Meet the new capitalists

Since the credit crunch started the phrase 'New Capitalism' has appeared with increasing frequency from the mouths of journalists, pundits and politicians. What does it mean? What are the implications of 'new capitalism' for ki workers?

From my research all I can say is 'new capitalism' is best defined as 'old capitalism'. Yep. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, as Pete Townsend wrote.

The fate of the term was sealed at a meeting on 8 January which brought together French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and, er, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a politician as sorely missed as George W Bush will surely be. 

I'm sorry, but when three such enthusiastic supporters of unfettered free markets are suddenly converted to 'new capitalism' it brings out the skeptic in me. (And I should add all the views expressed are my own and are not necessarily those of ki work.) 

Out of gas

These politicians sound too much like the board of a car company trying to get another year's sales out of an aging model. So they add some chrome, different shaped headlamps and an upgraded stereo system. Now it's 'new'. But under the chrome it's the same old gas-guzzling, inefficient, outmoded vehicle.

'New capitalism' is a way of describing the desperate measures that are being applied to keep the sinking globalized economy afloat. The fond hope of Merkel, Sarkozy and that English bloke is that sufficient patches can be applied to the ship of market capitalism so that it will appear to sail as well as it did a year or so ago. Of course, there's no chance of that.

Their form of 'new capitalism' has as much chance of success as Mikhail Gorbachev's new communism a couple of decades ago.

As politicians they do have an impossible task. They cannot say what everybody else knows. We have no idea what is going to happen to the global economy. Change is the only certainty.

Corporate death

That's why I'm so enthusiastic about ki work and believe me I'm not one of nature's natural evangelists. I'm at heart a cynical old hack ready to see the worst in most things. But I do see the future of my livelihood is through flexibility, adaptability and low capital outlay. 

We may not know where the economic system is heading, but we can see some of the forces shaping it. I've been impressed by the work of Harvard's Umair Haque , Director of the Havas Media Lab. He talks of the change from symmetric to asymmetric competition. To over-simplify, capitalism used to revolve around competition between corporate behemoths. Think General Motors versus Ford. Brands such as Coca-Cola took decades to build. Then along comes Google, achieving its position of power and brand with next to no marketing and without attempting to destroy its competition.

I'm slightly disappointed that he chose Google as an example, not that it's inaccurate, but it is another corporation even if it has a very different structure and philosophy compared with its predecessors. Far more interesting to me is the way small businesses can now successfully challenge and beat the big guys. 

The strength of the old corporations lay in their size. Now that's what holds them back. Encumbered by debt, real estate and old working practices, they cannot compete with adaptable, flexible and relatively debt-free small businesses.

Join the revolution

That's where ki work comes in. A team of professionals each working from home, linked to colleagues anywhere in the world via the internet, has negligible overheads. As a result they can beat conventional bricks-and-mortar companies on both quality and cost. 

Visit ki work's main site and see how you can use our online marketplace to fulfill your project requirements or create your own virtual business as a ki worker. 

Comments

[Joseph Concordia]

Dear Nick Clayton:
Your concepts for the future of work and of capitalism are certainly enjoyable to read. However, I wonder how the real future will evolve. Can the small agile individual worker really prosper without the deep pockets of the large organized business entities? He perhaps can survive, but can he gain meaningful financial success? The old adage, "it takes money to make money" still applies, and the other one, "the golden rule; he who has the gold rules" is still at work. The life blood of business is money and money only comes to business when there are customers that buy and pay for the goods and services.

How can ki work to bring this about? I have technical skills, experience, and knowledge to offer in a world where we hear daily about the shortage of scientists and engineers. But there are almost no buyers seeking these services. For the few buyers out there, the sellers outnumber them many, many fold. The ki concept is beautiful in principle, but the chance for success is small for individuals like me. What is needed is an opportunity creating vehicle with tangible project activities presented to the work performer for action, not just a cyber-mall where offerings are displayed.

[Nick Clayton]

Hi Joseph

Thanks for your response. It's always good to know somebody's reading what I've written. As always I have to say that I can't predict the future, but neither can anybody. I do know that change is the only certainty.

I don't think you're necessarily right to talk about 'the deep pockets of the large organized business entities'. Those pockets are often either empty or filled with IOUs for the banks. And don't get me started talking about the depth of the difficulties faced by the banking sector.

As individuals we may feel as if we're massively in debt, but we won't cease to exist in the way that corporations will as a result of the current recession. Think about it. Enron's gone, but the majority of people who worked for the company are still doing the same job. Only the name at the top of their pay checks has changed.

Also while I certainly don't totally buy into the American Dream I don't agree always that "it takes money to make money". Being born rich is certainly the best starting point if you want to die rich. But there are plenty of entrepreneurs who started with relatively little money. I would also imagine that you have more money than 90% of the world's population.

I don't know what your technical skills are, but generally demand still outstrips supply globally. That doesn't mean you'll find exactly the employment you want, matching your experience, in a convenient location. Thanks to the internet any work that can be done online can be done anywhere. You're competing against the world.

And that's where ki work comes in. It's early days, but the idea is to create a platform where people can create virtual teams based on the strengths of individual members. Without the markup currently charged by bricks and mortar outsourcing companies the members of those teams will be able to take home more cash and undercut the conventional competition.

In a sense this is no different from what multinational corporations are doing already. First they shifted their manufacturing to countries where labor was cheap, then they began to move parts of their R&D. The point is that through ki work we as individuals can follow the same path unencumbered by the debt and old work practises of the corporations.

The financial crisis we're living through at the moment is horrible. To me it's also symptomatic of a fundamental change in the way capitalism works. I genuinely believe the ki work concept can take advantage of those changes in a way that is beneficial to all. If I'm wrong all that's lost to people who join is the time they've invested. And the way to make it succeed is by getting involved.