in the wonderful state of Wisconsin the battle of our age is raging - the population has had a gut full of it and who can blame them because nothing will be resolved by tomorrow's vote...in an almost unique recall election the incumbent governor who is a small government republican is being challenged by a big union democrat candidate ....it is easy to characterise this battle, as most do, as a simple right vs left ideological war or the tea party vs occupy wall street but it is ultimately about much much more than that...to my mind this election is about the real issue facing the developed world since 2000 - that is how do we grow wealth and redistribute wealth in a digital economy?....the old analogue or mass production economy ways of redistribution through regulated work/jobs is becoming less and less effective in a networked economy...I contend, no assert, that today the nature of work has changed fundamentally - in C20th each worker could point to his/her role in a value chain and calculate just how much or how little value-add he/she brought to it... today the worth of one's contribution to a digital economic network is all about just how much use value an individual brings to the enterprise...use value is a measure of consumer or customer satisfaction not a measure of production throughput....in a digital economy huge wealth will accrue to a few people (eg Zuckerberg and Sandberg at Facebook) without the need for massive employment of others and without the multiplier effects that has on income, let alone wealth, distribution...the real problem for future generations is how will we be able to adequately redistribute wealth in a 'jobless society'....should it be done by increasing the power and influence of the state or can we find a free enterprise way? Sweden can argue it has and always has had a good mix of both but others will say it still is a big state model...there is no viable free enterprise model at present and that is why most western democracies are locked in a ideological warfare....if we were to adopt the big state solution then western democracies would begin to look and act more like Chinese cantons and less like the open forums that allow meaningless ideological mudslinging battles like the one raging in Wisconsin....see http://goo.gl/aeAw4
