’s so much more. It’s a way of raising social connection, morale and cohesion. It’s a way of giving a voice to those that are voiceless. It’s a way of transforming production so that workers have agency in their work. They can follow their passions, their convictions, do their duty. Why do we need to do this? Surely you go to school and university to get an education then get a job, pay off your student loan, then marry then buy a house, start a family of your own and then retire?

This middle-class “American dream” is just not a reality for workers as in other developed countries. Housing is a large ponzi scheme for which shovelling in money just means that it is gobbled up and will vanish. This is especially true for rents. Renters pay for their own class prisons. They are under the watchful eye of the rental agency and must live their life and produce maintenance work under their terms. Yet, the owner often falls short on maintaining the structural and watertight aspects of the property. Those obligations are considered an expense that can be avoided by expecting tenants to clean mould rather than doing maintenance work that would prevent moisture in the first place.

Even the serf had more freedom, free time and agency than the modern worker/renter.

It is a highly competitive system and yet we are largely fighting each other. Hundreds of us line up to fight for these dead-end jobs or rental houses. The more ambitious and competitive we are the more we dig our own grave. When the corporate world screens applicants there is a bell curve or normal distribution of ambition. The bottom 20% are weeded out because they don’t even try in the interview. They might not even turn up for work and if they do they would likely be poor-performers. They don’t have natural ambition. Those with the highest levels of ambition can be screened out for another reason. That is that they could be seen as difficult to manage, keep in their place, be disruptive, attempt to bring about rapid changes to conventions, processes and production techniques and be a threat to the status quo. Would you make a hiring decision that could potentially put you out of a job? Unless you were smart enough to have planned to take your redundancy and split then of course not.

The other reason is that the vast majority of the population relies on joy, enthusiasm and morale to keep them motivated. An ambitious jerk will keep working in gruelling conditions and thus raise the bar to unbearable levels for everyone else. When they do find an employer that will take them on it is usually in an environment that would crush those ambitions with a near-infinite workload contrasted to almost non-existent opportunities for advancement.

The ambitious person can themselves go into a state of low morale and joyless existence. They can work themselves into isolation. Far from “American dream” where they have a beautiful home and a family, friends and go on holidays, they find themselves toiling away in misery. They find themselves in the worst possible rental property or “fixer-upper” home. Perhaps an innate masochistic drive compounds the problem as the ambitious person takes unconscious pleasure as the market punishes them to the point of a complete breakdown. After this point there is regret. A lifetime of work has given them a broken body and a mountain of credit card debt. Yet those of far humbler ambitions seem to effortlessly rise to the top. But what happens when large numbers of them can’t either?

As I mentioned earlier the bulk of the population relies on joy and enthusiasm to keep them motivated. The entire economy runs on enthusiasm. When you get the keys for the rental property the agent expects you to be overwhelmed with joy. The person doing job interviews wants to see enthusiastic applicants. The whitegoods salesperson wants to see you buy that new fridge or TV with gusto. In their innermost being, he or she would even rather make an enthusiastic low-value transaction than an un-enthusiastic high-value transaction.

But what happens when social morale is low? At best everyone is just going through the motions but likely production quality and output are low. The employer can’t find enthusiastic applicants. Perhaps for some of the following reasons:

• House prices have put homeownership out of reach for the average worker
• Little chance of promotion either at work or to higher social status
• The market is rewarding the wrong types of behaviour e.g. YouTube and Twitch stars instead of teachers and nurses.
• In their last job, they were treated poorly. Made to do overtime for free, treated like dirt by complaining customers. It was stressful and that stress took a toll on their body.
• In their last job, they were working in a building with stuffy air that made their nose run and their head spin.
• Being in a state of near sickness was the new normal
• High student loan or credit card interest rates
• Generally, people scrambling for the job to maintain their existence rather than because it is their passion
• Haven’t been on a successful date in a very long time!
• They feel disconnected from their work e.g. no sense of agency
• They feel like they don’t have a voice in the system and their cries for help go unheard. “If no one will help me why should I help you?”
• The work they are passionate about they must do in their own time at their own expense. If they aren’t broke already they soon will be.
• A general “eat shit then shit gold” expectation of them both in the workplace and in other aspects of their life such as renting.
• They feel a sense of disconnection and lack of intimacy from their fellow humans. In a word, they feel alienated.

In a recent article entitled “Government figures reveal almost one in two employers struggle to fill roles” Warwick Levy the owner of the ethical fashion brand Lonely Kids Club reports that job seekers are:

• Turning up late to interviews
• Not answering questions in interviews
• Wasting time on their phones even during the 1-hour trial
• Not showing enthusiasm in their work

He then goes on to say “I got the impression they didn’t want to be there. Their behaviour was begrudging, almost like they were doing someone a favour.”

I was more inclined to argue it wasn’t just their attitude but it was a general problem with low levels of enthusiasm and morale in our society.

The article then goes on to say Warwick Levy’s experiences are backed up by Department of Employment survey released by employment minister (Australian) Michaelia Cash.

and “The alarming research revealed 45 per cent of Australian employers struggled to recruit staff in 2018.”

I feel it should be a sense of national duty that we address this issue of low morale and enthusiasm amongst job seekers.

We tend to think perhaps if they could just somehow buy a house then everything would be OK. Paying off a mortgage isn’t that much better than renting especially if you couldn’t get onto the property ladder until your middle-age years. Nor is owning more stuff. They probably already have a ton of consumer items they bought for which they couldn’t get even a fraction of the money back in the resale value.

In the corporate and business world today the vast majority of the value of firms isn’t even in physical assets such as buildings, stock and machinery, it’s in what economists call intangibles.

This is becoming more and more the norm as described in Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy a Book by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake.

And it’s not just a few tech newcomers in this position. Large companies such as Walt Disney, McGraw Hill, Pfizer have far more in intangible assets such as patents, trademarks, digital content, copyrights, trademarks, brand awareness, sponsorship and promotion contracts than they do tangibles like buildings, office equipment and machinery. Yet accountants and stock analysts may still have trouble accounting for this. The rise of intangibles and intellectual property has made traditional accounting all but obsolescent.

Don’t take my word for it. Check out the “Intangible asset value study 2017' by Ocean Tomo.

“Within the last quarter-century, intellectual capital has emerged as the leading asset class. The term “intellectual capital” refers generally to traditional Intellectual Property assets — patents, trademarks and copyrights. At Ocean Tomo, we uniquely include within the definition of “intellectual capital” special client intangible assets, especially corporate and government preference rights.”

So why are we are concerned about people buying a physical asset like houses and land?

It goes back a long time. Colonial settlement was seen as an opportunity because of the lack of a highly developed property market (let alone an intellectual property market) and a traveller (go West young man!) could lay his stake and claim land. Compared to toiling away in Europe for meagre wages while paying high and rising rents it was breathtakingly easy to take this new land and become a capitalist. [I haven’t mentioned what happened to the indigenous people that is another story one that is deep sorrow and shame for many nations mine included.] For this reason, it became impossible to find labourers. If you brought them over on a boat they would quickly escape and claim some land for their own. They ended up bringing slaves and convicts or taking local indigenous people as slaves and force them to work the land.

Of course, they knew at some point slavery would need to be abolished. They had to build the country on wage labour just like in Europe so they set a price for land. You had to work for wages first then you could save some of those wages and buy land. New arrivals would have to work until they reached this point. Gradually over time, each new set of arrivals had to work harder and longer to buy some land but it was still a far better deal than the country they came from. They also had a chance to build a better life for their children which gave them hope and inspiration for the future. Rather than fighting over scraps, there was mateship.

Today this is all but forgotten. Those that can’t afford to buy a house ( even at such ludicrously high price to income ratios) may be seen as lazy but even those sympathetic consider them a “lost generation”.

Yet, those with a mixture of ambition and enthusiasm are investing in certain types of intangibles themselves. They are buying shares, developing drop-shipping e-commerce sites, buying cryptocurrency assets. In these rapid and fast-moving markets, there is manipulation, collusion and well as all the trapping of market cycles. Most of it is separated from genuine use and value. From ICO scams to pump and dumps. Built on speculation and false optimism it will make a handful of insiders rich or richer while many others will lose their shirt. Even now the property market operates through such a cycle but over a much longer length of time.

Even the safety in houses evaporates. Their habitability too deteriorates without the expensive and time-consuming maintenance. All which requires high levels of enthusiasm and morale. It requires a young, motivated and energized workforce.

Instead, we see this space under the grip of old age and treachery. Slum lording is the new normal. The remains of the middle class cling to these buildings in their putrid, dilapidated, mould infested state and charges the highest rate the market will bear. Preying on the most vulnerable and charging them more if their circumstances are dire.

Late-stage capitalism in a nutshell

Given the downright treacherous mind state of those holding the title deeds in bricks and mortar property and the ruthlessness of the landlord class (as well as land bankers, and the banking sector) then we need a completely new asset class to build enthusiasm for.

We need something that recaptures our roots of telling stories around the fire and we can destroy the establishments narrative by giving the workforce a voice. We can give them meaning and agency in their work, restore gusto and pride. It is time to make their life stories and the emotion we all share the energy that drives production.

Enter “shared living-intangibles”. Perhaps just an uber nerdy way of saying “stories” but now in a way that makes them far superior to every other asset class. It is also:

• Better than social media as they directly drive emancipation of production
• Reconnect people with those in their communities and share the goods of production globally
• Production for a purpose
• Production for enjoyment
• Production to help others especially those that need help the most
• Production for more acceptance and inclusiveness

Ideally, it will work so well that you will be so busy enjoying production that you won’t waste any more time on social media or watching television. You will feel part of your species, not a slave working forever for this elusive staus. Gattungswesen!

Now how do we build these? It’s an effort we all need to get involved in from the most impoverished to those with high-level skills that can’t find employment to those with brightness and enthusiasm that can only spread. As we lift someone up they, in turn, will lift others up. Their story is an inspiration. Those trapped in unemployment can be given an opportunity to produce.

It will unify and repurpose existing and new mediums to tell the stories of our lives and our dreams. These mediums include:

• Books
• Board games
• Music
• Cinema
• Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
• Computer games
• Live performance such as theatre

Spaces are to be transformed include:

• Floorspaces left by closed down anchor stores (large department stores) in shopping centres to become co-working spaces
• Public retail strips to become art spaces
• Larger family homes and mansions to become spaces where people can freely come and go as needed
• Industrial warehouses to become a hotbed of maker culture and social production especially for producing new “tiny homes” for those the system has forced to live on the streets.
• Derelict service stations to become hemp plantations
• The carpark space where there was a swap-meet comes a science fair
• The roof-tops of buildings as well as empty commercial space (such as closed bank branches) can serve a dual purpose of becoming nurseries to grow tree seedlings and becoming a focal point where members of the community and current or former front-line workers meet to arrange tree planting expeditions
• Ghost towns to become flash communities of those fleeing the cities in search of a new life and new opportunity

In a word every place that was once bustling with consumption is now bustling with production.

The important thing is that every act of labour gives people a voice and becomes a labour of love, responsibility or duty in the service of others.

Perhaps there are certain businesses today especially newer start-ups that can pioneer “shared living-intangibles”. They can tell a story through their merchandise and incentivise employees by giving them the benefits and creative control over their own work.

These businesses will become magnetic for enthusiastic workers and create even higher levels of enthusiasm as they go. They will have the advantage of being a beacon of light, of being a place of equal cooperation and cohesion rather control and coercion.

How do we define shared living intangibles?

I don’t actually yet have a firm definition as this synthesized idea is still in the very early stages. However, I would like to discuss some things that might be shared living intangibles already in existence.

One of the most powerful things about intangibles is that while only a few people consume the product many millions or even billions can consume the idea of the product.

Elon Musk used his own electric sports car as a dummy payload when testing the Falcon Heavy rocket and it is now in our solar system and orbiting the sun. There is even a website where you can track the vehicle's journey.

Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster was fired into space as “dummy payload”. Source: Wikipedia Author: SpaceX

It is very hard to calculate the economic (or marketing) value of this intangible (in the sense that we can’t touch it as it’s in space) asset. Perhaps it is priceless. The problem is that very few people are in a privileged enough position to do this type of thing. What will make shared living-intangibles so powerful is the potential that anyone can create one.

One day a homeless person could use discarded packaging and other consumer waste such as old computer parts to make an art piece that explains his life then walks into a library and publishes photos of it and an article about it online. Due to being online (the imagery) potentially has the same reach as Elon's star man but it would be a far less appealing product. The idea of it was not to be appealing but to raise awareness of what homeless people experience by giving them a voice. It may actually be a terrible product to consume but the product was the greatest act of joy to produce. This is the opposite of the reality of production today where workers suffer all day long to make products and provide services and then take a break to consume something they enjoy such as a coffee, chocolate bar, toasted sandwich and so on. The worker is strongly discouraged from thinking about the suffering that other workers went through to produce that product.

Businesses might see “shared living-intangibles” like a nightmare because they are very concerned about undercutting. Imagine social media being replaced by social production and suddenly workers are doing things for the joy of it. The services they are producing are priceless because they solve the social issues that corporations externalize. The technology the workers develop would rapidly surpass the stagnant technology used by dinosaur corporations. The entire capitalist class would lose at their own game. They can’t even enjoy their accumulated wealth anymore because all the joy has been moved from consumption to production.

As the product of “Shared Living-Intangibles” is by in large consumed as information there is no limit to how fantastically terrible it can be. For example, an artist named Avril Corroon went around to flats around London and collected mould samples and used them to make cheese.

The “product” is highly toxic and would make you sick if you even went near it but because you only consume the idea of the product that’s OK.

user: jacquilynne posted on meta-filter

“That is revolting.

Not as revolting as the fact that people are forced to live in the conditions from which the mold was taken.

But still revolting.”

This is a fantastic example of a “shared living-intangible” where much of the pleasure is in production. The consumption value is the act of giving a voice to people trapped in these squalid conditions. If you met one of these people in real-life you would be far more likely to cross the street to avoid them than you would be to help them. But after consuming this “shared living-intangible” you are far more likely to work towards change that will improve the persons living conditions. The social value of this is priceless.

A young and enthusiastic woman from my city created a game called “Rent: The Card Game”. Playing the game was an interesting mix of enjoyment and simulated suffering. Some players joked that the game could make someone suicidal. That shows the effectiveness of the game because if simulating renting can make someone feel slightly suicidal then actual renting certainly will. There are people who have never rented before and for them playing this game could open their eyes. Among people who do or have rented then it could create further unity. More advanced versions of the game could even teach players how to fight back such as using knowledge of tenancy legislation for example.

Under-cutting

The upper classes see the ambitions of workers clamouring for survival as undercutting. Learning from books, going to “lesser” colleges or universities, learning from online sources, getting experience by offering services below market rates, taking lower paid work, DIY work, guerrilla marketing, developing new technologies in the garage and even working longer hours as under-cutting. Whereas the upper classes invested a lot in their homes, house keeping, meals, furniture, redecoration, their children's private education all the way to finishing and tertiary they end up competing in the same job market as workers that have far fewer overheads and dollar value invested in them. To them this is a brutal because they are exposed to open competition and this threatens their class prestige. They have a far higher level of awareness of this than do workers who went through the public system without knowing that they were entering the workforce at a lower tier, potentially putting a glass ceiling on career growth. For the upper-class raised an educated job seeker or entrepreneur looking down gives intense feelings of acrophobia then a life-long duty to defend their investments and the investments of their social class. They would defend their private institutions to a degree that would be seen as heroic if only the lower classes would do the same for the public system. Perhaps most of them feel they barely survived the system.

For them it is entirely reasonable that they should “over-cut” the the lower classes. If they have less stable homes and too much ambition sell them beer. If they try to expand their business (such as buying tools) with credit make sure they pay the highest interest rate, if they try to trade through a retail broker setup a sophisticated machine to part them from their money, if they have an interest in sport get them hooked on gambling, if they have a superannuation fund then charge them high fees and insurance rates, if they pay rent increase it, if they own their own car make sure the fuel, parts, tires are expensive. Started a business? pay high commercial rents and business overdraft fees. Opening a franchise? We will ruthlessly make sure you lose everything. Dead? Good pay for an expensive funeral service. Ideally, for them the worker works for months or years saving up what they can and then in a series fatal moments loses the lot. The under-cutting strategy failed. This loss becomes upper class gain and is invested back into the machine to pay for more quality educations, finishing schools and so on. And the less they are willing to put into maintaining the quality of the rental homes that workers live in and the products they purchase. After all the workers are relentless in their undercutting why not see how much shit they can take until they reach breaking point?

So now imagine shared living intangibles that are able not only undercut with production for joy but also able help workers escape “over-cutting” which currently is a leech on their labor power. For the worker to receive this kind of protection service would be priceless. Finally the working class can compete head-on with the capitalist class and even hold a strength in numbers and sheer network size. This class of shared living intangible will be like an “immune system” against information asymmetry and although at times it would feel like it was making the economy sicker it would soon see it return to health and with it a much stronger and well off, unencumbered working class and thus a far more powerful engine of production to drive our civilisation further.