What will the World look like when capital is no longer scarce? In his book, World After Capital, Albert Wenger makes the case that technological progress throughout the ages (foraging, agrarian, industrial) brought a change in scarcities. As society transitions from the Industrial Age to the Age of Knowledge, scarcities will also shift – human attention will become our most valued scarce resource.

Albert Wenger is a Managing Partner at the VC firm Union Square Ventures. A graduate of Harvard and MIT, he holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology. Before joining USV, he founded several companies in the aughts, and was the President of del.icio.us when the company was sold to Yahoo! in 2005.

Topics covered in this episode:

• His motivations for writing “World After Capital”
• How the properties of near-zero marginal cost and universality are unique to the digital age
• Human attention as the primary scarce resource in the Knowledge Age
• The shift towards the Knowledge Age and the role of capital in the future
• Covid19 as a catalyst for positive societal change, and things like universal basic income
• Potential upsides for crypto in the current economic crisis
• The asymmetry between technological progress and privacy

Episode links:

• Union Square Ventures
• World After Capital
• Continuations by Albert Wenger
• Putting the Economy in Suspended Animation: A Proposal
• World After Capital: Laying a Foundation (Regulation & Self-Regulation)
• Albert Wenger Twitter
• Reset Everything Virtual Conference – April 29th

Sponsors:

• Status: A multi-purpose communication tool that combines a peer-to-peer messenger, secure crypto wallet, and web3 browser - https://status.im/

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/333