Soon, the concept of dollars and yen and euros, while likely always dominant, will be joined in ever greater scale by Lindens and Ven and Rewards, along with infinite other forms of trading currencies that allow people everywhere to barter in a form of sophistication scarcely imagined. We are only a few years from the emergence of internet based exchanges that will be able to handle these multitudes of currencies in any form possible... from Starbucks points to American Airlines miles to Goofy dollars, it should be possible to trade our own personal currencies on floating exchanges managed in great complexity by systems that compare relative values of these currencies and trade them against each other in real time. What will be the value determinator? Just like in today’s larger national currencies, personal currencies will be valued by two things: size of network and reputational status. One can easily imagine a world where your status and your friends will drive the value of your work and wealth.  

Early examples of this are already appearing on the internet, where peer-to-peer lending is providing new ways to raise capital among distributed groups of people. Zopa.com, Prosper.com and LendingClub.com are all leading this, and rapidly launching social network applications that make these projects viral within the largest social networks. It is only a matter of time before they become accepted, and then dominant. In so doing, they will close the arbitrage enjoyed by large banks, who lend at up to 15% interest but only pay on capital at around 5%. Why would you borrow from a bank at 15% when you can borrow from your network at 7%? Why would you save with a bank at 5% when you could earn 7% from your network? These are same questions that bankers know the answer to in their heart, the same way media people now know the answer to “Why can’t you charge for content on the internet?

The Big Shift: Energy

Even more radical, but slower to fruition, will be a similar networked view of energy. Currently 60% of the top 10 Global 500 companies are energy companies, accounting for trillions of dollars in assets, and a combined total of over 15% of the entire top 500 companies on the list, across all industries. It is massive — no other media company comes close to the top 10, and no financial company even cracks it. So when peer-to-peer hits energy, we can be sure it will change life as we know it.  

The change is slower, but it is coming.  Already, families are choosing to go "off the grid" to install solar or other micro-produced power sources at their homes.  Companies across planet are installing solar panels on flat roofs, ranging from Home Depots to Wal-Marts, or building skyscrapers in China and the Middle-East that generate alternative power. We are effectively turning these buildings into small power producers. As wind, solar, and alternative energy take off, they will transform the consumers into producers, and begin to shift the stranglehold of energy distribution from a few key players to one of many participants. Just like media. Just like banking.  

We can expect that this will really take off when we figure out how to produce cars that generate power instead of consume it... that store energy from their movement and then plug into the grid to feed it, instead of taking from it. That will transform all of us into producers, and create another source of collective power for the people. 

But What's In It For Me?

It will be a long time before we see a three stream micro-income for people in advanced or advancing economies that stems from our individual contributions to communications, finance and energy, but rest assured — the process is hardly reversible. It’s a good thing. It might mean that companies have to learn to live in a new reality, and some may not even survive it, but in economic terms this shift towards collective economics is more efficient for all of us. It helps to price in externalities, it helps to prevent waste, and it will move us toward a sustainable economy based on equilibrium rather than growth.  

If we are, as a collective and unified global society, going to survive the resource modernization of over 6 billion people in the coming years, we have to find a way to live better with less, to find happiness in equilibrium versus unchecked growth.  A peer-to-peer economy can help make that happen. So what if it doesn’t make any money? With a strong network of friends and a good reputation, you’ll be just fine.  

It sounds unbelievable, but at Hub Culture, we believe someday there will be no consumers, only friends.  

That’s the beauty of an internet-powered barter economy.... and a return to a very old world from a very long time ago.

Stan Stalnaker
Nearly five years ago John Wiley & Sons published Hub Culture: The Next Wave of Urban Consumers, by Stan Stalnaker, one of the first books to look at the social impact of globalization. In that analysis, the book outlined the emergence of a common group of people in the worlds largest urban areas, or hubs, who had more in common with each other than with anyone else. This tip-of-the-pyramid collective group thrived on common characteristics, including travel, communication, and a thirst for experience — all principals that global companies today regard as indisputable, especially in the luxury sector. Now Stan is exploring what happens with the whole pyramid — with new ideas in articles and columns leading up to his next big thesis, tentatively titled IS: How Everything Syncs, and Why It Doesn't, and coming (hopefully) in 2008. Much of this material is appearing at hubculture.com, where he and others explore the latest zeitgeist on topics surrounding global culture. 

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