💬 Friday discussion: common prosperity

I was fascinated by the news that China’s Alibaba will invest $15bn towards “common prosperity”, a pledge to support an initiative from President Xi.

Alibaba's funds will go towards areas such as subsidies for small and medium-sized enterprises and improving insurance protection for gig economy workers such as couriers and ride-hailing drivers.

Fascinated because, in my book, I argue that the transition to the Exponential Age creates a series of exponential gaps, and these gaps, if left to grow, will challenge the fabric of working society. Two examples of the exponential gap are

• the breakdown of the worker compact, as more work moves towards gig-working and away from salaried employment, largely at the expense of the employee,

• the creation of new private spaces, enabled by technology and owned by firms, which we might have otherwise thought of as the pubic domain or commons.

One way of addressing this issue is through the principle of commonality*– that many exponential gaps can be narrow…