Post-Capitalist Entrepreneurship: Startups for the 99% details the implications of the post-capitalist society on entrepreneurship around the globe, and it challenges many of our underlying assumptions about how entrepreneurs form startups and the objectives and roles, or lack thereof, of startup investors in a post-capitalist society. The author explores real emerging stories about different forms of post-capitalist entrepreneurship (PCE) with chapters dedicated to subjects such as platform cooperatives, alternative currencies (local, crypto, and time banking), and the emergence of blockchain-enabled Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). This book will help aspiring and current entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers to: Understand emerging trends in new forms of economic activity that will shape the future of entrepreneurial opportunities Discover new approaches to business modeling in the post venture-capital opportunity space Embrace Lean startup and collaborative startup approaches that can accelerate startups in these new markets Recognize new spaces and avoid being disintermediated by new forms of startups and financing Know why and how local governments should reshape entrepreneurship policy to support post-capitalist entrepreneurship for the 99%
How design can transcend the logics, structures, and subjectivities of capitalism: a framework, theoretical grounding, and practical principles. The designed things, experiences, and symbols that we use to perceive, understand, and perform our everyday lives are much more than just props. They directly shape how we live. In Design after Capitalism, Matthew Wizinsky argues that the world of industrial capitalism that gave birth to modern design has been dramatically transformed. Design today needs to reorient itself toward deliberate transitions of everyday politics, social relations, and economies. Looking at design through the lens of political economy, Wizinsky calls for the field to transcend the logics, structures, and subjectivities of capitalism—to combine design entrepreneurship with social empowerment in order to facilitate new ways of producing those things, symbols, and experiences that make up everyday life. After analyzing the parallel histories of capitalism and design, Wizinsky offers some historical examples of anticapitalist, noncapitalist, and postcapitalist models of design practice. These range from the British Arts and Crafts movement of the nineteenth century to contemporary practices of growing furniture or biotextiles and automated forms of production. Drawing on insights from sociology, philosophy, economics, political science, history, environmental and sustainability studies, and critical theory—fields not usually seen as central to design—he lays out core principles for postcapitalist design; offers strategies for applying these principles to the three layers of project, practice, and discipline; and provides a set of practical guidelines for designers to use as a starting point. The work of postcapitalist design can start today, Wizinsky says—with the next project.
Post-Capitalist Society provides an analysis of the transformation of the world into a post-capitalist society. This transformation, which will not be completed until 2010 or 2020, has already changed the political, economic, social, and moral landscape of the world. The book reviews and revises the social, economic, and political history of the Age of Capitalism and of the nation state. It argues that the real and controlling resource and the absolutely decisive 'factor of production' is neither capital, nor land, nor labor. It is knowledge. Instead of capitalists and proletarians, the classes of the post-capitalist society are knowledge workers and service workers. This book covers a wide range of topics, dealing with post-capitalist society; with post-capitalist polity; and with new challenges to knowledge itself. The focus is on the developed countries—on Europe, on the United States and Canada, on Japan and the newly developed countries on the mainland of Asia, rather than on the developing countries of the Third World. The areas of discussion—Society, Polity, and Knowledge—are arrayed in order of predictability.
Post-Capitalist Entrepreneurship: Startups for the 99% details the implications of the post-capitalist society on entrepreneurship around the globe, and it challenges many of our underlying assumptions about how entrepreneurs form startups and the objectives and roles, or lack thereof, of startup investors in a post-capitalist society. The author explores real emerging stories about different forms of post-capitalist entrepreneurship (PCE) with chapters dedicated to subjects such as platform cooperatives, alternative currencies (local, crypto, and time banking), and the emergence of blockchain-enabled Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). This book will help aspiring and current entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers to: Understand emerging trends in new forms of economic activity that will shape the future of entrepreneurial opportunities Discover new approaches to business modeling in the post venture-capital opportunity space Embrace Lean startup and collaborative startup approaches that can accelerate startups in these new markets Recognize new spaces and avoid being disintermediated by new forms of startups and financing Know why and how local governments should reshape entrepreneurship policy to support post-capitalist entrepreneurship for the 99%
List of Tables and Figures; List of Acronyms; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Thinking Big Again; Chapter 1: From Crisis Ideology to the Division of Innovative Labour; Chapter 2: Technology, Innovation and Growth; Chapter 3: Risk-Taking State: From 'De-risking' to 'Bring It On!'; Chapter 4: The US Entrepreneurial State; Chapter 5: The State behind the iPhone; Chapter 6: Pushing vs. Nudging the Green Industrial Revolution; Chapter 7: Wind and Solar Power: Government Success Stories and Technology in Crisis; Chapter 8: Risks and Rewards: From Rotten Apples to Symbiotic Ecosystems; Chapter 9: So.
Read the Intro Chapter (PDF) View the Ayn Rand Appendix View an interview with author Robert L. Bradley, Jr. at Reason.com Capitalism took the blame for Enron although the company was anything but a free-market enterprise, and company architect was hardly a principled capitalist. On the contrary, Enron was a politically dependent company and, in the end, a grotesque outcome of America's mixed economy. That is the central finding of Robert L. Bradley's "Capitalism at Work": The blame for Enron rests squarely with "political capitalism"--a system in which business firms routinely obtain government intervention to further their own interests at the expense of consumers, taxpayers, and competitors. Although Ken Lay professed allegiance to free markets, he was in fact a consumate politician. Only by manipulating the levers of government was he able to transform Enron from a $3 billion natural gas company to a $100 billion chimera, one that went in a matter of months from seventh place on Fortune's 500 list to bankruptcy. But "Capitalism at Work" goes beyond unmasking Enron's sophisticated foray into political capitalism. Employing the timeless insights of Adam Smith, Samuel Smiles, and Ayn Rand, among others, Bradley shows how fashionable anti-capitalist doctrines set the stage for the ultimate business debacle. Those errant theories, like Enron itself, elevated form over substance, ignored legitimate criticism, and bypassed midcourse correction. Political capitali
Why have some countries been able to escape the usual dead end of international development efforts and build explosively growing capitalist economies? Based on years of fieldwork, this book provides a detailed account of the first generation of entrepreneurs in Vietnam in comparison to those in other transition countries. Focusing on the emergence of private land development firms in Ho Chi Minh City, the author shows how within seven years the private sector produced the majority of all new houses in the real estate market. This book demonstrates that capitalist entrepreneurialism was not the result of state initiative, properly incentivized policies, or individual personality traits. Rather, a society-wide reconstruction of cognitive paradigms enabled entrepreneurs to emerge and transformed Vietnam from a poor, centrally planned economy to one of the fastest growing, market economies in the world.
What if the distinction between business and doing good vanished? What if all those who engaged in business were committed to a deeper purpose, and all those committed to doing good were entrepreneurial and enterprising? What would it take for a world of seven billion such people to solve all the world’s problems? More and more people are looking for meaning and purpose in their lives as employees, as consumers, and as investors. More and more people have more than enough material goods and are more interested in the qualities of the goods they buy; in the experiences associated with the services they provide and buy; in the way the companies they buy from act as citizens; and in self-actualization—rising up Maslow’s hierarchy. As an increasing percentage of the population reaches the point at which they no longer need more stuff, what will they do, how will they live their lives? If you are one of these people, wondering where to go from here, how to “be the solution” in the twenty-first century, Be the Solution provides an original perspective on how to create a better world. Focused entirely on entrepreneurial and Conscious Capitalist solutions to the challenges and opportunities facing humanity, Be the Solution shows how the entrepreneurial passion to create a better world, in combination with Conscious Capitalist business practices, can solve far more of the world’s problems than any other approach. In combination with leading Conscious Capitalists such as John Mackey writing on “Conscious Capitalism,” leading social entrepreneurs such as Muhammad Yunus writing on “Social Business,” and leading legal reform experts such as Hernando de Soto writing on “Is Economic Freedom for Everyone?,” entrepreneurial educator Michael Strong lays out a philosophical, social, and legal framework for a FLOW vision through which all problems may be solved entrepreneurially. FLOW, Inc., is an organization cofounded by John Mackey and Michael Strong to promote Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow as optimal experience—the state in which we are so immersed in challenging, creative activity that we forget that time is passing. To be engaged in flow activities is happiness itself. Whether we are creators of enterprises or entrepreneurially creative within our life as employees, we can embody the entrepreneurial spirit and, in the words of Michelangelo, “criticize by creating.” In addition, FLOW refers to the global flow of goods, services, capital, humans, ideas, and culture, in a positive win-win-win world based on love rather than fear. Combining the best of the positive psychology and human potential movements with the best of free market thinking, FLOW offers a unique perspective on how to Be the Solution in the twenty-first century.
