A good friend and great person read one of my rants and asked "Talent is more expensive than capital, yes, but isn't talent the new capital, hence the new capitalism, borderless and beyond economic limits?"
Great question! Quick answer: no.
Talent is the old capital. Talent is capital in a barter economy, and we are unlikely to return to a barter economy any time soon, if for no other reason than the measurement of economic activity is too critical to people who want more capital, and barter is too hard to quantify.
Talent and capital are two different things. Talent is more expensive, but because it has taken a back seat to capital in the worlds markets since the advent of the mercantile economy there has been very little work done on the quantification, analysis, packaging and hedging of talent. There is no "talent arbitrage."
This is not just because people are different than money (which is the obvious answer), but because talent just hasn't had a lot of rigorous analysis put behind it. Talent was cheap, capital was expensive, so we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to manage money and not a lot of time around trying to manage talent. Perhaps Maslow was the Smith of the 20th century. That would put us about 200 years behind the curve.
My friend is right that, due to information age infrastructures, talent is without borders. And he is right that we are in the new age of "Talentism" which will replace "Capitalism" and speak deeply to the fundamental error of "Socialism" (that a person's needs are more valuable than their talents, basically reinforcing capitalism in the first place).
But I digress. And appreciate the comment. Thanks!
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